“What do you think they’re up to?” he asks.
“Hell if I know, but nothing good. They went behind Vale’s back with that deadman’s puppet show. That was bold. There’s no telling what stunt they might pull next.”
Rian stops, grabbing my cloak. The light from the moon reflects on the shimmering eyeliner lining his upper lashes. “They didn’t go behind Vale’s back.”
I wipe a hand over my face, looking left and right down the lane, anxious to follow that fae scent. Offhand, I mutter, “Yes, they did. Vale said it himself.”
“I don’t care what hesaid,” Rian emphasizes, his voice a low hiss. “I know a lie when I see one. I’ve bluffed my way through Basel since I was five years old. Vale might have claimed he wasn’t aware, but I assure you, he fully knew.”
A wrinkle of unease turns over in my gut as I stop and fully face Rian. “Why would Vale pretend not to know? Even act angry about it, if he condoned it?”
Rian rubs his own jaw, staring into the middle distance. “Maybe he wanted plausible deniability…I don’t know. But I’m telling you, that manknew.”
A spike of dread shoots through me. There’s something wrong here that goes beyond Artain’s drunken antics.
But before I can follow that uneasy line of thought, I catch a whiff of iron again.
We follow it through the Glassmarket and along the curving lane of High Quarter, following the city wall as it turns south, winding down grid-like alleyways?—
—Until we come out right in the courtyard of Hekkelveld Castle.
Where guards are admiring their brand-new spears, freshly delivered from the blacksmith.
Spears that reek so strongly of iron, I couldn’t scent a fae within ten paces if I tried.
I drift to a stop. “Fuck.”
Rian cranes his neck. “What?”
I shake my head, sighing. “We lost them. Maybe they knew we were trailing them.” I start for the entrance, lowering the cloth around my face so the soldiers will recognize me. “Come on. Promise to behave yourself, and we can check on Sabine.”
We’ve just started up the central stairs when we nearly collide with Suri, coming down.
“Basten! Rian!” she says, startled to see us.
“Lady Suri?” Rian asks. “What are you doing up at this hour? Shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep?”
She doesn’t even bother to roll her eyes—too intent on the stack of books she’s carrying, her arms trembling under their weight. She pointedly ignores Rian and looks at me. “My assistant just brought me these books. When we locked Rian in the Coffin, he said he was bored out of his mind and asked me to fetch a book he’d been reading in the secret passages. I forgot to call off the order, and my stewards just finished unearthing all the old books hidden in the passages and wiping off the cobwebs.”
Rian perks up, stepping forward to take them. “Better late than never. I was halfway through the history of the Panopis corsair fleet?—”
“You don’t get them anymore,” she snaps, pulling back the stack. “You don’t deserve them.” She pauses—something bright, almost feverish, igniting in her eyes. “But that’s not what matters. Look.”
She lifts the topmost book as though it’s fragile glass, not paper and leather.
“This,” she whispers, “is the one Sabine has been searching for. The second volume ofThe Last Return of the Fae. I knew it had to be somewhere in these castle walls!”
A slow, electric tingle crawls up my spine. “The Last Return of the Fae?” I turn sharply to Rian. “You knew about this?”
He shrugs, open-palmed and infuriatingly casual. And gods help me—he looks truly baffled. “Never heard of it. I told you, I was reading about the great corsair sea battles.”
I study him closely.
No twitch. No sweat. No shift of the eyes.
He isn’t lying.
I hold out my hand for the book. “I’ll take it to her. She’ll be grateful, but there was no need to get this to us tonight. Sabine already has a copy of the book. Woudix gave it to her.”
