“You let him get like this?” Llir said, hoisting his brother to standing.
“Me?” I said. Surprise gave way to brittle anger. “He gave me the slip. But even if he hadn’t, it’s not like he’d have listened tomeif I’d said anything.”
The revelation about the fights was on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to spill out my bitterness to Llir, but I was willing to bet he already knew all about them.
Llir kept his eyes down, navigating the shingle. He looked strained, the corners of his mouth pulled taut. “What happened? Why is he…?” He gestured to Emment’s breeches.
I eyed our filthy, soaking garments. The two of us must have presented quite a sight. I let out a shaky breath. “The sinking sands,” I admitted. “There were howls, and I pushed the horse too hard. Emment fell. He took off over the flats—I had no time to stop him. He wandered right into one of those wide streams.”
Llir’s head whipped round; he gazed at me through the murk. “You got him out,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Saved his life.Eventually.
I nodded guiltily, meeting his eyes.
Llir blinked, as though seeing me properly for the first time. I wavered under that piercing stare. After a pause, he said, in a hoarse rush, “Thank you.”
I said nothing, merely moved to Emment’s other side, and in silence we helped the heir up the path to the castle. He shuffled alonglike a walking corpse, only just making it up the West Tower steps without collapsing.
On reaching his rooms, we steered him over to the bed. He made no attempt to undress. Didn’t even take his boots off. He collapsed face down and lay there unmoving, leaving streaks of sand and mud on the coverlet. I was certain his valets had seen much worse.
I folded my arms, darting a glance at Llir. “He does this often,” I said. Again, not a question.
Llir didn’t tear his shadowed eyes from Emment’s form. After a heavy silence, he murmured, “He was eight when our mother died. Remembers it all. It was slow. Drawn out. We think all this started as a way to…block it out.”
He was stock-still, trancelike, lost in memories. He almost seemed to have forgotten it was me he was talking to.
“And now?” I ventured, recalling Rhianne’s and Tigo’s dark looks. What had Emment been trying to escape from this time?
“Zennia. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Zennia.”
The heavy quiet was broken by a sudden, grating snore.
Llir blinked, and a veil drew across his face. Whatever reverie he’d been caught in had dissipated.
“We should get to bed, too,” he said. “I’ll check on him in the morning.”
“Of course.” I hung back to let him go first.
But as I made to leave, hearing Llir’s quick steps fade ahead of me, I suddenly realized where I was.
What I could do.
Heart scudding, I looked back at the regal four-poster. Another snore emanated from that thatch of dark hair.
Silently, carefully, I went to Emment’s wardrobe and rifled through the garments within. My crumpled ball of paper was tucked into mybodice—I’d decided it was safer not to hide it in my room. Unfolding it, I used a quill from Emment’s writing desk to scratch out a list of all the laconite I found.
I moved to a slim closet. An end table. A dresser. And there, in a box in a top drawer, I found it:
More of that same false laconite.
It was set into a few earrings, a brooch, some rings. A long, heavy pendant wrapped in thin tissue. I touched them all hesitantly. Silence. Stillness.
A grunt from the bed; Emment shifted in his sleep. I jumped, slipped the drawer closed, and scrambled to my feet. What if Llir decided to come back after all?
Quickly I made sure everything was as I’d found it. Then, feeling even more puzzled than before, I stole out of the room and down the dark, silent stairway.
17
