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She looked over at the sound of Máel’s voice. He stood beside her. Not propped against the door, not trying to bar the world from entering, not panicked, not scared. Just standing like a mountain, like some sovereign thing, redoubtable in the midst of all chaos.
“And then you’d have been killed yourself,” she retorted shakily. “And never got your sword.”
“That is not your concern.”
She stepped away from the door. “I wish for someone to have a home. And from what you have said, that is this sword.”
He stared at her a moment, then bent and touched his mouth to hers. She wanted nothing more than to disappear into this kiss, to run back to the forest with him and forget the world.
But the world would find her, and there was no hope except to do this one small deed, and thereby make the world a slightly better place.
The bright sunlight burning outside barely stretched a foot into the room. She moved into the slanted yellow light, toward her trunk.
“It is in this one,” she whispered, then stopped short.
The coffer was flung open.
Her clothes had been tossed out, as if someone had dug through the chest in a hurry, seeking something that lay wit
hin.
Only one other person had the key.
Understanding dawned in slow, painful degrees.
She denied what her heart told her. Rushing to the trunk, she knelt in front and began flinging aside the few remaining gowns, searching, but it was a lost cause. There was nothing underneath.
The sword was gone.
She slumped to the ground, her arms resting on the wooden edge of the coffer.
Máel’s boot scraped behind her. “It looks as though your father betrayed us both.” Fury was in his voice, but as always, it was controlled.
He was right. She’d been betrayed.
The sword had been here, ready to be handed over, but instead, her father had handed over Cassia.
She bent her head, crushed by the knowledge. How could she matter so little?
How could a sword matter so much?
She lifted her head an inch. A sword, however legendary it might be, could not matter so much, not unless it had the power to cast spells from the grave.
The realization was a seed. It took root and blossomed to a hard certainty in seconds.
Máel did not have something her father feared.
He knew something.
She slowly got to her feet. “Why is my father frightened of you?”
He didn’t reply.
She took a step closer. “What did my father do?”
Through the strange shadows of the room, sun bright and tourmaline black, he watched her, saying nothing.
Her next step took right to him. She stared up into his blue eyes, which just now were not so much unreadable as opaque. He would not let her in.
