Eleni took a deep breath, expression solemn, though the bracketed lines around her mouth held the ghost of her smile in place.
“Thereisa rush, as you say, and to that end I’m afraid I must ask a favour of you.”
Kai felt his shoulders tense at once; he’d had his reservations about Eleni from the beginning. He hadaskedher what her motivations were, and found her answer evasive at best. Was he about to find out that he’d been wrong to believe her invitation was entirely in good faith?
“Is our welcome here contingent on this favour?”
“As I’ve said, my home is your home. That iswhyI need your help.”
Kai scrutinised her for a moment, the slight, imploring slant of her brow and the trepidation working its way through her nerves until her fingers twitched slightly where she gripped the table’s edge. He gave a slow nod, waiting.
She exhaled.
“When you meet the other merrow, I would ask you to act as a Dhaliaan emissary, to an extent. I would ask you,” she said, eyesdropping to her own twitching hand before she forced them back up to meet his, “to broker peace.”
“Peace?”
Kai exchanged a swift look with his cousin; Os was similarly tensed, his typically impassive face tight, eyes narrowed. He had no idea, then, what it was that Eleni wanted from them.
“There are waters beyond the reef known asIsa Koemi;Isa’s Graveyard. Have you ever wondered why the Crossing takes quite as long as it does?”
He hadn’t; ships were a rather abstract concept to one who could travel the waters at their leisure, and Kai had no point of reference for the length of such a journey. But at her prompting, he could only guess at the connection between Daughter Isa, who he knew to be a water-wielding deity, and the apparently troubled waters off the Dhaliaan coast.
“I’m assuming your ships keep a wide berth of this graveyard.”
“They do. And when theArabidaetakes you beyond the reef tomorrow, you may have a ways to swim, unfortunately, as we are neither permitted nor willing to enterKoemi.”
Kai stared.
“Are you saying these merrow have settled within the graveyard?”
Eleni gave a stiff smile, her silence stretching ominously.
“I’m saying they are the Daughter’s own reapers.”
Chapter Eight
Gerard
The kitchens were sweltering, heated by aromatic steam and the breath of dozens of bodies, all packed in tight. Footmen, and maids, and stable hands, all savouring a few scarce moments of warmth, all thawing the chill that gripped their very bones day in and day out. Ger thought he even recognised a courtier, a former lady-in-waiting of the late queen’s, hugging the wall and watching the bustle with her eyes wide beneath a dainty silk hood that did nothing to hide her identity. It didn’t matter who she was anyway; all were welcome in Marie’s kitchen. All save for Doran’s men. Well, most of them at least—not that Ger considered himself in any wayDoran’s man, even if he had technically been appointed to the Queen’s Gard.
Goddess, he wished he’d never entered that fucking tourney. Would he still have ended up where he was now? Stationed atthe usurper’s side, day in and day out? Fighting off the clawing panic with every suffocating breath? Stealing three minutes between shifts to warm his hands over a pot of bloody stew?
Probably, he reasoned.
Avette didn’t give a frozen fuck that he’d won his place in the tourney. She only cared that he remained, like a trophy, in full view. He was a weapon kept close to hand, ready to be wielded should Adeline ever return from Dhalias to claim her throne. And he hoped—Daughters, hehoped, with every impotent fibre of his being—that she never did.
“Here,” came a voice at his shoulder, brisk enough to yank his thoughts across the oceans and drop him back into his surroundings.
A wooden spoon was pressed into his hand, and Ger glanced up to find a harried, pink-cheeked Marie at his side. The kitchens, though busier than ever, were not buzzing with the usual cacophony of laughter and chatter, and it was plain to look at any of the many faces behind him that these last few weeks had hardened nearly all of those who dwelled or worked in the palace. Yet Marie, who had been so hard to begin with, had softened. The steel in her eyes had dulled, and the stern purse of her lips was fleeting, free of any real severity. She laid her palm over his shoulder and squeezed—which, for Marie, may as well have been a bloody hug.
“All these extra hands in my kitchen,” she said, with a gentleness that seemed to strain the very muscles in her throat. She swallowed against that strain, then nodded at the pot of stew before him. “We may as well make for lighter work. Get stirring.”
Ger stared after her as she scattered a cluster of gard initiates with a flap of her hands and bustled off to find them somethingto do, the youths scurrying after her like ducklings after their mother. A snort of laughter had him whipping around again;laughter. All the fucking Daughters, when had he last heard someonelaugh?
It seemed impossible.
But there he stood, unfathomable joy written in the brackets around his laughing mouth. The porter leaned against the counter, loose and open with his palms braced behind him, grinning as he nodded at Marie’s retreating back.
