“No,” I snapped. “You’re stalling. Dodging. Evading. And I don’t know if it’s because you’re clueless or incompetent.”
“You infuriating?—”
“Enough.” Brynelle’s voice cracked like lightning between us. She manifested in the space between us, wind stirring around her like an extension of her will. “You’re both being idiots. And children are watching.”
Shit.
My children were clinging to Fenric, who looked exactly like a man wondering if he needed to sedate one or both adults arguing in the garden. Mireth clutched his sleeve in a white-knuckled grip, her bottom lip trembling. Eryx looked like he couldn’t decide whether to cry or grab a stick and start swinging. Fenric had a steadying hand on each of them.
“Oh gods,” I whispered, stepping back, my fury dissolving. “No. No—” I moved toward them, hands raised, useless. “I’m sorry.”
I crouched in front of them, trying to make myself smaller, trying to breathe.
“I lost my temper,” I said, because I couldn’t lie to them. “I got scared. But it’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”
Mireth looked up at me with fear too old for her little face. “Are we gonna have to run again?”
“No,” I whispered. “Not if I can help it. I swear, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I swear it.”
I wrapped my arms around them both, pulled them in tight. Held them like they were the only good things left in the world. Because theywere.
Darian groaned again. “Don’t mind me. Bleeding. Still bleeding. Just having an out-of-body experience over here while you all process your trauma.”
“Shut up,” Brynelle muttered, kneeling to press her hands to his shoulder. “You’ll live.”
“Tell that to the pain in my soul.”
I pulled back from the kids and looked over my shoulder at Varyth.
“The wards will be reinforced. This won’t happen again,” he said smoothly, already turning away.
I stared at his retreating form like I could set him on fire with my mind.
“We’re not finished,” I called after him.
He paused. Glanced back.
“You are.”
7
The marble was unforgiving beneath my bare feet, like everything else in this gods-damned palace of pretty lies.
I moved like smoke down the corridor, back pressed to the wall, ears straining for the whisper of fabric or the tread of patrol boots. Nothing. Just the distant hum of magic thrumming through the stones, that same cursed melody that had been clawing at my consciousness since I’d arrived.
Behind me, two doors down, my children slept. Mireth had finally stopped crying an hour ago. Eryx had fallen asleep clutching a wooden horse someone had carved for him—probably Fenric, the bastard was too kind for his own good. I’d left a small dagger beneath Mireth’s pillow. Not much, but enough.
If someone comes for them before I get back.
If I don’t make it back.
The thought carved through me like glass, but I shoved it down. Deep. Where it could bleed quietly without making noise.
I had a list burning in my head.
Food. Travel rations. Something that wouldn’t rot in three days.
Maps. Any maps. Even if they were written in fae script I couldn’t read.
