The male put a hand on his chest. “I most certainly am an Autumn emissary, and an effective one, if I do say so myself.”
Draven leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms and surveying the seated male. “It’s what you do behind the scenes that concerns me.”
I narrowed my eyes, tired of the way they were both talking around something I had no notion of. “Such as?”
“Drinking copious amounts of good whiskey,” Soren offered.
“Spy,” Draven corrected flatly.
Spy?It made a certain amount of sense for the male who always seemed to know so much more than he should. But it alsodidn’t because he was still very much alive instead of frozen wolf food.
Something shifted uncomfortably inside me as I recalled all the times I had let my guard down for one of the few people who had bothered to be on my side since I got here. He had brought me books when I was recovering from the Mirrorbane attack, had defended me to the court.
Was all of it for an agenda? Was I the only one naïve enough to think that anemissarycould also be a friend?
I looked from one male to the other, then to the sleeping—comatose—female.
“Does Nevara know?”
Did he hear the question I didn’t quite voice aloud. Is that why you’re close to the second most important person in this Court?
Soren raised his eyebrows in an expression that might have been casual, but for the smallest tensing of his jaw.
“Most emissaries have… side hobbies, and there’s very little that Nevara doesn’tSee.” His voice was soft as he met my eyes with a rare earnestness. “But she also knows that my relationships here are genuine, whatever loyalties I have to my own Court.”
His meaning was clear enough. He was trying to tell me that our friendship had been real, too, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to believe that.
I exchanged a look with my husband—the husband who had still not made a move to kill the Autumn emissary, which lent a certain amount of truth to Soren’s comment about his role not being unexpected.
Not to mention, Draven would never have allowed Soren to be one of the only people who could access Nevara’s rooms if he didn’t trust him to some extent.
Did that mean the rest of what Soren said was true as well?
“Is that why you allowed him to stay?” I asked.
Draven gave me a terse nod. “Better the frostbeast you know... Though that doesn’t mean I am likely to trust him where Winter is concerned, considering I know full well he’ll report back to his.”
Soren opened his mouth, then closed it, shaking his head like he was warring with himself. Several seconds ticked by on the intricately carved silver clock before he seemed to make up his mind.
“I haven’t told them about Nevara, and I’m not going to.”
It was Draven’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “You’d turn traitor to your own… king?”
The pause was deliberate enough to make me think I was still missing something, but Soren gave no outward sign that he noticed.
“Of course not,” he responded easily. “But unless you have plans to attack Autumn—and I can’t imagine you’re itching to gain yet more enemies—then nothing currently happening here concerns him.”
There was an undercurrent to his tone, a hint of a threat concealed in the nonchalant words.
You can’t afford more enemies, he was saying. And he wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t mean we had to trust him as an ally. There were plenty of reasons for Autumn Court to want to see an end to the strongest king in a millennium.
I could practically feel the same thoughts warring in Draven’s mind. I studied Soren only to find him fixated back on Nevara, grief once again clouding his gaze.
No one was that good of an actor. Whatever else he was, he cared about Nevara… Maybe even loved her. And he had helped us before, had fought monsters at our side… and he had kept the secret of my heritage for months now.
I turned back to Draven, remembering the way I had sent him the image, how he had sent words in return, and trying to channel the same back to him.
You’re the one who said we can’t fight a war on every front.
