“I told you I can’t control it. But if you let me stay here, I’ll try. I’ll do whatever it takes. Please, Seth.” I slip the open sleep elixir on the floor beneath my bed, and then I creep towards the desk.
He turns back suddenly, startling me.
“I told you I wouldn’t defy her. What am I supposed to tell her about why I should be the one to keep you?”
I have absolutely no idea how to convince Adria not to take me back if that’s what she wants. “You could tell her I didn’t manage to escape from you like I did from her.”
He grins, his mood turning suddenly. “That’s true.” He turns back to the desk and shuffles through the papers, making more notes.
I’m nearly to the cork. I lean down to grab it—
“Say, howdidyou give Adria the slip?” Seth asks, turning back to me again. I scratch at the nightgown’s lace hem where it touches my ankle, hoping he doesn’t notice the odd gesture. “Didn’t she have you shackled?”
I freeze. He’s about to realize that I’m no longer shackled. His maid ran during the commotion with the griffin, but she’s likely in a tent nearby, waiting until the camp bells ring the all clear. At which point he’ll have her shackle me again.
I’ve got to get this damn cork.
“She had me in a dog kennel,” I say, straightening back up. I can’t see any value in concealing the truth of what happened. Adria has certainly put together Larus’s betrayal by this point. “Larus broke me out.”
Seth turns back around, shaking his head. “He always did have a soft spot for you.”
I grab the cork between my toes and limp back to the bed before he can turn around again. Taran lifts his head to look at me as I silently retrieve the bottle from the floor, deepening the shadow beneath the bed. I hold my finger to my lips and then I cork the bottle.
It makes a tiny squeak.
I shove the bottle under the sheets as Seth turns. “Did you hear that?”
“It sounded like a mouse.”
Seth shudders. “I agree. I’ll have the servants find it when we move. Or a cat, I suppose, if they fail.”
When he turns back around again, I slip the bottle deep inside the pillowcase as he folds each letter one by one.
“Well, it’s time to get a few hours’ rest, I suppose,” he says as he rises. “I’ll come and get you in the morning when it’s time to take the tent down.” He heads to the tent flap with the letters in hand. He’s one step away from it when he realizes. “Your shackles. You were wearing shackles.”
Well, it was too much to hope that he would forget entirely. “I took the key from your maid with my shadows.”
Even from across the tent, I can see the shift in his demeanor. He’sfascinated. “Really?”
I can use this, his desire for information about my power. I don’t know why it fascinates him, but I can use it to get him to keep me instead of giving me back to Adria. “It’s like—I mean, well, it’s difficult to explain.”
He walks back over, his steps far surer than before. Either he really wants to hear this, or all of his letter writing has sobered him up. “Try.”
“Well,” I say, drawing out the suspense as long as I can. “It’s like they’re an extension of me. Like an extension of my hand.”
“You can feel things with them?” He sits backwards in his chair again, ready to gossip.
“Yes.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Like having another hand, I suppose. I can feel objects. I can maneuver them.”
“With some precision,” he adds. “If you opened a lock with them.”
“I threw a knife with them once.” This isn’t exactly true. When I fought Marcella, I stopped her knife with the shadows, but what I threw in her face was an elixir just like the one concealed in my pillowcase.
But I don’t want him thinking of elixirs right now, and I can use the lie to fuel my magic.
