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“That is.”
“The Prince left the door between his and Lira’s room unlocked, and her door is still open.”
My boots froze on the rich carpet laid over the stone floors. This entire palace was like a dungeon. “He put her in a room next to his?”
“It’s not like that.” Luz rolled their eyes. “He’s not interested in women. He was just watching out for her. Jealousy isn’t an attractive look on you. Plus, I thought you said I needed to stay focused. Who’s the distracted one now?”
I breathed through my teeth, but they were right. My emotions around Lira were like a fog that seeped around every aspect of this job. “Sorry. His room is still on the third floor like we suspected?”
“Yes, Orman knows where to find it. Lira’s room is to the west.”
“West,” Orman mumbled, his magic glowing around him for a moment. “Got it.”
Luz saluted me and marched in the opposite direction.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We found the hallway and only had to take out one guard before moving into Lira’s room. I stepped across the floor, intensely aware that she’d been in this space only a few hours before. I longed to speak with her, apologize, explain. Luz wasn’t one to oversell things. If they said I’d hurt Lira, it was true. Which meant I’d ruined things between us. Grief wound through me.
We’d achieve this grab, return home successful, and I had a feeling I’d echo with emptiness, anyway. The Naga had said I was about to fall. I thought it was in this mission, but it was personally. I’d met someone who intrigued me, who was compassionate and beautiful and fierce, and I burned that into ash. As we approached the door, I released a breath. No time to think about it now.
“There’s a chance Lennox’s room has wards that alert the guard,” I said.
Orman and Neia nodded.
We had to work quickly and be prepared for a fast escape.
I pushed the door open into the cave of the room that sat in shadows. I slipped around the chamber until I found a lamp and lit it to a low gleam. “All right. To work.”
Orman stripped the bed and moved furniture, I began emptying drawers, and Elisa opened the armoire.
Orman remade the bed.
“Don’t,” I said.
“We don’t normally leave evidence?”
“We don’t normally toss the room of someone who betrayed one of our princes either, do we?”
Orman shrugged and tore the room apart with more gusto. Elisa looked uncertain but returned to digging through the armoire, and I continued dumping out drawers.
“Sai,” Elisa said.
I stopped what I was doing and walked behind her. She’d set a neat stack of clothing on the ground, and I kicked them because I had a spiteful, immature streak I hadn’t overcome. Elisa gestured to where a safe was built into the wall within the armoire.
“Good. How long to break it?”
Elisa removed her dress and draped it over the chair she stood on, giving her access to the undergarment twined with different metals. “A while. It has three keyholes—easy enough—but this looks like a weighted tumbler lock, and I don’t know if there’s magic infused in it or not.”
“Get started. Orman and I will finish the room.”
Her eyes brightened to silver as she began unweaving metal from her shift. We finished tossing the room as the click, slide, click of Elisa unlocking the safe echoed in the distance.
“Got it,” she said.
I stopped what I was doing. I’d finished anyway and had found nothing. The floors and walls were solid stone, and we’d gone through every drawer, searched for hidden compartments, checked all the seams of the furniture, even cut open the mattress. I walked over to the safe as Elisa pulled the door open.
Jewels sparkled and my heart rate picked up, but my gaze snagged on something else.
