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Einar clears his throat. “Her tonics are very effective, and she’s likely been made more impatient by recent events.”
By the things we’ve done, he means.
It’s an effort to remind myself again that Madame won’t kill her. Aika is still too useful. She won’t kill her.She can’t.
Then Remy speaks, and all of my hardened resolve goes out the window.
“So we goaded the most ruthless woman in the kingdom into a state of panic, then you just let Aika waltz back to her and take the brunt of that?” His eyes burn with fury, with an accusation that cuts straight through to my bones, then deeper still.
“There was nothing to be done. She would have been in more danger if she hadn’t gone,” I explain, even as the words churn in my stomach.
Einar moves closer and wraps an arm around me, pulling me against him.
“And I’m not sureletis the operative word,” he adds. “She didn’t tell us until she was ready to leave.”
Remy does not look remotely mollified, and I can’t find it in myself to disagree.
I ease out of my husband’s grasp and head to where I keep my tonics. With trembling fingers, I start grouping together the ones she will need immediately to bring with me and set the rest in the guest room.
The prince watches me with an increasingly stony expression.
“I’ll go wait for her again,” I say.
He huffs out a disbelieving breath. “No. You’ll take me to her.”
“Fine,” I say, too guilt ridden to argue. “We can wait in the place—”
“No.” There is a lethal quality to his voice I have never heard from him before, quiet, authoritative, and brooking no argument. “I want you to show me where she is. Show me where she meets Madame.”
CHAPTERFIFTY
AIKA
My heart has beaten a staccato in my ears with each step since I left the palace.
For all my false bravado with Zaina, I have no idea what Madame might do tonight. I might be able to lie my way out of it, but she’s distrustful already lately, and less stable than usual.
My feet are like boulders, each step dragging as I take the long way to her grounds. I stop by the orphanage to drop off a coin purse that will tide them over until my project with the queen takes off—or in case Madame kills me before it can—then I finally force myself down the narrow dirt road that leads to Delmara Estate.
Fear grips my insides when I spot the silhouette of the crypt, the sound of the crashing waves against a cliff like a herald to all the pain I have in store. Madame is always terrifying, but something about my pretend life with Remy seems to have left me more susceptible than usual to fear.
Maybe it’s because for all that our life together is not quite real, it’s the closest I’ve come to picturing a future worth living for instead of just the day-to-day survival of a street-rat-turned-assassin.
Or maybe it’s just that life at the palace has made me soft.
Either way, it takes more effort than it should to walk on casual, careless steps into her dungeons. The hallways are unusually silent, like even the rats are afraid to scurry, to move, to breathe.
As if they, too, sense her ire.
Each soft footfall echoes in the deathly quiet space, punctuated by an ominous clicking sound I know well. It’s Madame’s fingernails tapping against the arm of her chair.
And it is never, ever a good sign.
When I step into the cavernous room, the tapping stops. She blinks impatiently, glancing from me to a vial of clear liquid sitting on the table to her right.
Does she want me to drink it?
“You sent for me, Mother?” I ask in the most even tone I can manage, not daring to look away from her long enough to examine Damian where he stands behind her right shoulder.
