Page 141

The day passed achingly slowly. My eyes flew to the window every few moments, trying to gauge the position of the sun as it moved across the palace. Silver was unobtrusive, as always, hovering outside of the salon while I dusted the empty rooms.

I made my way back to where the crowns lay with Goose at my heels.

I knelt next to him, making a show of trying to clean the unlit candles that littered the floor. “When it is time, Goose, before you go to collect the others, come back here. No matter who is in here, we take these crowns with us. They belong to me. I will lay them to rest in the graves I make for my parents.”

Goose turned his great head up to the mantle, then back to me, and nodded his shaggy head. As the days went by, he became more and more solid in his form, appearing as nothing more than an especially sooty-looking wolfhound. It made petting him much easier, which he seemed at every opportunity to enjoy with all the gusto and interest of a real dog.

I added a mental note to the discarded and forgotten stack of them to see how far Goose’s new powers had developed when we got free of the palace. I filled my mind and my time with thoughts of what came next. What happened after we were liberated from this place. I wished I had time to find and stash weapons somewhere. All that was in my pack that could act as a weapon was the small shard of iron I had pried from the door crusted with a spider’s blood and the dagger I had freed from one of the guards. It was a pitiful arsenal, not even worthy of the name, really.

It would have to do, though. Goose was not a beast of burden, and I imagined there was a limit to how much he could slide through the shadows of his passages. I didn’t know how that worked, I only knew that he could carry at least me. His part in this caper would exhaust him, leave him nearly spent, but it would be worth it for the four of us to be finally free.

A distant knocking on wood pulled me up from my crouch, and I stuck my head into the narrow hallway that connected each of the open rooms. Silver, ever aware of his status and inability to access this part of the palace because of it, was standing in the far-off doorway.

“The Captain has called for you to be brought to him, miss.”

My eyes darted to the windows where the sun hung low but nowhere near the distant horizon. “So early?”

“He said he wished to speak with you before you attended the meeting with his betrothed.”

I had almost allowed myself to forget that he was truly engaged to that monster. I had almost allowed the poison of that knowledge to slip my awareness.

I nodded, abandoning my rag to the pile of them stashed behind the lounger where the other cleaning supplies were secreted away behind a panel. I always marveled at the lengths the Fae went to to keep their servants but also make them as invisible as possible. As if things cleaned themselves.

Silver was silent at my side. I knew he sensed that something was amiss or at least out of the ordinary with me. I wondered if he suspected what the plan was. Would he try to stop me? Would he be one of the guards that would pour into the woods I had seen outside of The Raven’s window to come after us? Would they even send guards after us? Or were there some other creatures they used to hunt down daora? There were still so many things that I didn’t know, so many other factors that made this plan a risk, so many little things that could go wrong once we were free.

I was glad, though, that I had left the feather necklace that The Raven had almost given me, in the box in his room. The last I was there, it was still in the exact same spot he had left it. Next to the tub filled with scented water and the memories of a moment that was stolen and never returned to either of us.

When we came to the door that had once held so many fears, I gave it not a single moment of my time. The woman that had stood before this door the first time was not the woman whose golden sheen hand pushed it open wide and strode through it. Daróg had not returned from the infirmary yet, and even if he had, there would be nothing he could do to me anymore. I was no longer confused about who I was. I was no longer traumatized by the transformation I still did not have the stomach to look at in the mirrors that we passed every day. There was nothing that lived beyond those doors that could scare me anymore.

The Raven was seated in the same chair that he had been that day, staring into an empty fireplace. I wondered if he was reliving that day or if he was thinking of something else. He had been there a while, though. A discarded lunch tray rested on the side table.

He looked up his eyes catching on mine before sliding to Silver’s. “You can leave us, Silver. I’ll escort Cricket to the gardens when it’s time.”

“Yes, Captain.” Silver barked and disappeared behind me, the large carved doors closing behind him. Only a few weeks ago, that sound would have made me jump, but they didn’t even bother me as I watched The Raven regard me with a contemplative and conspiratorial look.

The tension between us broke as simply and easily as it was built, and he smiled softly before patting his knee. “Come, sit down. We have much to talk about before you go to the gardens.”

I raised one brow and looked down to Goose at my heel. “Go ahead, Goose,” I said to him, giving him the signal to begin executing the plan.

It would take him time and effort to move the necessary pieces into place, and I wasn’t going to allow myself to be distracted by The Raven and miss the appropriate window to light the fuse.

Goose looked between The Raven and I, whined low, and then turned to find a shadow to step through.

“He’s grown fond of you,” The Raven said, calling my attention back to him as I made my way to him.

“Seems you have a lot in common with him.” I tossed back, letting my ass perch on the offered knee.

It was thick enough to require very little balance and wholly made a much more comfortable seat than he had any right to offer.

“I have grown fond of you, Sóna. I won’t make any excuses for it.” He pulled my braid out from behind me and toyed with the end that still sported the gold-and-black ribbon he had tied into it a few nights ago though with a much less complex braid to hold. “It’s complicated too many things for me.”

“Terribly sorry to have been a bother.” I snorted. “I told you to leave me alone several times. One of us refused to take the advice, and it wasn’t me.”

He chuckled. “I didn’t mean it like that, little bug. It’s been a nice complication. One I genuinely never expected to encounter. I had truly thought that finding you was not something I could even dream of, let alone would happen the way that it did. I fought it at first, fought the way I was pulled toward you at every moment. But I’m done fighting it. I will have to find a way to allow it to happen and carry on with my life.”

I twisted on his knee, watching the way his decision played across his face. He looked like a man that had thrown his life savings into the pot at a poker table and had consigned himself to the capriciousness of the gods. It was a strange, complicated reaction. “What do you mean by that?”

He smiled and toyed with the end of my braid more, his unbusy hand finding its favorite spot on my hip. “I have said a thousand times or more that you could not choose me while you were still enslaved. That you could not make that choice while in bondage because no choice you made would be your own. Do you remember?”