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I felt stunned. “You could have lived with Crescent and Gawain?”
“Yes. I was seven then. Now I’m almost eleven.” He sounded proud.
“You’re remarkable for an eleven-year-old, Beks,” I said truthfully. “I doubt many eleven-year-olds could do what you did tonight.”
“Almost eleven,” Beks corrected. “I guess Javer’s not so bad. But he’s not really like... well, a father. Not like Crescent might have been. Taina might have been my little sister. She’s annoying but... I guess she’d have grown on me.”
The wistfulness was back.
“I’m sure Crescent still cares for you,” I said carefully. “You’re a part of the team, right?”
Where had that come from? I didn’t want to think of Draven’s bloody team.
Because I actuallylikedthem. I liked his friends.
Even if I hated that soulless lying bastard.
Beks nodded. “Javer cares for me, too. It’s just that he shows it differently. Plus, he’s boring sometimes and so I run away. And then he gets mad and yells a lot.”
“And endless cycle, I’m sure,” I said drily. But still, I was relieved that Draven had warned Javer to take better care of the boy.
“Here we are,” Beks announced.
He tapped a spot on the stone wall lightly and a door swung open, much larger than the one back in the garden.
I followed him out the doorway and onto a small landing overlooking a spacious windowless room that must have been farther below ground in the palace. Steps wound down to the main floor.
Polished stone walls were set with brass lamps that burned with the same magic light Beks had conjured in the passages. Around us was an array of impressive, meticulously arranged equipment that reminded me a little of my uncle's apothecary chamber back in Camelot.
Shelves of oak and iron held a vast assortment of crystalline vials and potion-filled flasks, all carefully labeled. Glass beakers and brass contraptions I didn't recognize stood along gleaming white marble countertops, their intricate mechanisms glowing in the lamplight.
Large white polished tables were spread with parchments, notes, and diagrams, intermingled with fine-tipped quills, stirring rods, and precision scales.
A subtle bubbling sound filled the air and I looked to the corner of the room where a glass cauldron filled with a bright yellow liquid boiled and hissed.
In the middle of the work space stood a girl hunched over a parchment spread out on one of the tables.
As we entered, she lifted her head, her gaze unfocused as if she had forgotten we were coming.
I sucked in my breath. The girl had Draven’s eyes. Emerald and intelligent, they gazed back at me.
Short cropped black hair framed her heart-shaped face, while a pair of small horns peeked out from beneath her locks. Her light-brown, sun-kissed skin was the same shade as Draven’s too. Perched on her nose were a pair of round glass circles, surrounded by metal frames. They made her look like a clever bird, sharp and relentlessly curious.
“Who is this?” I asked Beks, though I thought I already knew.
“I’m Rychel,” the girl said, overhearing. Damn, her hearing was as sharp as Draven’s, too. “You must be Morgan.”
She smiled up as we came down the steps towards her.
“What is this place?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. “And look, it’s been a hell of a night so I won’t mince words. Why do you look so much like Draven?”
Rychel’s expression became amused. “Beks said you were used to calling the prince that. Kairos is my older brother.” She looked around her. “And I believe this was one of my father’s torture chambers before I repurposed it for my work.”
“Your brother?” I stared at the girl. “Your work? What sort of work do you do?”
I suddenly spotted a table across the room that I hadn’t noticed before. It was covered with a white sheet. Dark spots were forming on the fabric from whatever was below. And sticking out from underneath, just the tip of one foot showing was...
“Why the fuck do you have one of those things down here?” I exclaimed, backing up and hitting my hip against a marble table.
