Page 6
“I am not staring.”
“You definitely are.”
“I am assessing,” I snapped back, my hands rolling into fists against my thighs.
“That doesn’t make it any better, Taur.”
My father was still watching me from the hearth. “You saw something during the breach.”
I met his green eyes, squaring my shoulders. “Yes.”
“What did you see?”
“A man. Standing near the western sea windows. He wasn’t fighting, and he wasn’t wearing armor.” I paused, the memory replaying with terrifying clarity. “He was just watching the doors. He was watching me. And then... he disappeared.”
“Disappeared how?” my father asked, his brow furrowing slightly beneath his silver crown.
“Not like any displacement spell I have ever studied in the archives,” I said, a cold sweat breaking across the back of my neck. “It wasn’t light magic. It was shadow. Smoke. Like his physical form had never been fully solid to begin with. It just sank into the granite floor.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Aerynn shifted his weight beside me, his hand dropping toward the hilt of his sword, his eyes locking onto our father’s face.
My father’s expression did not change—which, in this court, was always significantly worse than anger.
“We will discuss the details of that later,” the King said flatly, turning his back to us as he walked toward his heavy mahogany desk.
I let out a quiet breath that edged far closer to frustration than relief. “That seems to be the answer to everything right now.”
“Yes.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It is not meant to be reassuring, Tauriel.”
Aerynn stepped closer, his elbow lightly nudging my shoulder. “Welcome back to the spires, little sister.”
I glanced up at his golden face. “Why is it always like this?”
He smiled slightly, a quick, dangerous flash of pure chaos returning to the corner of his mouth. “Not always.” He paused, his blue eyes tracking the distant, slow tolling of the warning bells. “Just when it actually matters.”
TWO
The throne room smelled entirely different when we returned. Not quieter, exactly. This was final.
The air still held the heavy, metallic sharpness of fresh copper and sheared steel, but beneath the surface sat judgment. Five men knelt at the exact center of the blood-slick flagstones, the blades of the vanguard pressed firmly against the napes of their necks. The prisoners wore no provincial crests, no house colors, no border markings. They had been completely stripped of anything that could be traced back to a high lord.
But I had seen something before Manem and Caspian dragged me out. A slice of emerald fabric shifting beneath a displaced armor plate, a brief glimpse of an embossed silver emblem half-covered by pooling blood. The traitor’s mark had been there, hidden in plain sight.
Manem stepped forward, his heavy dark boots grinding a stray piece of shattered glass into fine dust. He rested his blade lightly against the shoulder of the lead prisoner, the edge angled close enough to shave the skin of the man’s throat.
Beside the commander stood Caspian. His dark training leathers were still splattered with the remnants of the ambush, his broad frame casting a long shadow over the captives. As I entered the room, his piercing blue eyes immediately snapped to mine, his jaw tightening slightly. My skin prickled under the intensity of his stare, a sudden wave of heat fighting the chill of the room. I looked away first, my knuckles tightening around the hilt of my blade.
“They will not speak,” Manem stated, his deep voice bouncing off the high stone arches. “But you certainly attract interesting company, Princess.”
“I had been back in Elfain for less than an hour,” I replied, matching his glare.
“And you are already significantly improving the vanguard’s morale,” Manem said, entirely deadpan.
Aerynn let out a quiet laugh beside me, though his blue eyes remained fixed on the crimson pools in the center of the floor. “You really did bring the storm with you, Taur.”
