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VEYKA
Cyara moved to her new apartments. Arran disappeared, leaving me with my Goldstones. He’d insisted on guarding my door himself until Gwen had become one of my protectors. Apparently, he trusted her to guard me even if he didn’t believe I was capable of doing so myself.
I went to sleep.
Not that endless, bottomless sleep that I’d used to hide from reality in the months after Arthur’s death. But actual restoration. I’d been at Cyara’s bedside for days, and as the door closed behind me, I realized how bone tired I was.
My consciousness bid me go to the library, seek out Parys and tell him what Cyara had found. But my body demanded rest, and I was in the bed before I could think too hard on it.
When I awoke, morning had broken. Carly and Charis were there to help me dress, and if they were extra attentive, I was also murmuring more thanks than I ever had before. I emerged from my bedroom, set on my destination and ready for whomever was on duty to fall in at my shoulders.
Of course, Arran was there instead.
How was he always there? Did he have some sort of otherworldly terrestrial sense that alerted him to when I was awake?
I didn’t know what to say to him. We’d barely exchanged a sentence as we spoke to Cyara. By the dark expression on his handsome but unforgiving face, I doubted he was in the mood to talk.
Fine. Neither was I.
“I am going to the library,” I said to no one in particular.
Let them squabble about who would guard me. I didn’t care. I swept through the doors and down the corridor. I hated that I recognized instantly that it was Arran’s footsteps that followed me.
I opened my mouth. Then closed it.
I didn’t have anything to say to him, I reminded myself. Nothing that I wanted to apologize for. I’d lied to protect myself and to protect Annwyn. If Arran couldn’t understand that, then I’d misjudged him from the beginning and it was for the best that the tentative understanding between us had been sundered early on, before it grew into something more dangerous.
Neither of us spoke as we descended into the goldstone palace, into that cavernous entrance chamber with the two strange statues standing sentinel on either side of the library doors. I paused long enough in the doorway to see if Arran would follow me. But he was already going to stand beside one of the statues, arms crossed over his broad chest, glare firmly in place.
Fine.
It was all fine.
I didn’t need him to talk to Parys anyway.
68
ARRAN
For someone I hated, I was having a damn hard time staying away from her.
That string in the center of my chest pulled, a silent demand, and my feet were walking to her apartments. Whatever instinct that was, it proved true as always. Veyka appeared a few minutes later, every curve of her delectable body on display and determination in her blue eyes. It had taken no more than a look to pin her Goldstones to their posts at her door, rather than following us to the library.
When we arrived, Veyka disappeared behind the massive doors without a backward glance.
I stood beside the unnerving statues, trying not to look at them, trying not to think. Breathing was an effort, these days.
Maybe that pull in my chest was a reminder from the Ancestors. While I may hate Veyka, resent her for her lies, our futures were inextricably linked.
Things were changed between us. But the world around us, the threats within the elemental court, to Annwyn—those persisted. We still needed to find out who had ordered Arthur’s death and eliminate the threat. We needed to find out how the rifts—known and unknown—fit into that plot. Whether they fit in at all, or were a waste of time.
We were being watched now, I had no doubt. It was unspoken between us, but the weight impossible to miss. Cyara’s attack had not been random. It had been a contrived attempt to eliminate the handmaiden and whatever knowledge she carried.
I started ticking through the members of the royal council, the likeliest suspects, as I had a hundred times now. Esa, power hungry and willing to start a war to hold on to it. Teo, a possible conspirator, but also hedging his bets. Elora and Roksana… both wildcards, for their own reasons. Elora was young and impetuous. Roksana the opposite, ancient and wise and skilled in political maneuvering. Both were equally dangerous. The only one I didn’t have a real sense of was Noros, the fox-faced councilor who sat beside Esa, but thus far hadn’t shown himself as an ally one way or the other.
Then, of course, there was the Dowager. Igraine Pendragon.
Veyka had mentioned her brother sealing her mother in her wing, but I’d seen the Dowager at a distance walking through the court. Whatever magic Arthur had used, it must have faded with his death.
