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Chapter Fifty-One
Zaina
“Sands-blasted hells!I should have come tonight.” I had been so sure that I could balance cautiousness with protecting her, and I had been wrong.
Now, my sister is in the dungeons.
“You couldn’t have fought off a palace full of guards, and you would have revealed yourself trying,” Einar counters.
I level a look at him. “I might have been able to stop her, though, from...” I trail off, my fingers going to massage my temples because I’m still not sure what she was playing at.
“There might still be a diplomatic way to handle this. Let me talk to the king.”
“There isn’t time for that.” I fight to keep my voice even. “She won’t last the night in that dungeon. Madame would never risk her being interrogated by the palace. If she doesn’t manage to capture her toextract informationherself, she will damned sure make sure no one else can.”
Another tense beat of silence goes by before I speak again.
“I’ll just have to go get her.” How hard could it be, defeating at least half a dozen guards and sneaking out the most notorious criminal in all of Corentin?
“By yourself?” Einar is already poised to argue, and I cut him off.
We don’t have time to rehash everything we’ve been fighting about right now.
“I know how you feel about me risking our mission with Madame to save one single, reckless person,” I say, remembering the way he had refused to pull a petal early to try to find a cure for Sigrid because of the risk of ruining it for everyone else.
There are icicles in his eyes when they meet mine. “I understand your need to save one person, however reckless. What I don’t understand is how readily you put everyone else at risk for that. Even now. Even after everything.”
My head pounds as I take in his expression, his posture, and the bitter resignation in his tone. Before I can manage any kind of cohesive response, there’s a knock on the door.
Einar and I exchange a wary glance as Helga’s voice sounds out.
“The Crown Prince Francis to see His Majesty.”
Einar clears his throat, giving me a moment to slip into the bedroom before he calls, “See him in.”
I watch through the same crack in the door I had used for Aika as a tall man with a lean, muscular frame strides through the door.
A very familiar man.
Sands. Blasted. Hells.
Einar gestures for Francis — Remy to sit, but Remy shakes his head, pacing the perimeter of the room instead. His eyes flit from the two glasses on the coffee table to where Khijhana currently stands, not between him and Einar, but between him and the door I’m standing behind.
Just when I thought this situation couldn’t get any more complicated.
His inscrutable expression gives nothing away, though. Not that it ever has, as far as I remember.
“I’m here about the Lady Aika,” he announces.
“I assumed as much.” Einar’s game face rivals Remy’s.
It could be carved from marble for all the expression he shows, but his shoulders are taut with tension.
Remy studies him. “She will hang for this, confessing in front of witnesses and refusing to defend herself.”
My heart drops into my stomach.The hell she will. Not while I’m alive to stop it.
Einar’s jaw clenches, and Remy’s gaze homes in on it.
