“Looks like they’re wide open.”
The old male turns in his seat, glancing between Zadyn and me with a moderately horrified expression. Zadyn shoots me daggers as we slip into the empty seats.
I shrug. He has his methods. I have mine.
The old male looks uneasy, but says nothing as he sips his drink. There’s a slight tremble in his hand as he lowers the pewter mug.
“You’re Loryn, aren’t you? The Blockade.” He looks surprised for a moment as he regards Zadyn.
“No one’s called me that in a long time,” he rasps.
“You built the wards around Castle Illona.”
“Rebuilt. But yes.” He looks haunted, his eyes sunken in. “Who are you?”
“Your reputation precedes you. They say you’re the best ward mason to ever live.”
“It was a lifetime ago. I don’t build anymore.” Something dark shadows his brow as he hunches over his drink.
“Even so, I think it’s the Fates’ design that our paths crossed today. It just so happens, my friend and I here are in need of a ward mason. Specifically, the one who designed the wards around Illona.” A crackle of threat looms behind Zadyn’s warm tone and kind smile. The male—Loryn—starts to stand, but I reach out and shove him back into his seat. He has the good sense to look fearful as his eyes dart between us.
“Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“We’re the kind of people you don’t want to make enemies of,” I answer for Zadyn.
“Relax, Loryn, we just want to ask you some questions,” he says. Loryn swallows tightly, his throat bobbing as a thin layer of sweat beads on his forehead.
“Settle in. Get comfortable.” I offer him a threatening smile.
“We have this friend,” Zadyn begins again. “A very powerful friend, who has found herself in a precarious situation at the castle. Sherequires our help, but the wards—your wards—seem to keep getting in the way of that. We need to get inside.”
“You—you want to get inside Castle Illona?”
“Precisely. That’s where you come in.”
“No, no, no. There’s a reason I stopped building wards. I don’t work for the Trioris anymore. I don’t work for anyone?—”
“Oh, Loryn.” I chuckle, discreetly drawing my dagger beneath the bar. Loryn freezes, his gaze dropping to the knife now pressed against his balls. “That wasn’t a request.”
He looses a tight sigh, glancing over his shoulder at the unassuming crowd of wayward drunks. “We’d be better to discuss this in private.”
“Here seems intimate enough.” My patience is waning quickly.
“Even if I could get you in—and I’m not saying that I can—you’ll never make it out alive. No one does.”
I give a half-assed shrug. “They haven’t met us yet.”
“I understand you want to help your friend, but whoever they are, if they’ve been taken by the king…you’d do best to let them go.”
I press the tip of my knife in deeper, and he straightens.
“I speak the truth. I learned the hard way.”
“I don’t care about your sob story. What I do care about is the female they’re holding captive inside their keep. You are trying my temper, and you don’t want to know what happens when I lose it,” I growl in his face. He shrinks back, and Zadyn claps a hand on his shoulder.
“We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if we have to. We need your help.”
“It’s always a girl, isn’t it?” Loryn hangs his head, and I can see the echoes of a man who once held pride and promise. Time has not been kind to him, and from the way his shoulders slump, the deflated air surrounding him, it seems life hasn’t either.
