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I grabbed another arrow but Gerarda had her sword ready and a knife aimed at my throat. “Keera, I don’t want to kill you, but Iwillif you don’t listen to me for once in your life!” Her wide cheeks were sweaty as her chest rose and fell in a sharp rhythm. Her dark eyes held the same resignation that I knew mine had countless times. The look of someone who would strike if given any reason to.
“She’s in on it.” I seethed through my teeth. “Damien used her husband to stage a coup and now she’s working with him to send his weapons to the other realms. Weapons he makes bykilling Shades.” I snarled down at the foreign lady. Her light brown skin was more sallow than the last time I’d seen her, and her perfectly manicured curls were tangled and unkempt behind her head, but there was no denying that she was Lady Curringham.
“Keera.” Gerarda took an exaggerated deep breath, trying to calm me, as I stalked down the steps. I turned my arrow on her.
“Why would you protect her? Lady Curringham of all people.” Too many possibilities were running through my mind, my entire body shook under the weight of them. “Did youknowabout this?”
I gestured to large white doors, identical to the ones that had fronted Aemon’s throne room. Dark stains of amber blood were inkeddeep into the grain. They had turned the one place where Shades could laugh and eat freely into a place of horrors.
One of the guard’s dropped his sword. “Lady …?”
He never finished his thought because at just that moment, Lady Curringham pulled a gold hairpin from her curls and drew it across the man’s throat in a long, ragged cut. His body hadn’t even hit the floor before her pin was lodged in the other’s eye. “Would one of Damien’s allies do that?” she asked. There was no harshness to her consonants and no lull added to end of her question. Her foreign accent was nowhere to be found on her chapped lips.
My eyes narrowed but I refused to lower my bow. “If that’s what it took to escape, that’sexactlywhat Damien would do.”
“This is ridiculous,” Gerarda muttered under her breath. She drew a knife from her belt and tossed it at Lady Curringham’s feet.
I tightened my grip on my bow but didn’t release the arrow. “Friends don’t arm the enemy, Gerarda.”
She only rolled her eyes.
Lady Curringham’s fiercely green eyes never left mine as she slowly bent over to pick up the knife. “What Ger is trying to tell you”—she pushed the mountain of curls out of her face with a feline smirk, before sliding the blade down the middle of her third finger—“is that I can’t be your enemy.” She raised her amber-covered hand. “Because I am one of you.”
I blinked and slowly lowered my bow. Gerarda broke from her spot across the landing and charged at Lady Curringham. I thought for a second that she had changed her mind, and was going to kill her after all, but instead Gerarda kissed her.
Lady Curringham dropped the blade stained with her own blood and picked Gerarda clear off the ground, spinning the Halfling around three times.
“Why do I miss everything interesting?” Nikolai quipped from the main entrance flanked by Vrail and Syrra.
Vrail’s full cheeks were red and her lips had almost disappeared into her mouth. “This is what she leaves me for? Takes off across the island without warning and no care for who sees her.” Vrail folded her arms and shook her head in disgust as Gerarda’s hand made its way into Lady Curringham’s curls.
“I’d break protocol too if I knew someone was going to kiss me like that,” Nikolai mumbled as he stared at the couple. His eyes flicked to Vrail for the briefest moment before shaking his head out of his daze. He lifted the vial—it was already a muddy brown color.
I turned to Riven who immediately cloaked the landing in darkness, getting the attention of Lady Curringham. She stared, wide-eyed, as the shadows faded into the white stone. “It’s even more splendid than I’d imagined,” she whispered, curling an arm over Gerarda’s shoulders. There was almost as much difference in their height as between Gerarda and me.
“If you’re not an enemy, then tell us how you’re alive and the Shades are not,Curringham?” I made sure to flash my fangs when I said her name.
Gerarda had a blade pressed to my ribs before I could blink. “Her name is Elaran and she is the only reason you weren’t left on this island to rot. You will treat her with respect or I will cut out your tongue.”
Riven’s shadows wrapped around me just as Lady Curringham placed her arm in front of Gerarda. She grabbed the knife from her hand and tossed it over her shoulder onto the floor, while smiling widely up at Riven.
I snarled and Gerarda grabbed another one of her daggers to point at me. I looked down at the thin blade and she raised her brow. It was a dare as much as it was a threat.
“Apologies, Elaran,” I said through clenched teeth. Gerarda’s gaze trailed over me before she nodded.
Vrail threw her arms up in exasperation. She tugged at the vial attached to Nikolai’s belt, yanking him into her. “We need to break the seal. Now.”
“Seal?” Elaran asked, pushing back her tremendous curls. “You didn’t come for the Shades?”
The entire world stopped, even my heart froze in my chest. I stared at Elaran, unable to think, unable to breathe.
Syrra was the one to clarify. “The Shades are alive?”
Elaran glanced at Gerarda, who wiped her eye on her sleeve. “You didn’t come as a rescue mission?” Her full lips hung open.
“We have a ship and the means to get you to it,” Riven said. He straightened at my side as he admitted the truth. “But our reports were bleak. We anticipated the worst.”
“I told you,” Gerarda sneered, but it evaporated the moment her eyes landed on Elaran again.
