I sink back a little. “Of course not. Hence my question. I wanted to know if there was anything else that could do it.”
“Of course. You’ll forgive me if I cannot answer such a question from memory. I would be willing to open the library at Mistmark to you, if you sought an answer.”
“Thank you.” I can’t help fighting a yawn.
“Tired?” Mistmark asks.
Falion tops up my cup. “Do you need somewhere to stay for the night?”
Mistmark shoots him a quizzical look.
“What?” Falion asks blandly.
“I’m just trying to work out what you’re plotting,” he tells his friend. “That was… generous.”
Falion scowls. “She’s my sister.”
“And I’m your friend.” Mistmark leans back in his chair, his arms crossing. “Do you remember when you threw me out into the mud and told me to find my own fucking bed?”
“You were drunk.” Heat climbs up Falion’s throat. “And you snore like a wounded bear.”
“Precisely my point. I was in a precarious state of mind and you made me sleep in a barn. Anyone could have slit my throat.”
“I set a shadow to watch over you.”
Mistmark shoots me an amused look. “There is one thing you should know about your brother, my lady. Don’t ever trust him when he’s trying to be polite. He’s up to something.”
Falion throws his hands in the air.
I don’t know what to make of this good-natured play. “I’d begun to realize that. He looks slightly constipated whenever he tries to smile.”
Mistmark coughs a laugh into his hand, his blue eyes twinkling as he glances to see his friend’s reaction.
“Cauldron’s icy kiss,” Falion says. “You two are as bad as each other. Fine.” He glares at me. “I tried to be kind. Sleep in the hallway. Crawl back to Keir’s bed. I don’t care. Just don’t come sniveling to me when he casts you out.”
Yanking his cloak over his shoulder, he slams the door as he stalks through it.
“He’s out of sorts,” Mistmark explains, stretching his arm along the back of his sofa and watching the door with an affectionate look. “Your appearance in his life is very confusing for him.” His gaze softens. “He’s spent years hoping his mother was still alive. And now he knows what happened to her. He won’t ever say it, but he doesn’t like surprises. He doesn’t know what to do with you.”
“He offered to train me.”
It startles a laugh out of him. “Did he?”
I sink back into the sofa. I’m so fucking tired. Every inch of me feels like I’m covered in bruises, but it’s the one painted across my heart that hurts the most. I’ve been avoiding Keir ever since I returned to the court, but I can still hear our last argument.
“What now?”
Now? It’s an explosive question. The last time I saw Keir, he’d just discovered the depths of my betrayal. I drain the rest of my tea in a single gulp. “Now I have to go beard the dragon in its den.”
“You’re going back?” His smile is kind, even as his eyes remain watchful. It’s a reminder. Mistmark is still sounding me out.
Falion isn’t the only one I cannot quite trust.
I push out of the chair. “Someone has to go see if your bride is still alive.”
“Oh, she’s alive.” He swirls the rest of his drink, staring into it. “At least until I get my hands on her.”
29
I slip over the edge of the balcony and come face to face with a furious dragon.
There’s no surprise in Keir’s eyes as he wrenches the curtains aside. Only frustration.
“Where have you been?” he growls. “It’s been hours.”
“Making friends.” I stagger over the doorstep. “Where’s Soraya?”
“Sleeping.” He jerks his head toward my bedroom. “I healed her with my blood and put her to bed.” His eyes narrow. “Where have you been?”
There it is.
The first thrust of the knife in this game of parry.
“Somewhere safe,” I tell him, because I haven’t entirely decided what I’m going to share with him. Somewhere in my head, I’m still trying to sort out what this revelation about Falion means.
He prowls back into his bedchambers as my dry tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. I follow him slowly, uncertain whether I’m truly welcome here. If he put Soraya in my bed then does he mean for me to stay here with him?
My heart skips a beat. I never meant to be here once my deception was discovered. Until Keir told me that story and made me question where the horn truly belongs, I was planning to slip away before he could confront me.
I’ve never had to face the consequences for my actions before. Not like this. I’ve never had to stare a prince in the eye and beg for forgiveness. I’ve never… wanted forgiveness before.
And I can’t read him.
What is going on in his head? I want to be ill.
“What?” he finally asks.
“You’re… not as angry as I expected you to be.”
His expression is cold. Stark. Unforgiving. “Oh, I’m angry.”
“I told you the truth of what happened. I changed my mind. I was going to give you the horn. I was going to let you throw it in the deepest trench in the ocean, if you wanted to keep it secret—”
“But?”
“Then I saw Soraya’s chest. I saw the blight spreading through her.” My voice drops to a whisper. “It’s a wasting sickness that afflicts my kind—the backlash of the curse that transformed us. It’s brutal and unforgiving, and I’ve seen what those who suffer it go through. It will eat away at her, inch by inch, until there’s nothing left. There is no cure. Do you know what they do to those afflicted with the blight? They kill them, Keir. A quick knife across the throat is the cleanest death we can offer them, but there’s another truth my father wants to keep hidden…. Every year the blight affects more and more of my kind. It’s not contagious—not the way
