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I felt dizzy with rage and grief and panic. I felt dizzy with not knowing which of those feelings I should give precedence to. I didn’t want it to be grief or panic. So I went with rage.
Pushing myself higher up in the bed, I hid my trembling hands beneath the sheet. “Now tell me where she is. Tell me where my friend is, Draven. Or so help me, by the Three I will...”
I nearly said “blast this room to smithereens,” but stopped myself just in time. Draven had never witnessed my magic. And the Three knew I didn’t think I could access it that easily. The thought of what I had done to Vesper was still fresh in my mind. Did I really want to make an empty threat when I had no intention of ever using magic again if I could help it?
I clenched my jaw. “Don’t make me fucking pull those horns off.”
Draven surprised me by giving a low chuckle. “They’re more firmly attached than they might look.”
I didn’t smile back. “Fascinating. And yet to me they seem to have appeared almost as if by magic. Care to explain?”
Draven looked away. “Let’s finish discussing Lancelet first. You said you wanted to know.”
“Fine.”
“I told you before that she was gone. When Vesper left with you, I tried to get to her. She was under attack, as you witnessed. But I was too late. Those... things... dragged her into a passageway. I was shielding Odelna.”
I shifted uncomfortably in the bed. That I remembered. I had left him with a small child unable to defend herself and now I was berating him for failing to save my friend, too.
“When I was finished, I searched for her but she was gone. There were too many of them for me to take Odelna farther into the passage.” He met my gaze. “I left her. I left Lancelet. I let her be dragged away. Don’t think I don’t know that. The blame lies with me.”
I felt my cheeks flood with shame. The blame was not his alone and we both knew that. “I left her, too.”
“You did what I told you to do,” he said. “Do you remember?”
I remembered. I remembered the expression on his face from across the room as he had realized he couldn’t save us all. Couldn’t come tomewithout leaving a child to die, let alone get to Lancelet.
I didn’t think I would ever forget it.
And yet... hehadsaved me. Because here I was.
He had said he would find me. And he had.
Now I studied his face and what I saw surprised me. Grief. If it wasn’t for me, then it must be for... Shit. He believed what he was telling me.
“I couldn’t get to her. I had to get Odelna away safely. We were responsible for her. I had to find you. I thought maybe with you and Vesper, we could go back and try to...” He shook his head. “Well, that didn’t quite work out. I found you bleeding out on the floor. I managed to get you back here. Get you to a healer. And you’ve been recovering ever since.”
I wanted so badly to ask where “here” was. But I didn’t want to stop the flow of his words.
“I went back the very next day, Morgan. And I didn’t go alone. I took people with me. We scoured that place. Every inch of it. We went into every passageway.”
My heart began to hammer. “And? What did you find?”
“What did we find when we went back? Many more of those creatures. We put them down, whenever we came across one.”
Creatures. Monsters. Things. Someone’s child. Children.
“But we found no trace of Lancelet.” He turned his head and looked at me. There was sorrow in his emerald eyes. “I had hoped I could at least bring her body back to you. But in the end, we couldn’t even do that much.”
I swallowed hard. “No. She couldn’t have just disappeared.”
“She didn’t just disappear. Don’t make me say the words, Morgan. Please. You know what must have happened to her.”
Bile rose in my throat again.
Eaten. He meant she had been eaten. Every piece of her had been torn apart. Flesh shredded. Bones chewed. I thought of the room Vesper had led me through, with the floor littered with gnawed-on bones.
Would I have recognized Lancelet from merely her bones?
