Page 215 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“Apology accepted,” she said, turning her attention back on her book and wiping a hand over her cheeks.

He cocked a smug brow up. “I’ll ask Selia to be less generous with her perfume.”

“Don’t inconvenience your whore for me, Malik,” Thora said, giving him a polite smile and standing. “I can just sit further away.” After finding a spot near where Visha was sitting, she continued her research.

Odd. These two had been inseparable since Thora had come to live just two doors away from our rooms.

Snow chewed slowly, looking between her sibling and then my own. She turned to me a little. “He doesn’t smell that bad, does he?”

“I think they are fighting.” Had my brother done something again?

Snow blinked. “Why? They have been getting along just fine.”

“They are just bickering, love. Let them be.”

“Last I remember us bickering like this,” she said, putting a slice of apple on my mouth, “you almost kissed me.”

The recall to memory made me smile a little and I slid my hand over hers. “It is not like that with them if that is what you’re trying to get me to say.”

She chewed on a piece of cheese. “My manipulation is no longer working, huh?”

“Working just fine, but I like calling you out on it just to see you accept it.” Leaning in, I kissed her shoulder and then her neck. “One of the many things I like about you.”

“So,” she started, glancing at her sister and then at Mal who’d kicked his feet on the table and was napping. “The two—”

“They are friends.”

Caiden came inside the library all grave and curious, eyeing the shelves, the walls, the stained-glass ceiling and then the rest of us. “Research? This is how you all research?” he asked, kicking my brother’s chair leg that sent him flying backwards to the floor. “Glad to see you’re eating, Cakes.”

She threw him an apple and he caught it mid-air. “Where is Nia and why were you forced to come all the way here?”

He took a bite from the apple and pointed at her. “Your brother kicked me out from the Myrdur camps and told me to go rest in Taren where trouble came to find me straight away. I’d barely stepped one foot in the castle. Get up, it’s news from Bash.”

Snow shot up from her seat, dusted her dress and headed to leave. Well, almost headed to leave, because I pulled her in my lap and rounded my arms around her. “I love you,” I said in her ear. “Be safe.”

She shivered a little and nodded. “I will.”

“No goodbye kiss, my muffin?” Mal said, straightening on his chair.

Cai threw him a middle finger and my brother laughed.

Sebastian? Why was he calling for Snow?

Chapter thirty-three

Martius

Snowlin

Larg dragged me along as we squeezed past the narrow and hidden corridors of the Highwall. The same that Esbern Kirkwall had used for his illegal trades.

The old troll had huffed sigh after sigh ever since I'd asked him to bring me through the wall without telling Kilian. There was a risk of fading or portaling in Isjord. With Melanthe’s nostrils being on high alert, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could sniff us out all the way to Olympia and through the zgahna. This had been our only choice.

Cai followed quietly behind me, a hand on my elbow to keep me from tripping in the dark tunnels.

I knew we’d reached the exit when my skin puckered from the Isjordian chill that had all of a sudden turned burning. Sebastian was already there, waiting along with a few soldiers. All surveying the surroundings with high alert.

“You stay here,” I said to Larg.