The prince had lied to me. But then, I hadn’t told him I was a Luminae. We wanted to protect each other. Maybe the truth, in times like these, was too expensive for people like us. Maybe that’s also why I didn’t tell Wren what I was doing; I wasn’t afraid she’d try to stop me. But she’d have insisted on joining me, and she was still too weak for that.
The ember’s heat and the seal’s pain flared simultaneously this time. I dropped the poker and braced a hand against the hearth to stay upright. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly in and out, trying not to fight. The ember and seal were already engaged in battle. I only gave myself a moment, then pushed through the pain.
I opened the door and found Pax standing guard, and didn’t waste time. “The prince is in danger.”
There was no hesitation now. This wasn’t a bit of leftover food, but the life of the man he’d sworn to protect.
“How?”
“I can feel when the Aetheric practitioner is preparing.” I tapped my chest. “In here. And I can feel it now.” I held out the scrap of note. “I think the prince went to confront him. Do you know where he went?”
“He doesn’t want you to leave the palace.”
“I’m aware. But I will do it anyway in order to save him. Pax, I swear on all the realms that I’m not wrong, and he won’t be punishing anyone. I can feel it in my bones. The Aetheric practitioner wants to kill the prince. We have to stop him.”
He was only quiet for a couple of heartbeats, but it still felt like an eternity. “I can’t leave the palace. But I know who can help. Follow me.”
We ran through the palace to the “small” armory, or so the prince had called it. When Pax pushed open the door—well concealed in the passageway wall—the space it revealed was larger than the dining room.
Either the former prince had given this room more attention than the library, or Red had already cleaned it up, but it was immaculate. It had stone walls and floors and an arched ceiling supported by enormous timbers. There were racks of swords and pikes and bows, and the Moriad with its gleaming sapphires had pride of place.
Red wore a leather apron and was working a knife against a flat piece of stone. He looked up as we strode toward him. He wasn’t the only one. There were half a dozen more soldiers in the room, and they all watched suspiciously, surely wondering what in Oblivion I was doing in their war room.
Red put aside the knife and stone and rose from his stool. “Fox. Pax.”
“The prince,” I said breathlessly. “I think he’s in trouble. Do you know where he’s gone?”
“If he wanted you to have that information, he would have told you.”
“Do you know?” I repeated.
“The prince didn’t say,” Yue said, moving closer. “He believed you’d wheedle the information out of us and follow him.”
“Is he meeting the Aetheric practitioner?”
Red snorted. “Without an army? Why would he do that?”
I held out the note.
Red looked at it, and the doubt in his eyes faded to hard, cold fear. “Where did you get this?”
“His rooms. In the fireplace, where he burned it, or thought he had. Tell me.”
Red put aside his tools and rose. “I don’t know the details. Only that he took Galen and two soldiers to a meeting outside the stronghold. Surely he wouldn’t…”
“He wanted to draw out the practitioner. I suggested using me as bait, and he refused. Then the practitioner gives him a chance to meet outside the stronghold, where there’s much less risk of injury to civilians. He thinks the practitioner is weak from our fight, and he thinks doing it will protect me.”
“That won’t be a meeting,” Red said. “It will be a consensual assassination.”
“We have to find him,” I said. “And we need more soldiers.”
“I don’t know where they’ve gone,” Yue said.
“Where would they go?” Red asked me.
I tried to put myself in the Aetheric practitioner’s shoes. Orcloak, anyway. “He must have a place relatively close to the stronghold; humans can’t travel very far through the Aetheric, and I don’t think he’d want to waste time in a carriage. He wears a mask. Could be part of the costume, but I think he doesn’t want anyone to know his identity. So he’d want a place that’s secluded and has places to hide. In the foothills, maybe, where he can disappear in the woods but get to the stronghold quickly when he needs to.”
I looked at Red. “You said Jonas was killed outside the stronghold. Where?”
