The last time I saw her, I’d just found out I could safely touch others again. I answer her by wrapping my arms around her. I don’t try to stop the tears streaming down my cheeks or the possibility that I might turn into a hot mess. She’s really alive.
“They told me you died.”
“Oh, Princess.” She drops her head to my shoulder, too weak to hold it upright. “I was very close to death. I had just enough energy to spellcast a death trance. I was injured badly enough that it was convincing. It’s how I escaped.”
She’s very thin and very weak. I help her relocate to the two-seater at the side of the room so she can lean her head into my shoulder. Mom and the others are already retreating from the room.
I wait until they close the door. “It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
She’s suddenly agitated, pulling away from me. “Nobody is safe. Nobody!”
“Elise, talk to me. They say you won’t eat until you speak with me and youneedto eat.”
“I know why the Elven Command wants to destroy the deep springs. When they thought I was dead, they spoke freely in front of me. All three of them were there and they didn’t guard their words.”
I ask carefully, “Which ones were there?” I know I shouldn’t care if Grayson lied to me about being involved in Elise’s torture but I need to know.
“The original three: Elwyn Elder, Osian Valor, and Pedr Bounty.”
“Not the younger ones? Grayson or Priscilla?”
“Grayson! No, but they talked about him many times. It was his mother who started it.”
Started what?I want to ask her so many questions, but I need her to eat something. “Tell me about the deep springs. And then you must eat.”
“They said the springs are located in the spot where the gargoyle king first separated the earth’s layers for our new home. Water from the surface of the earth drips into the springs.”
Elyria once told me the same thing. She said that the springs are the only water source that flows directly from Earth’s surface. I also noticed the strange drip from the ceiling when I healed Baelen—water droplets that seem to form from nothing.
Elise’s hand tightens around my arm. “They said there is an unseen entrance in the ceiling of the springs.”
“An entrance… to where?”
“The surface,” she whispers. “A pathway back to the surface of the Earth.”
