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Not to mention...
“If Avriel won, he could make Sephone his empress, couldn’t he?”
Rychel shrugged. “He could. I don’t know if he actually would. Avriel is a dick. Sephone would have to be pretty stupid if she actually trusted him to do that. He could easily take another bride. One who hadn’t already belonged to my father.”
“Belonged.” Another word I really disliked at the moment. The court thought I belonged to Draven.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Rychel,” I said. “But I don’t particularly want to sleep on your floor tonight, so...”
“I suppose this will go down as one of the oddest conversations you’ve ever had,” Rychel observed.
I tried to smile. “Most likely.
I started to move back towards the stairs, debating whether or not I should wake Beks.
“My brother says you got the sword,” she said quickly. “Excalibur. How did you open the portal in the lake? What was down there?”
I froze. “Your brother hasn’t asked me much about that.”
“From what I understand, he thinks doing so might upset you,” Rychel said carefully. “Things didn’t exactly go as planned, I take it?”
I turned back slowly. “My lover cut me open, dripped my blood into a lake then shoved me into it, stabbed me when I brought back the sword, tried to kill your brother, and then I had to kill him to stop him. My lover. Not your brother. Though I wish I had killed him, too.”
“No, you don’t.” Rychel’s voice was gentle. “Though I don’t blame you for being angry with him for whatever he’s done. But that man who hurt you–my brother’s not like that. I promise you.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” I said, not even trying to force a smile. “How did your brother know the sword was down in that lake in the first place?”
“He knew because I told him,” Rychel said evenly. “Just because he was banished didn’t mean we stopped talking.”
I nodded. That made sense. I was sure they had some secret magical way I didn’t need to know the details of right now.
I stifled a yawn. I was more tired than I realized. But the night wasn’t over.
“Look, I should go,” I said quickly, seeing Rychel was staring at me with open fascination and seemed about to ask yet another question. “You’ve given me a lot of answers tonight though. More than anyone else. I’m truly grateful. Maybe we can talk again another time.”
“I’d like that,” Rychel said, smiling. “Come back and visit me anytime. Beks knows the way. You’ll learn it.”
I nodded. A plan had been forming in my head while we talked.
“One last question. How does the average Siabra get to the city above us? They can’t exactly just... walk to the surface. Can they?”
Maybe there was some sort of passageway I just had to find out about that would take me there. I could hope.
Rychel gave me a funny look. “They use a stitcher.”
“A what?” A passage in one of the books I had read days ago started to come back to me.
“A stitcher. Someone who can pinch the threads of space and time and... well, manipulate them magically. Not everyone has the gift, but enough do that it’s easy enough to make sure you always have a few stitcher friends or family to help you get around. Of course, you can always use a gate–” I assumed she meant an arch, like the one Lancelet had traveled through from the temple to get to us. “But the danger with gates is that they can be moved or destroyed, so you never know exactly what’s on the other side. And if there’s nothing... Well, let's just say some Siabra have had some bad experiences with gates, so stitching is currently back in fashion.”
“I don’t know any stitchers,” I said slowly.
“Of course, you do! Crescent is one. An excellent one.”
“Crescent is a stitcher? He can bring me to the surface?”
That seemed like crucial information that he had conveniently left out. But then, I had to admit that before tonight I hadn’t been quite as desperate to get the hell out of Draven’s court.
But now... I was as desperate as I could get. Wasn’t I?
