So, Saga and Lord Riis left the queen to her plans.
The princess wiped her face and did not cry another tear. Nor did she speak, not even to ask if she might gather personal effects. She did not look at the spymaster, nor breathe in his direction. Not as they left the castle. Not as he took her to the Warmsnap to get a disguise and ready two horses.
Normally, Lord Riis would travel via a gateway. But Saga did not know of Luccan’s magic, and the spymaster thought it a good idea to keep that quiet for as long as possible. The less the princess knew right now, the better. The king had closed the city gates, but Lord Riis had spiders at his service. One gate was open to him. Once they left Avaldenn, they’d simply have to ride swiftly down the King’s Road to put distance between them and Avaldenn.
“The vision of you and Rhistel and my mother was not the first I saw today,” Saga said suddenly. “It was the last. Before that, I saw Vale, Neve, your sons, and others.”
“Did you? Were they in a town?”
Vitvik perhaps? He was not sure what would delay them, but anything that made his job of finding them earlierwas welcome.
“No. They were traveling. Through a forest in the midlands, judging by the size of the trees.”
The largest trees grew far from the raging winds along the coast and the mountains that bordered the west and south. If they’d begun in Vitvik and were traveling, Lord Riis assumed they were still going east.
“Were they well?”
She turned her reddened eyes up to the spymaster. “They’d been captured.”
Chapter 22
NEVE
Iopened my eyes to find bars. Bars in front of me. Behind. To the sides. Above and below, solid slabs of metal caged me, magic simmering on the surface.
Wards.
Sitting up, I blinked hard, trying to orient myself. The air smelled cold, as though someone opened a window or door. Each of my traveling party were also caged, all separate, all passed out. Knocked out? I felt my head, which did not pound. From a brief examination, I deduced I hadn’t been hit on the head.
“By the dead gods,it’s about time.” A voice cut through the silence.
Turning, I found stairs and to one side, cloaked in thick darkness, there was a single chair in which a female faerie sat. Locking eyes with me, she leaned forward and placed her elbows on her knees.
My blood ran cold at the sight of the black-haired archer who had tried to kill me at the Royal Theater. Shewas there, just mere paces away, her expression haughty, her countenance cold, her body was strong and taut. Ready to strike.
This time, however, she wore black trousers, tunic, and cloak, with no Falk insignia on her arm, declaring her loyalty. Rather, she seemed to be prepared for the elements.
A memory surfaced. Shouting, running, ice-blue eyes—her eyes. Then darkness.
“What am I doing here?” I asked. “And why did you abduct me?”
She laughed, though there was no joy in her face. I wondered if there ever was.
“Abduct!Wesavedyour arses. Your guard was knocked out and the rest of you were asleep, just waiting to be devoured.” She rolled her eyes, an action that drew my attention to the scar over her left eye. “Of course, we wouldn’t have bothered had we known who you were, but no one stopped to have a meeting. Not with the Dream Eater so close. Why would you camp there, anyway? Don’t you know anything about this area?”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What’s a Dream Eater?”
Low-hanging fruit. But that was all my muddled mind could manage. Somehow, this violent faerie found me. Which meant the rebellion had found me. And they hadn’t already killed us?
“Dream Eaters are a race of fae that directs and eats dreams,obviously,” she replied through tight lips.
I blinked. Those strange dreams, my last memories before I saw ice-blue eyes, came back to me. They’d beenso fast. So odd—like the Dream Eater was pulling them from me. Creating them too, or so she claimed.
The archer snorted. “I guess what they’re saying might be true.”
“What are they saying?”
“That you’re not from here. If you have not a clue what a Dream Eater is, I can believe it. So, are you from here,Princess Isolde?”
