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“They have seen her. They just didn’t realize it.”
“Why does it seem like you’re avoiding answers rather than giving them?”
“Some things are better left unsaid, Your Highness.”
My frustration flares. I didn’t stay in Ulysede to deal with this. “No, they’re not!”
In the next breath, Lucretia is gone.
Vanished.
“Fuck,” I hiss, my curse hollow in the empty vault. She doesn’t like being shouted at. Noted. But how long before she comes back? I don’t have time for this. Loose stones scrape beneath the boots I hastily threw on as I stroll around the ominous statues, studying each in turn. “Hello?”
Nothing.
I sigh. “Lucretia, I’m sor—”
“Who is the blond mortal?”
I startle at the sylx’s voice suddenly in my ear. “What?”
She reappears beside me, her breath washing over my face like a puff of ice-cold air on a bitter January day. “The blond mortal who lies with your warrior servant?”
It takes me a moment to clue in. “You mean, Eden?”
“Eden,” Lucretia repeats, continuing on with her serpentine walk as if she was never gone. “A lovely name for a sweet girl. I wouldn’t think she was the warrior’s type. She seems quite smitten. Though I can see why, the way he moves inside her.” Her creepy eyes blaze with heat.
Wait. “Did you just go into Jarek’s room and watch them?”
Her responding grin doesn’t show a hint of shame. “You are right, he is occupied.”
A shudder skitters along my spine. If she can float around Ulysede unseen … “Who else have you been spying on?”
“My masters wish to understand Ulysede’s occupants.”
“From their bedrooms?” My anger flares a second time. She must have been in my room tonight, calling me here. My ward didn’t keep her out. That’s a concern. But has she been in there before?
Has she spied on Zander and me?
I’m pretty sure I know the answer to that. But forget what she’s seen; what has she heard of our conversations? Of how much we don’t trust the nymphs and don’t want to release them.
I take deep, calming breaths as Lucretia weaves the statues. If I yell at her, she might vanish again. “Caindra was outside the gates last night, and she didn’t kill us.”
“I presumed not, given you are still alive.”
“You’re a pervert and a smart-ass,” I mutter. “Is she on our side?”
“She does not choose sides.”
“Will she fight for us?”
“If she feels like it.”
I shake my head in frustration. “But you said I could use the creatures from the Nulling to help me fight this war.”
“Caindra is not a creature from the Nulling.”
“Fine. How do I get her to feel like fighting for us?”
“That is for you to discover. I do not have a view into her mind or control over her will.” Lucretia’s fingertips skate over the hand of the daintiest, childlike nymph statue. “You are not looking at this the right way, Your Highness. Islor will be free of the blood curse. Everyone will have a common enemy. The two elven halves and your spell wielders will have no choice but to unite. It will be as it once was.”
“We’re just trading one war for another.”
“As I’ve said, their kind cannot seem to escape that path.”
“And the nymphs? What will they do?”
She tips her head back to admire the gargoyle statue. “They will exist as they always have, as a check and balance. Only now, they have a Daughter of Many and a Queen for All. Never before have they had that.”
“And why does that matter to them?” What do they get out of it?
Her perfectly symmetrical eyebrows arch. “Because you are powerful, and you are now bound to them as they are to you.”
“Because of Ulysede.”
She smiles.
“If I’m their queen, can I order them to not open the Nulling?” That would end the blood curse and yet stop Malachi and untold monsters from flooding this world.
“That is impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because it is all connected. The Nulling shall open, my masters will return, and their power will heal the lands.”
“Are you saying the nymphs are in the Nulling?”
“It is all connected.”
I still don’t understand. “But Farren was a key caster too. How did she open the Nulling and not the nymphaeum door?”
“She did not open the Nulling, she tore into it. She did not hold the right key. My masters did not return.” Lucretia drags a nail along my forearm, tracing one of the blue lines.
“You mean, my blood.”
“The blood of the Daughter of Many and Queen for All.” She pauses to study me before moving off again. “Caster Farren tore a hole into the Nulling by channeling her affinity through one of the stones, yes. But without my masters here, the fates cannot pass through.”
Lucretia’s words strike a chord. “One of the stones. How many are there?”
She waves a hand around the room toward the nymph scripture on the wall.
It dawns on me. “These are all nymphaeum stones? Like the one in Cirilea?”
