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I got my first inkling of disaster when I saw Asher come running out of the house as he heard us arrive, but he went first to Wyatt and spoke urgently to him. Wyatt turned as pale as a ghost.
“What is it?” I shouted and yanked Asher around to face me. “Why aren’t you with Rory? Did youleavehim? All alone?”
“They wouldn’t allow me to stay, Lex. I tried, but they only let me go as far as the palace gates. It was the queen’s guard, and you know how they are.”
“Damn them and damn the queen! If she’s hurt him…”
Wyatt stepped forward and grabbed my arm. I tried to tear it away, but he was the strongest of us and he held on tightly. “Stop it, Lex! You have to listen to what Asher has to tell you.”
“Listen to what? I have to go for Rory!”
“No, Lex, please wait. You can’t!”
“What the fuck do you mean, I can’t? Get me a fresh horse—don’t just stand there. I’ll kill that bitch with my own hands if she gets in my way or tries to stop me!”
“Lex!” This time it was Brandon, who usually could calm me, but not today.Why were they just standing around?“Lex, you have to listen to what Asher has to say. You can’t go to Rory!”
“Why the fuck not?”
Asher came over to me and laid his hands on both my arms. I had a terrible feeling of doom, but I couldn’t acknowledge it. “Because… I’m so sorry, Lex, but he-he’s gone. The priests and magicians have…oh gods, Lex, the queen has had him put him to death.”
I remember reeling backward as if from a terrible blow. Everything went hazy for a moment, and I heard someone shouting. My cousins were yelling, “Grab him!” and “Don’t let him get on his horse!” and I heard words like “shock,” and “catch him!”
None of it made any sense.
I suddenly crashed back into my body and realized I was lunging frantically for my horse against the grips of both Wyatt and Asher. All I wanted was to get to Rory, because Asher waswrong, and I had to stop him saying such an unspeakable thing again.
“Let me go!” I shouted and felt my legs go out from under me suddenly, but Asher was holding me around the waist, and he wouldn’t let me wrench myself away.
“He’s dead, Lex. I’m so sorry!” Asher was shouting.
“Dead? No, stop saying that! You have to be wrong! He can’t be dead! I have to get to him!” I saw Brandon standing beside me with tears streaming down his face, and I grabbed his arm. “Stop it. Tell them, Brandon! You have to tell them!”
“I will, Lex. I promise I will, but you have to go inside the house now.”
Go inside?I reared back from him, because he was crazy. They all were crazy, and I had to get out of there. I began fighting all of them and finally, one of them—I think it was Wyatt—grabbed me and picked me up bodily, as he held down my arms by my sides and hauled me toward the lodge. He manhandled me inside and threw me in a chair. “Stop all this!” he yelled at me, and I really saw him for the first time since we rode into the yard. He looked pale and wrecked, and his face was wet with tears. I could see he was in pain. Brandon ran over and shoved a glass of something in my hand.
“Drink this. It will help you calm down.”
“What? I don’t want to drink it. I have to go after…I have to…”
Rory’s doctor appeared out of nowhere it seemed—Asher must have had him standing by. He gave me a small vial of amber liquid he held in his hand. “Take this, sir. It will help you.”
Wyatt pushed my hand toward my mouth, and I drank down the damn draught if it would shut them up and let me get out of there. I washed it down with the whiskey Brandon had brought me. And then another glassful, when they shoved that at me too. I felt like I was floating, and that none of this was real anyway. I’d wake up soon and this would have been only a bad dream.
Because it had to be.
I got back up to my feet and began swaying, but I doggedly tried to make it to the door, refusing all offers of help or aid. I got as far as the front hall when the floor suddenly rose up to hit me in the face.
Much later, I woke up, my mouth dried out and feeling like it was covered in fur. Laudanum, I thought absently—I’d had the stuff once years ago after my mother died, and I hadn’t been able to stop crying. I’d only been five years old. They had given it to me, and it had left this horrible taste in my mouth that I still remembered. I was confused as to why Asher, Wyatt and Brandon were in my room, even though it was dark outside. Wyatt sprawled across the foot of my bed and Asher and Brandon were occupying chairs by my bed. All of them were deeply asleep.
Memory suddenly hit me like a barbed arrow right in my heart and I cried out in pain—I couldn’t help it. I bolted up off the bed, which woke up all of my cousins, and Wyatt tried to get in front of me. I pushed him hard, but he stopped me with his sheer bulk and held onto me tightly.
“Lex, sit back down before you fall. That doctor gave you too much of that medicine. You’ve been asleep for hours.”
“Asleep? No, I…where’s Rory? I need to see him.”
“He’s still at the palace.”
