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“The crowns are here, aren’t they? Razak brought them together.” Yes, that was why we were all here. Razak had maneuvered Draven, me, and Lark. He’d planned everything down to the finest detail. Then, with my freedom and Lark’s absence, one thing seemed obvious. My heart sank. “Is Razak free?”
She didn’t need to answer; the truth was clear in her fearful eyes.
Justice had set Razak free.
* * *
We staredat the empty cell that had, until a few hours ago, held Razak.
“There’s no fucking justice here,” Draven growled.
An open cuff lay on the floor. None of the guards had seen him—we’d asked—and none appeared to know who had released him. It seemed as though the Prince of Pain had evaporated from behind his bars like mist. And nobody cared either. The guards all bustled about, distracted by calls for aid and a commotion elsewhere in the castle.
“How does someone as conspicuous as Razak disappear?” I whispered.
“They have help,” Danyal said.
Then Justice was as corrupt as all the other courts, it had to be.
I turned my gaze to Noemi, still with us but conspicuously quiet at the back of our group. The crowns were likely here, and Razak was free and able to do as he pleased. Everything he’d wanted, had planned, had come to pass.
Had we already lost?
Several more guards ran by the end of the corridor. Did nobody care their prisoner was missing? Someone had to be in control of this circus, someone must have been able to stop Razak. The only person with enough power in Justice was the queen herself. “Queen Soleil must be informed of Razak’s escape.”
“Arin, please.” Noemi wrung her hands and averted her gaze. “You must leave.”
She bit her lip and shook her head. Danyal and Draven saw it now too. She knew more. “You helped us before, Noemi. Your own people arrested you for it. Something is very wrong in Justice, and you know it.” I gently touched her arm, prompting her to look up. “I’m asking for help. I’m asking for you to do the right thing—”
“This is the right thing, to save your life. He said you must go!”
“He…What do you know? Is it about Lark? Do you know where he is?” My grip on her arm tightened, and she stepped back, pulling free. If she knew the truth behind what was happening here, then she perhaps knew where Lark was.
“Arin?” Draven said from behind me. “She doesn’t know anything.”
I ignored him. Noemi bumped against the wall, and I stepped closer. “I will find Lark, whatever it takes. If you know where he is, tell me.”
“Love is the most powerful of the courts,” she whispered. “The most balanced.”
I braced an arm against the wall, fencing her in. “Yet my court was the first to fall.”
She blinked bright blue eyes. “It’s why Razak undermined yours first. He knew, without Love underpinning the shatterlands, the others would soon fall. It has always been known by Justice. Much is known within these walls. Balance is… all.”
I leaned close, so close she had nowhere to go, no escape. Noemi had helped Lark in the past. She’d helped me to realize the truth of Lark. And she knew the truth of what was happening now.“Tell me everything.”
“Arin, let her go,” Draven warned, but he didn’t get to level righteousness on me after all the wrong he’d done.
“Dallin forged the crowns and created four courts,” she said. “But it wasn’t for harmony as the tales suggest. He didn’t want peace. The courts were made to be at odds, forever in conflict, circling each other in a terrible, bloody dance. War, Justice, Pain, Love, they can never be balanced. Dallin did all this to guarantee the crowns would forever be kept apart.”
“What happens when the crowns are brought together, Noemi?”
“I do not know, for certain. There is nothing in the libraries. I looked for weeks once I was freed after serving my punishment. But there is not just nothing. There is an absence of information. The truth has been erased from Justice.”
“But you have an idea?”
She nodded, glancing over my shoulder at the two men and then back into my eyes. “I think… the crowns are a key to something hidden deep in the past. Something so terrible it’s been erased so none would seek it.”
“But Razakisseeking it.”
