“She needs something warm on her back,” Drystan snaps, and Prae rolls her eyes before shoving his head at me.
“I’ve dealt with him all day,” she says at my questioning glance. “It’s your turn.”
“Then you take Caed,” I retort.
Prae snorts. “No deal. They’re both your problem. I’m happily unmated.”
“For now,” Caed sings, striding past us.
“Fomorian, get back here and brush down my horse,” Drystan snarls. “He needs fresh water and?—”
“It’s a magical fucking horse,” Caed retorts. “Practically a unicorn. It’s not going to die, and unless it can drink sea water, it’s just as shit out of luck as the rest of us.”
Sighing, I turn and look at Caed, raising Drystan’s head as I do so. “Please, stop arguing with each other, at least for tonight.”
The eye contact is deliberate, and even though I don’t really have it in me to reach for Danu to strengthen the magic, it does the trick.
“Rhoswyn,” Drystan snarls.
But I’m not in the mood for it. Too much has happened today for me to put up with them arguing over a stupid horse.
“No. Caed saved me. You can growl and snarl at him once you’ve worked together to figure out a way to get all of our people out of Siabetha. I won’t leave this court without them, even if I have to charge in there and kill Eero myself.”
“As much as I love the direct approach,” Maeve says, laying a placating hand on my shoulder that manifests as a slight chill. “It’s not smart when your enemy is invincible.”
“I’m not insane,” I retort, following the others towards the shack. “Only an idiot would think someone like me stands a chance against Eero, but I highly doubt he’s guarding his own dungeons.”
Everything in me wants to storm the castle and rescue my mates. My high priestess. Wraith. My brothers…
I cut off that train of thought viciously. The only way I’ve managed to avoid sobbing like a baby during the ride here is by deliberately refusing to address what I saw as I tumbled from that window.
It will break me.
I can’t break until my mates are safe.
“Not all of us are in the dungeons,” Drystan replies, looking between me and the spirit. “Bree and Kitarni are still unaccounted for.”
My chest ices over. “Both of them?”
“Kitarni is likely being kept in the temple,” Drystan mutters. “It’s her right to challenge the Grand Clerics until she wins. Bricriu, on the other hand…”
“We need to find him.” I won’t leave him in the place that has taken so much from him already.
If they’ve hurt a single hair on his head, I will raze that city to the ground. I will make what happened to the Toxic Orchid look like a parlour trick.
If I take that route, innocent people will die,I remind myself, trying to smother the Goddess’s rage and my own with some deep breaths.
“Can you contact them?” Caed asks Drystan, shoving open the door to the shack and revealing a cramped, but dry interior, full of nets and old fish traps. The two of them are completely oblivious to the murderous urges I’m battling, and oddly, that helps.
“Ugh, it reeks of fish,” Prae mutters, ignoring us as she shoves inside and drops her pack on the ground with a clank.
There isn’t even a real floor, just some old rugs spread out over the sand.
“My mouth and ears are here,” Drystan reminds him, and it’s not quite a snarl, but close. “My body can perceive auras while my head is gone, but everything else is a blurry mess of black and white. I can make out structures, but that’s it. If you think that I can communicate well enough to organise a breakout, you’re going to be disappointed.”
“So what do you know then?” Caed asks. “Come on, you must have seen something useful.”
Is he…? My gut does a somersault as I realise he actually sounds like he’s going along with my plan.
