“He has no reason not to,” Lennox replied. “Not yet, at any rate. So far, Glimrey has given the king everything he wants, and Tarian hasn’t mentioned the times Glimrey was selling more than he was gaining. Tarian has it in hand…though…”
“He’ll have to make good on that threat to keep it in hand,” Niall surmised. “And I bet Glimrey doesn’t believe Tarian would do it, not when he’d have to defy the royalty.”
“They don’t think that,” Daisy murmured softly, remembering the look in Glimrey’s eyes. Remembering the guards who had relinquished her to Tarian, the prison wards,the servants who had hustled away… “This court is scared shitless of Tarian. He’s wild. He’s dangerous. He’s trapped, but he’s not tamed. They all know it.” She sucked on her bottom lip, going over everything she knew and the possible allure of the crystal chalice. “But Tarian’s threats don’t matter if they get what they want before he finds out. They can leave…and they know he can’t.”
“They don’t know how to use the crystal chalice, though,” Niall said. “Even if they grabbed it, they wouldn’t get what they wanted.”
Daisy shook her head. “They want what’s in our heads. You heard him. He thinks I know the details about all of this, and he thinks he can break into my mind. Honestly…he might be able to if I don’t fortify myself better. That was an iffy situation back there.”
“Besides the royals, he’s the most powerful person in this court,” Lennox said gravely.
She believed it.
“If I don’t figure out how to null magic, I’ll have my head cracked open, and then they’ll take me and try to use me. I have to get to work.”
17
Daisy
The cooling waterlapped at Daisy’s neck, and her hair hung down the sides of her face. The rest of her body was submerged.
The contraptions from Eldric had shown up in Tarian’s chambers shortly after Daisy and the guys had sat down. Lennox said Tarian must’ve visited Eldric right after he’d pried Glimrey out of their minds. Only he could magically send things across the ward to his private quarters. Daisy had wasted no time working with the apparatuses.
Twenty minutes in—or that was what it felt like; Tarian’s clock was a bunch of symbols she didn’t understand—and Niall had sent for Faelynn. Those contraptions gave no quarter. If she didn’t get it perfectly right, she got a shock or a head slam. Partial learning was not an option.
When she couldn’t take any more, she’d skulked off to the bath to twitch in peace. The shocking system had been slow to dissipate.
As the water cooled further and time trickled by, she thought about getting out. She should go back to training. Everythingcounted on her mastering the chalice magic. It was the only thing that would keep her alive in this court. She felt it. Hell, just today, she’d been given proof of it.
Before she’d fully decided, the soft light from the magical orbs positioned around the room dimmed as a figure loomed in the doorway. She sucked in a breath when she saw Tarian’s appearance.
Shadows pooled under his eyes, and his face was drawn with weariness. His wild hair had frizzed, a bit of it matted at the side of his head with blood. Blood splatter decorated his neck and had dripped down. His tunic lay open, and the white undershirt was stained crimson all down his front. It didn’t look like the blood had come from him. His pants were ripped, and his boots were gone. He leaned heavily against the doorframe.
“Hello, darling,” she teased. “Busy day at the office?”
His answering smile was slight, and he leaned his head against the frame as well. “I had a few meetings that didn’t go as planned. Then I had to track down that nutsack who nearly killed me last night and gruesomely claim my vengeance. The last required a lot of effort, and I wasn’t really in the mood, but I had to send a message, so…” He shrugged.
“You got it done?”
He held out his hands, indicating the blood.
“I would’ve rather gruesomely killed someone than what I was up to,” she murmured, then swished the water. “Want in, or do you have another life to expend by narrowly escaping an assassination attempt?”
“Another…life?”
“Yeah, like a cat. Nine lives?” She paused. “Do you have cats here?”
“Oh.” He pushed off the frame. “No, we don’t. We have something like it, but they feed on entrails. They aren’t as moody, but much more violent.” He looked down at himself andthen at the water. “I should rinse off before I get in or I’ll get the water all gross.”
“We should drain it and put in more, anyway. It’s gotten cold.”
He shook his head as he ventured closer, his steps unsteady. He grabbed the edge of the copper tub, and slowly it began to heat, then faster. In a handful of moments, she had to hold up a hand and say, “Whoa, okay. That’s getting hot.”
He nodded quietly and began to strip as she called up the various magics in the human world that might be able to do something like that. There were fire elementals, of course. They could heat a body of water like this. Or just set her on fire, if they wanted to. A couple Ares magics could…
She let her thoughts drift as she noticed Tarian staring down at her, his bloodied shirt halfway off.
“What?” she asked.
