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My chest feels heavier than before. I know I’m breathing, if not deeply enough, but it’s hard to convince my body not to panic. To stay calm.The faster my heart beats, the faster the poison works.
Even as I think that, I realize it’s already too late. The room tilts, and I faintly register that my head pounds from falling the rest of the way to the floor.
Just before my world goes completely dark, two black boots appear in my line of vision, and I swear I hear a man’s oily laughter.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Einar
My fingers drum impatiently on the table while the Lord Skarde again addresses the issue of raising the taxes, giving the excuse of solidifying their holdings after so long away this time. He has a different reason every time he mentions it.
I open my mouth to explain, yet again, why I won’t be allowing that when Leif all but bursts into the council room. I would have known something was wrong just from his breach of decorum alone, let alone the panicked expression in his eyes.
“There’s a problem with...Khijhana.” He just barely stumbles over the name and I know it is Zaina he refers to.
I am already out of my chair, telling the council we’re adjourned for the day. Hopefully, they chock it up to a weird attachment to my dead wife’s cat, but Odger’s words ring in my ears.
Did you think I was the only one who noticed?
As soon as I emerge into the hallway, I see Khijhana waiting by Leif’s side. Her teal eyes are wide with panic and her ears are flat.
“What’s happened?” I growl.
He glances around. “She’s gone.”
No.My heart plummets into my abdomen. She can’t have left again, not when she promised me.
I can’t ask him to explain more in the open hallway, so we race back to my rooms with Khijhana at our heels. Mentally, I replay the last few weeks with Zaina. She found the cure for my people, risked the wrath of the dragon for them. She opened up, telling me about her sisters without my prodding.
I know in my soul that she has not left me willingly.
There is no guard outside of my door, and the dread pooling in my stomach intensifies.
I barrel into the room, trying to take in everything at once. Gunnar and Helga stand, wearing twin troubled expressions on their perfectly opposite faces. A broken teacup rests in a pool of liquid near the bed, and shards of glass lie at the foot of Zaina’s open trunk. The remnants of a vial, I realize.
Hers? Or her kidnapper’s?
I stoop down next to the remains of the cup first, wafting air toward me. Her chai tea. Was it poisoned, or is it a coincidence that she dropped it when she’s never been clumsy a day in her life?
I think back to how happy I was that she was comfortable enough to stop testing her food for poison, driving my fist into the headboard. The wood splinters, but it doesn’t feel like nearly enough for the self-loathing pounding through my veins.
There isn’t time for more, though. I head to the shattered vial next, examining the black powdery substance on the glass. Charcoal.
Mixed with blood.
There’s a deafening roar, and for a moment, I think it comes from me. Then I turn to see Khijhana, wide-eyed and snarling, pacing the room and sniffing at the passageway door.
She looks exactly how I feel. Furious. Feral. Savage. Like nothing and no one will stand in the way of getting Zaina back.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Zaina
The world around me shakes, and I’m cold. Colder than I’ve been in ages. My bones ache with it, as if my very skeleton is made of ice. I faintly register that I’m being carried before I am roughly dropped onto a firm surface.
I’m too tired to complain, though. I feel far away, like I’m dreaming, but somehow, I know this is real.
There are voices around me, familiar and awful and straight from my darkest nightmares.
