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Vidrio shook his head again, and the movement seemed much more sinister now I knew what it represented.
“Disappeared?” I repeated, almost choking on the word.
“He’s been abducted, Your Highness.”
What?
“Why…why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“We didn’t wish to worry you unnecessarily.”
“Bullshit,” I snarled, rounding on Morales. “In the gardens this morning, you said Ren wasbusy. You lied to me!”
“It was in hand-”
“Was it?” I demanded. I was shouting now, drawing the attention of the palace guards still stationed outside of the throne room and further up the corridor, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. “Was it reallyin fucking hand, councillor? How aboutnow?”
She flinched, the movement barely perceptible, but by the Blessed Five it was there.
Good. She’d fucked up: they both had, and they deserved to know it. I could forgive errors, catastrophes even, but when it came tohim...if he’d been hurt, I would make sure they were left worse off.
Ren.No.It had to be a mistake. Surely they hadn’t looked hard enough, he just had to be...
I forced in a breath through my panic. “Use a fucking Tracker.”
Blessed with the Scent, a magic that allowed them to find anyone,anywhere, a Tracker would be able to discover where my husband had been taken. Unless he was dead, but I couldn’t think about…
“They’re all currently assigned to various bounties and missing persons reports across the country,” Vidrio answered, subdued. “We’ve sent messengers to recall as many as we can, but it will likely be a full day before any return to the city.”
Fuck.
“Was there sign of a struggle?” I asked. I could barely keep my voice below a yell.
Morales shook her head.
“We haven’t received any ransom demands?”
“No, sire,” said Vidrio in his softly-spoken way, and I felt a flush of visceral hatred towards the man when he casually added, “not yet.”
I snarled out my displeasure. “What about word from our spies?”
“Too early for that, king consort. It’s only been a few hours.”
A few hours. That was far too long. Ren could be injured, tortured,dead...and I’d been sitting on his fucking throne all morning because I hadn’t even known he was missing.
Elías strode up the corridor towards us with Aitor on his heels, the Comandante’s expression wavering into fear from the neutral professionalism he usually managed to maintain. “Mathias? I just learned what nearly happened in the throne room. It’s my fault that man was allowed to get so close to you. I…” He swallowed, clearly ashamed. “I had most of the guards looking for the king, and it left you vulnerable.”
I waved off his apology but let him pull me into a fierce hug. “El,” I said into his shoulder, sounding – and feeling – like I was being strangled, and it had nothing to do with the man holding me. “Ren, he’s…he can’t…”
“I know,” breathed the Comandante. His long fingers worried at the cuff of his uniform, another uncharacteristic tell of how stressed he was. “I promise we’ll find him.”
“Ren’s guard,” I said desperately, catching sight of the younger guard at Elías’ back. “Aitor, you were with him-”
“Aitor was discovered outside an empty room,” Morales informed me curtly as if the man wasn’t there to speak for himself. “He has been questioned by the Comandante, as were the witnesses who saw him in the corridor around the time the king disappeared, but was found guilty of nothing more than failing to alert someone sooner to his charge’s absence.”
Elías dipped his chin in confirmation. Aitor flushed and glanced repentantly down at his boots, rubbing a hand over his smooth scalp.
“Then search it all again,” I snapped. “The palace, the gardens. The city,” I added helplessly, knowing that it should be impossible for someone to have smuggled the Quarehian king past the palace’s guarded walls, but equally knowing I wasn’t going to rely on any assumptions when the life of the man I loved was at stake.
