Page 42 of Revealing Fate

Felíne blinked. “Goodness.”

He grunted.

“What do your friends call you?”

“Beaumont Stonehaugh.”

Felíne edged closer to the bars. “That is positively excessive.” Then again, Felíne Lochlan Faelstrom wasn’t any better.

Beaumont shrugged broad shoulders. “That is my name.”

“What about Beau?”

“We had a watch guard named Beau,” the man mused. “He liked to cheat at stones. Liked to cheat at most things, actually.”

“Where is he now?”

Beaumont scratched at the thick tuft of his beard. “Dead.”

Felíne huffed. “Well, that won’t do. How about Monty?”

Beaumont faced forward. Another grunt was his only response.

How about ‘Stony’? she thought, miffed.

Minutes ticked by in silence. The cell where Stonehaugh had taken her was located in some kind of encampment. Unlike Meress’s ethereal fusion with the surrounding forest, the buildings here occupied a sizable clearing enclosed by a towering wooden perimeter wall. When Beaumont escorted her through the gate, she’d glimpsed a collection of cabins of varying sizes, their green metal roofs glinting in the sunlight. Training rings dotted the expanse, clustered with watch members practicing sparring and hand-to-hand combat. Deeper into the encampment, another inner wall—maybe twelve feet in height—encircled some manner of pit. Felíne hadn’t gotten close enough to see within, but it looked wide enough to house a hundred shurii in second form.

The prisoners’ cells stood on one edge of the depot, the cramped enclosures forming a line parallel to the perimeter wall. Several interconnected rooms, cold stone on three sides, spanned the block, their iron-barred entrances facing toward the center of the camp. Not that they offered much view. The cells, covered by a sloping metal roof that extended in an overhang, were situated behind a lone L-shaped wall that blocked the camp from sight.

Beaumont Stonehaugh reclined against that wall, just outside her cell door. He stared down the row, monitoring the single accessible opening that existed somewhere to Felíne’s left, out of view. Hers was the last cell. She was the only prisoner.

“What happens when the Conclave arrives?” she asked.

“Inquiry.”

His tone made Felíne think it was more than a series of questions. “What happens during an inquiry?”

Gods, if someone walked in with a scale and stones, she’d scream. She’d survived Trade Master Grisham’s weighing thanks to Adder’s timely intervention. But Adder and Ophelia might as well be on the other side of Ilistaar. She had precious few allies here in the belly of Cozened territory.

Beaumont shifted on his crate. “You’ll be given a trial. Depending on⁠—”

Beaumont abruptly lumbered to his feet. Whatever he’d been about to explain remained unspoken, hanging in the air like an omen.

Felíne pushed to her feet and gripped the bars. “Depending? Depending on what?”

But Beaumont gave no indication that he’d heard her. “Battle Master Kaine,” he said, folding at the waist.

Felíne cranked her head to the left, breath catching. Her knuckles paled where they fisted the bars.

Heavy footfalls trod the short hallway leading toward her cell, their beats replacing those of Felíne’s frozen heart. A moment later, Kal stepped into view.

Her heart soared at the sight of him. Then it dipped. He looked awful.

Kal wore the same clothes he’d been in when he left Felíne at his cabin the previous day, but his countenance had changed. Dark circles rimmed the undersides of bloodshot eyes. Tense lines carved hollows between his brows and bracketed his mouth. Thick stubble shadowed a clenched jaw. He looked haggard. Exhausted. Stressed.

Felíne’s chest squeezed. She had the urge to reach out and fold herself around him, which was foolish. She was likely to blame for his current state.

“Leave us,” Kal said gruffly to Beaumont.