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Any guards she passed as she traveled through the halls, she commanded them to turn a blind eye.
The door creaked open, and she halted, peering into the shadows of the room. Swallowing, she entered when no one stirred.
The air inside the room was cold, stiff. She tiptoed into the room, her slippers quiet on the floor.
Despite the temperature, her palms were slick with sweat as she pulled back the curtain.
At the sound, the man turned in his bed, creases denting his forehead. He blinked.
In the dim moonlight that seeped through a small window nearby, the servant’s eyes were streaked with red. As she hovered over him, he stared up at her.
“Ryla?” the servant whispered. “Please, Ryla.”
The back of her eyes burned as the man called upon the goddess of healing and begged her for mercy. Still, she did not correct him even though there would be no mercy to be found tonight. She had sealed his fate.
She pulled a piece of parchment from her corset. With a silent prayer to Sabina, Kallie whispered the command.
Her target had been chosen.
Chapter9
GRAESON
Graeson leaned back,his right foot braced against the wall and his shoulder against the window.
At high noon, the sun cast shattered rainbows across the pine floor of the royal meeting room. No additional lighting was necessary, for the ceiling-high windows supplied enough natural light to fill the space. Long vines of spring green leaves from the pothos plants hanging from the ceiling cascaded down the length of the glass. Decades ago, the royal meeting room was one of the many sitting areas in the castle. It wasn’t until Queen Esmeray’s grandfather, King Esile, decided to move the council meetings here. The former meeting place was in an old room in the back of the castle, hidden from the sun, with a breezy draft from the island’s coast. Graeson, however, would have preferred that room. There, he would have been able to sink into the shadows.
Here, on the other hand, the sunlight poured into the room. The light only made the large room more suffocating today. Grief was meant to live in the darkness, unseen, not illuminated by large windows.
It was the first council meeting without Fynn, and his absence loomed large over the advisors at the table. You could see it in the grieving gaze of the queen, the purple bags carved beneath Dani’s eyes, Terin’s lost stare as he sat in Fynn’s former seat.
Terin was never meant to sit in the inheritor’s seat. Their roles had been decided from a young age, their abilities and personalities dictating their future. Terin’s place had always been across from Fynn during these meetings, where he listened attentively and provided an opinion when asked. Terin was supposed to be Fynn’s right-hand man, not occupying the inheritor’s seat. Still, the seat had to be filled. Now, Terin was supposed to provide answers, not suggestions like he had been trained to do for years.
The prince, however, had no answers to offer in response to the queen’s previous question about what to do about the attack.
None of the advisors at the table did. Not Airos, the Captain of the Queen’s Guard; not Theenah, the Head of Medicine; not Harmonia, the overseer of Port Clareis; not Menides, the Head of Strategy. None of the other older advisors sitting around the grand table had an answer.
No one, that is, except for Dani.
“We need to strike back,” Dani said, pounding her fist against the table.
“We cannot strike back,” Esmeray argued, rubbing her temple. Exhaustion soaked her tongue. Almost two weeks had passed since Fynn’s death, yet none had time to mourn. Meetings went on, reparations continued. It was as if Esmeray thought the kingdom would crumble if she stopped to mourn. But what happened when everyone was falling apart, nevertheless?
Esmeray continued, “The treaty—”
“Fuck the treaty!” Dani spat, slapping a palm against the table.
Silence filled the room as the advisors’ attention flicked between the two women.
Despite Dani’s disrespectful tone, Graeson knew no one would punish her for it.
Since Fynn’s passing, Dani had been off-kilter, and for good reason. Her other half was gone, now walking in the Beneath. No one dared to confront her, to tell her to let Fynn go. Dani would never be able to let him go, and Graeson couldn’t blame her. None of them could.
Even Esmeray, who had her partner ripped away from her by Domitius decades ago, was hesitant to broach the topic. The queen was the only one at the table who had lost their other half and knew what it felt like to have a broken soul bond. Unlike Dani, whose ring remained snug on her finger, the queen’s thin gold band hung on a chain that disappeared down the front of her dress. Dani should have removed the ring when Fynn passed, or at least after his funeral. According to the stories, a bond ring without its connection to its other half could drive the wearer insane. The loss of the connection had been compared to drowning beneath the frozen glaciers—cold and suffocating with nowhere to go but down. Even knowing this, Dani had made no move to remove the ring.
Was this the madness the others had spoken of? Or just the grief that plagued Dani?
Usually, Graeson would step up to the challenge, but not this time. He couldn’t lest he wished to be called a hypocrite. He knew better than to tell someone grieving to calm down, especially when he was grieving and angry, too. After all, he still wore the gold band his mother and Esmeray forged from the rare metal blessed by the god Pontanius. Graeson had never taken it off, even when everyone told him Kalisandre was gone. Even when they said she was a lost cause. He, however, was more attuned to the metal’s rhythms than the others, and the ring still hummed. The connection, although faint, was still there. If he couldn’t let go of Kalisandre, how could Dani let go of her husband, the man who had wanted to save everyone?
