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Erick nodded once. “I’ve sent a coded raven message to him, and he’s agreed to meet us in Belle.”
“Belle!” I exploded incredulously. “But it’ll take us a week to get to Belle.”
“Or a day,” Erick corrected me. “As we’re in Ashley now.”
We were in Ashley? How long had I been unconscious? It had to have taken them days to get here. And what the hell were we doing so far from Tyler? I needed to get back to Tyler. Tyler was the last place I’d seen Quilla.
I instinctively didn’t want to stray far away from where I’d last
seen her, though logically, the likelihood of her being kept in Tyler was small. My guess would be for the king to bring her to Elaina—the capital of High Cliff—for this ritual thing, so he could personally oversee it. And Belle was closer to Elaina than we were now. So, meeting there made more sense.
But still, it felt strangely wrong to me.
“We’ll have to meet him in person in order to explain everything,” Erick was saying, “because too many coded messages might alert Father to some kind of duplicitous behavior from us. We have to be smart about this.”
I nodded. “You’re right. Thank you, Erick. Even if this doesn’t work...” I blew out a calming breath and clasped his arm. “Thank you for at least trying for me.”
Erick checked us into an inn just outside of Belle a day later.
I was a complete wreck. Sometimes, I’d allow myself to wonder about her.
Was she okay?
Being tortured?
Still even alive?
And sometimes I raged out of control, breaking something near me.
But letting myself think about different ways she could have suffered and died was when the panic would attack the strongest. Black spots would form in my vision, and my breathing would ratchet out of control. I’d let myself picture worst-case scenarios, where she was chained, unable to defend herself, and hurt in every way imaginable.
I would press my palm against the scab growing over my temple, willing my mark to return, until the wound broke open and began to bleed, but it never revealed a single thing to me about Quilla’s location or welfare.
The only way I could ever control the desperate anxiety and terror that sloshed through my veins like acid was to get mad. I locked on to the anger like a drowning man clinging to a log floating by, gasping and digging my fingernails into the bark, knowing I’d go under and suffocate if I dared to let go of it.
It started to grow clear to me why Quilla had always been so angry. When you couldn’t control anything, fury became your power. I might not know where to find her, but I could concentrate on all the ways I was going to mutilate her captors when I caught them. So wrath became my close friend.
Feeling it simmer just under the surface, I watched Erick exit the inn’s main house and tip his chin to me.
“Vander’s already here,” he announced. “He’s checked into the cottage at the end.”
I pivoted and started that way, relieved we wouldn’t have to wait for him. At the last lodge on the row, I knocked on the door and it was opened almost immediately.
Olivander was probably the tallest of the three Bjorn princes, though not as wide as Urban. He grew his hair longer too, letting the dark locks fall past his shoulders. When he bothered to smile, he had a dimple, like his sister Allera, and his blue eyes were considerably paler than the others, bordering on almost eerie.
“Indy?” he said in surprise before the dimple flashed and he tugged me into the cottage for a quick hug. “I had no idea you’d be here. Hell, I had no idea you were in High Cliff at all. Growing a beard now, huh?” He reached out and gave it a brief, teasing scratch. “Makes you look a bit—huh—a bit violent, actually.”
“I’d say that properly represents his mood, then,” Erick answered, entering the cottage behind me and shutting the door at his back. “Darkness seems to have become Indigo’s middle name these last few days.”
Olivander’s smile faltered. “Uh-oh. Found some trouble for yourself, did you, old friend?”
Erick quickly highlighted the details of my predicament. And as he spoke, Olivander pressed a finger against his lips and squinted in confusion as he glanced back and forth between me and his brother.
“So…” he finally said, shaking his head and widening his eyes when Erick was done talking. “You want my help to locate and save a Graykey?”
“I need your help finding my mate,” I growled impatiently, clarifying the situation.
“Who’s a Graykey,” he added, blinking a lot as if trying to comprehend that one.
