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“I need you to listen very carefully.” The seriousness in his tone snapped her to attention. “We’re not going back to Ruadhán.”
Arianna furrowed her brow. She thought that might be a possibility if Niall wasn’t cooperative, but—
“Okay.”
“Ellie sent a letter to your father. We have a safe house stationed here.” Talon pointed to a random location on the map.
“But that’s within Pádraigín’s borders.”
“It is, but they don’t patrol that far south. We presume it’s either because they don’t have the numbers or they don’t care. Either way, once we have Rion, we’re to meet your father there.”
She raised a brow. “That journey will take him days.”
“Which is why Ellie already reached out and another reason I dispatched half of Móirín’s forces there before we left. They’ll have it ready for us.”
She studied the map again, trying to memorize the area and everything around it.
“Raevina, Saoirse, and Ellie will meet us as soon as they’re able to get out safely.” She nodded again. “Arianna.” She met his gaze. “A mission like this is dangerous. I need you to listen to everything I say."
“Okay.”
He didn’t look away. “If I tell you to do something, it’s for a reason. We won’t have time to debate it.” Her heart started pounding and Talon swallowed. “Even if you see him, even if he’s standing right in front of you, if I tell you to run, then I need you to run.”
She blanched. Talon was a warrior. A commander. He knew what he was doing and if a scenario like that unfolded, she knew Talon only had their best interests at heart. Still—
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that.”
“You have to. He wouldn’t want you to get caught or worse. We can always reconvene with others to form a new plan, but if we’re captured too, that’s it.”
“Not if they ki—” She couldn’t say the word.
“For reasons I can’t fathom, Niall hasn’t done that yet, so I doubt he’d do it now. Just promise to trust me. If there’s a way to get Rion out, I will not leave him behind.”
“Do you promise?”
Talon placed a hand over his heart. “I swear it on my honor as a Fae.”
Arianna gazed out into the pouring rain again. “How long will it take us to get there?”
He blew out the oil lamp and returned it to its hiding place. “At this pace, before sunrise.”
“You said you didn’t notice any guards before?”
He nodded. “No prints aside from a few animals. We scouted the entire perimeter. The fire looked fresh, so we didn’t pursue much further.” He replaced the floorboard. “Though if they possessed Pádraigín’s magic, I assume they could have made it look any way they wished.”
“Which means there’s at least one person there at all times.”
“Let’s hope we get lucky and that’s all.” Talon readjusted his knives. “Don’t you think it’s odd that no one in Móirín has ever mentioned their magic before? They taught us enough about the wind part of it, but nothing about manipulating our vision. Seems like an important detail to leave out.”
“Maybe they didn’t think enough Fae could do it, so they felt it wasn’t necessary.”
Talon rolled his eyes. “Then the right warriors aren’t making our curriculums.”
Arianna offered him a silent laugh. So many people had gotten so much wrong. Could they trust any of their history? She tried to breathe and work the tension from her shoulders. Any moment now and they’d be running again, headed straight into what could be a bloody confrontation. She wished she had spent the last few weeks training, but Niall, it seemed, was responsible for manipulating her emotions.
“Does it still hurt?” Talon asked and Arianna followed his gaze to her arm. She hadn’t realized she’d been massaging the muscles there.
“A bit,” she admitted. The area carried a thick scar where the bone in her forearm had snapped in half and ripped through the skin. Arianna grimaced at the memory. “It wasn’t his fault,” she said, the words feeling more than repetitive as she defended her mate.
