Working dough like any other day.
But with half her face bruised and a bandage wrap poked out of her shirt collar.
Elysia swallowed and walked in tentatively, her steps weighed down with a sense of responsibility and guilt. Choking on the rising panic, she flung it away.Beatriz is dying, and Garrison went after Lynd.She blinked away tears. It wasn’t Lynd’s job to make her feel better.
Clearing her throat, she spoke nervously. “Any maple cakes today?”
Lynd dropped the dough, her head jerking up as she gasped.Hurrying over with flour covered hands, she immediately admonished Elysia. “You shouldn’t be here. There’s a warrant out for you—you need to leave.”
“I know, but I think you know why I’m here.”
Lynd’s mouth tightened, stubbornness setting into the lines of her face. “I know no such thing.”
“I can’t leave until you tell me whatever it is.”
Lynd’s voice became fierce. “It’s not your job to deal with gods or fates. Let someone else handle this mess. Look at how they string you along even now, making you beg others for what to do.”
Unshed tears pricked Elysia’s eyes once more, but she swallowed the burn. It was a funny thing to hear her own justifications validated by someone she loved. Somehow, it almost made them easier to let go. Because none of this was her fault, but that didn’t change the fact that she was tied up in it all now.
Elysia could see her battling over the right thing to do, so she pressed a little harder. “I need to know whatever it is, Lynd. Can’t leave until I do. Then I promise I won’t come back.”
“Not like you to make promises you can’t keep.”
“I’ll do my best not to come back,” she amended with a half smile.
Lynd watched her through hard eyes, not looking like she believed her. She continued to work the dough as if she could knead and punch through whatever it was that kept her from speaking plainly as she normally tended to do.
“Never was much a believer in the undead gods even before the Fall. Maybe they exist elsewhere. But not here. Not for us.” Dropping the dough, Lynd finally relented, knowing she had no choice. “Three people visited me.”
“And?”
Lynd stared past Elysia, clearly swimming in the memory of the visit. “They told me to tell you that your voyage begins where you last left your heart. That you must take it back to begin.”
The name she hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on since wakingup in the death realm whispered through her mind. Everything in her body screamedno.
She didn’t want to see him.
If she didn’t see him, she could pretend it had all ended with a dance. When the truth was, he had plunged the dagger into her heart the night he had left her on a beach to die. He’d twisted it even deeper in the woods as he screamed in her face and asked for answers. And then shattered her to nothing when she finally accepted that he would sell her out in a heartbeat if it meant achieving his goals.
Drained, Elysia leaned back against a counter. Gods help her, but she wanted to go back to the death realm and lick her wounds in peace. But she couldn’t, not until Lynd told her the last bit of information she was still refusing to hand over.
Elysia’s magic wanted to dive in, peeling back Lynd’s armor, but it banged to no avail against its own weakness in this land. “Whatever it is you’re hiding, it could get me killed. Now isn’t the time to protect me.”
Lynd glared. “You’re barely grown.”
“To you.” Elysia smiled, looking at her hands.
“Yes, to me, and I’m the only one who matters, got it?”
Laughing tiredly, her wan smile held. “Yes, ma’am.”
“They said that you need to remember your voyage, or you’ll fail before you even begin. That the talisman is yours to find and the king is his to destroy.”
Chapter 13
Dripping wet,Elysia held unnaturally still. Water rolled down her neck and off her body onto the hardwood floor, making an ungodly amount of noise in the midnight silence.
She rested her hand on a wooden beam next to her, squinting into the pitch black. Stacks of old ledgers. Half-finished cups of tea on every surface. An enormous fireplace with one of the dogs sleeping in front of the still-smoldering embers.Was she in his office?Her heart picked up as realization dawned.
