Page 78 of Sky’s Edge

Mom gasped.

And my voice was high-pitched when I asked, “What?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I know. Kidnapped. He says she’s in Land’s End, safe. However, he did not share why he went to such dramatic lengths to get her safe, why he thought she wasn’t safe, or why he’d care at all if she wasn’t, because he made his feelings clear about her.”

I fought growling, because any time I was reminded of what Cormac did to our Gayle, it made the demon come out in me.

Laura kept on.

“But I’ve tried to get in touch with her, oh, I don’t know, approximately five hundred times since we loaded up to come up here, and she isn’t answering.”

I immediately took my Palm from Laura so I could text Gayle.

Where are you? Are you ok? I sent.

“She won’t reply,” Laura told me.

“Why did he take her?” I asked.

“Again, Prince Cormac wasn’t forthcoming,” Laura answered. “But all this tweaked Aleksei because…”

She didn’t really have to explain the because, since Aleksei’s True Bride had been targeted, multiple times, the head of her security detail had been murdered while protecting her, and all of this drama ended in a troll attack on the royal residence in Nocturn: the Celestial Palace.

“Aleksei,” she carried on, “and from how he tells it, Tanyn, Cormac and Bainon as well, believe Tatra was behind everything.”

Bainon was the prince, and future king, of Dawn’s Break.

Mom gasped.

I gasped too.

“We can all agree it makes sense, considering Arnaud wasn’t the brightest neon in the script,” she continued. “If you think about him, his being the mastermind behind that troll attack would be a shocker. And I learned on the way up here, Arnaud demanded to be given truth serum, he was, and even under the effects of the serum, he vehemently denies he had anything to do with Tula Longshot’s murder or any plot against me, Aleksei or Night’s Fall.”

“Oh my goodness,” Mom whispered.

“But Tatra’s exiled to Snowy Ridge,” I said.

“Exiled, but not cut off from anything,” Laura returned, then drifted a hand in front of her. “And I’ve heard the Hectic Chateau is quite something, but it’s no Berg Castle. Aleksei thinks…they all think, like she pulled the strings when King Riland was alive, she did the same when Arnaud was. They think she has designs to do…something. They just don’t know what.”

“Do they have any proof of this?” Mom asked.

Laura looked to her, shaking her head. “I really don’t know. Aleksei didn’t get deep into it. But he sounds pretty convinced of it.”

“Well, he’ll probably be more convinced when he learns the preliminary findings of Riland’s autopsy showed he was not only drugged, but poisoned,” I informed her.

It was Laura’s turn to gasp (I’d told Mom this over lunch).

“Mm-hmm,” I concurred to her shock.

“Cat,” she said in a weird voice, and weirder, she reached out to take my hand, holding it like she was supporting me through something terrible.

“What?” I whispered.

“I have no clue why it didn’t occur to me, but I didn’t really think about it until Aleksei mentioned it on the way up here,” she began.

But she said no more.

So I prompted, “What?” again.