“Unbearable woman,” he counters, his lips so close they brush mine.
It's all I can do to not grab his face and crush his mouth completely to my own. But I'm afraid I won't be able to stop if I do that, and realizing this does nothing to help the lightheadedness overtaking me.
I carefully untangle our fingers. “I think we've given a convincing enough performance to satisfy our watchers.”
“Yes. We likely have.”
I force myself to take a tiny step back.
Briar, I remind myself, fiercely.I'm supposed to be looking for Briar.
And we're supposed to be unraveling whatever sorrowful atrocities this king and his ancestors have committed, and I'm not supposed to be standing so close to him, or to be so terribly aware of every one of his increasingly ragged breaths, of every beat of his fickle heart, of every small and almost imperceptible shift of his weight toward mine…
I take another step back. A deep breath. A measured exhale. “Good luck with your meetings, Your Majesty.”
He makes an obvious, concentrated effort to mold his expression into something cool and unbothered.
“Good afternoon, Ashwalker,” he says. Words he's said a hundred times before. But there's a hesitation in them, this time, as if something else nearly slipped out in their place.
He kisses my cheek—a slow, lingering press that feelsmore like purposeful claiming than polite pretending—before walking away.
My hand reaches for the warmth his lips left behind before I realize I'm doing it. Touching my fingertips to the spot only makes the warmth spread and sink deeper, leaving me even dizzier than before.
Traitor, says Lord Faron’s voice in my head.
“Idiot,” I mutter to myself—aboutmyself—and then I clench my fingers into a fist and walk on, quickly locating Briar in the small garden that her room overlooks.
It takes a bit of time and strategy to slip back into the arena unnoticed, but we manage it just before sunset. Briar picks the door's crumbling, ancient lock with ease, opening it to reveal stairs that lead down to more dusty stone floors and cobwebbed walls…and yet another door.
This one is much wider and made of metal, with a thick iron seam running down its center. I step toward it, once again swirling fire to my fingertips so I can see better. There's no handle, only a narrow slot set into the middle of it, the shape of it uneven and strange.
“That looks like a space for a very specific key,” I mutter.
“Not a lock I can pick, in other words,” Briar says, frowning.
I guide my light closer, watching the flames lick at the metal. Even a glancing brush of this dragon-manipulated fire is enough to leave dark scorch marks, and I think I see the surface starting to warp a bit, too.
Briar reads the plan on my face before I can even fully formulate it myself. “If you melt a hole in this door, I don't think it's going to go unnoticed,” she says, flatly. “Especially if you set the room on fire in the process.”
“I've been practicing,” I counter. “I can be precise enough to not burn anything down. Also, look at how dusty it is in here—clearly no one regularly visits this area, so we'll at least have some time before our deed is discovered. Whatever might be hiding beneath this palace, I think they're trying to bury it…maybe they've forgotten what's even under here themselves? It will likely be weeks before they realize what we've done.”
Briar looks skeptical about this last part.
Honestly, I am too.
But my mind is already made up; I can't go another day without unraveling at leastoneof the mysteries surrounding the royal family.
And after a moment of enduring my wistful stare, Briar gives in as well. “Well…I suppose it's not themostreckless plan we've ever had.”
“Not even close to it,” I agree, placing my hand on the metal. It feels oddly cold, even with the warm magic still twisting around my hand. The cold bleeds up through my palm and into my arm, and without thinking, I allow the fire to respond with an alarmingly bright flare that makes Briar and me both stumble back.
“…But maybe wait outside, at a safe distance, just in case,” I tell her.
“Please don't incinerate yourself,” she replies. “I'm not even sure how I would handle that.”
“There's a broom in that room up above; you can use it to sweep up the ashes of me.”
“That's not funny,” she grumbles, and Sesca adds a short, indignant sound from somewhere outside, as if she overheard and doesn't approve of my morbid bit of humor, either.
