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Lydia frowns. “What’s our source on that intel?”
Ellie opens her mouth to explain, but at that moment, someone else speaks.
“Me.” Blaise enters the library, shutting the door behind her. “They got the information from me.”
Lydia looks Blaise up and down with that assessing gaze I’m all too familiar with. Blaise looks as if she might shrivel under Lydia’s glare, but she bites her lip and holds her chin high.
“And what, exactly, are you?” Lydia asks.
Blaise glances down at her feet. “It’s a long story.”
Lydia turns back to the group. “I assume you’ve added this girl to your ever-growing list of people you lackadaisically assume can be trusted?”
“We trust Blaise,” Kiran says, so quickly it startles me. I try to catch my husband’s eye, but he gives me a look that says he’ll reveal his reasoning later.
“Would anyone care to explain what Queen Abra wants with my wife?” the ailing male asks through heaving breaths.
“Yes, Marcus isn’t the only one to be wondering that,” says the man standing next to Lydia.
Ellie turns toward her friend. “Blaise, you know Abra better than any of us. Do you have any idea what she might want with someone gifted with the Old Magic?”
Blaise hesitates, exchanging a glance with me. She frowns apologetically, I suppose for contemplating feeding off me in the garden.
I’ll have to assure her she’s forgiven, later.
Sure, I’m not fond of the idea that she wanted to eat me. But that she wanted to and didn’t speaks to her character in its own way.
“She needs to open the Rip,” she says, her hands fisting at her side.
Kiran and I exchange a frown, even as my magic rumbles within me.
Mother hates the world of the Nether. I was there when she forced me to close the Rip.
I voice as much, and Blaise shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, other than what I heard when I was in her dungeons.”
My magic growls. Is the night stalker calling me a liar?
I don’t think she’s calling you anything, I think back.
Why are you defending someone who tried to eat you?
I’m not defending her. Well, I suppose I am defending her, but she didn’t try to eat me.
Oh, she only wanted to eat you. You’re right, that is much better.
Kiran shakes his head. “All we know about Mother—Abra—is that she originated from the realm that lies on the other side of the Rip. She’s always been motivated to keep the Rip sutured. There’s nothing for her on the other side, other than the memories of her own suffering. A time when she considers herself to have been weak. Why would she want to open the Rip?”
“Yes, child,” Lydia says. “Do you have an inkling to why the queen might have changed her mind?”
Blaise hesitates, biting her lip and shuffling on her feet. “I’m trying to remember exactly what she said. I think…I think maybe it had something to do with her son Farin. The one who was dead. I don’t remember everything. She had me drugged up a lot of the time, but I feel like I remember her mentioning him in connection to the Rip.”
“She could have been discussing the way the boy perished,” Kiran says. “He died shortly after the Rip was sutured, a victim of the fae curse, more potent in its first generation.”
Blaise shakes her head. “No. No, I’m sure it had something to do with opening the Rip, not closing it.”
She wants to bring him back. That vile female wants to bring him back.
“You said she kept his ashes,” I offer. “Do you think she’s hoping that if she’s able to open the Rip, she can use the power to bring him back?”
