Page 134 of Taken By Shadows

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it’s Sapphine,” Gavrin said with a roll of his eyes.

“Because she wanted my attention at home in Gallen. On the mines.” The breath in the room stilled. “We finally hit something.” Tymon paused as he looked to Kaed. “After over a hundred years, we finally hit something.”

Kaed’s eyes fixed on Tymon.

“We think we’ve hit a cache of faebane.”

No hint of shock pinched Kaed’s features at Tymon’s admission.

My heart sank and soared on that one sentence.

There was faebane. It existed. But it belonged to Tymon. What were the chances that there was another source of it in the Four Corners that no one knew about, that wasn’t going to take another century, if not more, to find? And from what Audrie had said, Tymon would need the faebane to fund his region. He’d only married Sapphine to save his people from ruination. And she must know that. So she would want repayment for her years of marriage.

Kaed hadn’t flinched. He had barely taken a breath.

“Why are you telling us this?” Gavrin folded his arms, chest inappropriately peeking through his shirt in the tense room.

Tymon looked at him, then spoke to Kaed. “Because I trust you. And I don’t trust Sapphine and her father.”

“His father is far worse than Sapphine’s.” Gavrin jerked a thumb at Kaed. He really had no filter.

Denora tilted her head to him as if to say Watch it.

“Gavrin is right.” Kaed’s eyes were unreadable as he held them downcast from all of us. “My father is far worse than Sapphine’s. Why would you tell us this?”

“Because you’re not your father.”

Unease seemed to knot in Kaed at the words, but he looked to Tymon. Disquiet rumbled through him, through his magic.

“I would ask you to defend Gallen should it come to it,” Tymon declared as he clasped his hands behind his back, shoulders stiff and waiting.

Silence.

“I understand the burden of this request,” he continued, “but I will not see my people suffer.”

Denora shifted on her feet, but it was Kaed who spoke. “We cannot defend your people.”

I thought I might hit him for that. But his next words might as well have collapsed me.

“Because we will be fighting a front on two sides then. Sapphine and my father. He already knows there is a new source of faebane in the Four Corners, and if he comes to believe it is in Gallen, he will not stop until it is his.”

“How could he possibly know? I barely knew until recently.” Tymon glanced at all of us in turn.

A muscle flexed in Kaed’s jaw, and he briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were laced with something I couldn’t place, but it was hard and unyielding.

“Imogen”—he tilted his head to me—“has also found faebane and refuses to give me its location.”

After that, everything came out. The kidnapping. The false betrothal. The reason Hart was moving through the Four Corners searching for faebane.

And how Kaed was not willing to give me to his father for his conquest.

Kaed’s body angled in front of me as he spoke. I wasn’t even sure he knew he was doing it, an innate part of him moving his limbs until I was behind him. The crest of his wings even broke through the confines of his back as he declared his father’s claim to me was nothing he would allow to manifest.

I think up until that point, up until he said it aloud to Tymon, to everyone, I’d still feared I would be given to the king.

Hart was already searching the Corners, according to the information Denora had gleaned in Hayden. And Kaed had been receiving letters from Hart at the Alabaster Palace with updates on his progress, their contents growing more demanding with each delivery.