“I only meant to agree with you, you know.”
“You—” He paused, eyes clearing. “Right. Then I need to go to my family. Make sure they know I’m alive and discuss a plan from there. Will you meet me?”
She nodded.
“And you won’t do anything reckless in the meantime?”
Chapter forty-six
When the ‘yes’had left her lips, she’d meant it. Though now, as she stood outside the door to her home, she wasn’t sure it hadn’t, in fact, been a lie.
Lux gripped the handle, pulling it wide, and stepped inside.
It was a good day for the festival. Rare sunlight shone unobstructed through the windows and poured in at Lux’s back. She let the door close, slow and noiseless, and with a fortifying breath, descended the stairs.
The first thing she noticed were the gloves.
She’d lost them. They had disappeared in the darkness. Abandoned in the shadow of a cottage, deep within the wood.
Now they were clean, dry, and laid upon the table side by side. They were meant as a warning. Or a threat. She brushed her fingers across them.No. They were meant as a test.
Riselda floated around the corner.
“Good morning, darling. You’re late.” Her face was off. It pulled tight in odd places while slackening in others, her eyes littoo bright. Riselda’s smile tightened at Lux’s perusal, feral and begging for her to say something. Thirsted for it.
She tipped her head, and long, slender fingers tapped against the table’s surface. “What were you saying, Lucena?”
“I didn’t say anything, Riselda.” A thin sheen of sweat broke over Lux’s body, and with a heavy stone coming to rest in the pit of her stomach, she swallowed.
The cackling laugh wasn’t the deep, melodic one she’d become accustomed to. It was different. The high laugh of something,someone, else.
It was true, then.
“I know you didn’t. I only expected you to. Some explanation, surely, for disregarding my advice and thwarting my plan of seeing you safe.” Lux’s hand fisted around the glove nearest her. “Yours?”
Lux studied those eyes for much too long. Every muscle quivered, pulled taut. “Yes. Did you find them?”
“Yes.” And Riselda smiled, her teeth glistening. “How is Morana?”
“She’ll live.”
Riselda tutted. “I suspected it was you.” Abruptly, Lux needed to sit down. She pulled out a stool. It screeched, and Riselda glared at her. “Your gasp as I struck that worthless girl gave it away.”
Lux sneered. “And yet you still tried to kill me in the tunnels?”
“So dramatic. I only wanted to frighten you off. Of course, then you blinded me. What the devil was that contraption?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t even sure what it would do when I activated it.”
Riselda laughed. “I enjoy your honesty. It’s a lovely change from that secretive little attitude.” Pulling out a chair herself, she sat upon the stool opposite. “So, you’ve saved the mayor’s daughter in exchange for your own life, was it?”
Lux been honest enough. “Something like that.”
“I wasn’t going to kill her, Lucena. I only wanted to make her experience all you had. Fear, darkness, hopelessness. A bruise upon her cheek.” Riselda reached toward her, and Lux drew back. “Though, without lifeblood, she would have died in the forest eventually. Goodness, you should have heard her in the solarium, prattling on about her wastrel of a husband to the help. A solarium I solicited! None of it would have been so brilliant without my touch. Such a waste.”
“When was this?”
“Last evening. When I happened to deposit a little tonic for sleep in her spiced chocolate. Her grief had been sooverwhelming, after all.” She winked.
