“I can see what you’re planning,” Ellis says. “But I have no problem killing you both. They knew you’d come here! They knew!” He’s all but crowing with glee. “They’ll probably give me areward. Boy! I told you to go down to Callyn’s!”
“I’m not helping you do this,” Jax snaps.
Ellis turns his glare on his son, his eyes red with rage. “I told you to—”
I see my chance. Those knives spin free of my hand before he can shoot. It’s a bad angle, so the first one misses, but the second one skips right across the man’s shoulder. He cries out, then aims to shootme. I fight to get a third knife.
Jax tackles him. He doesn’t have the strength to bring his father to the ground, but they grapple for the weapon, and the shot fires wildly. The lantern shatters and the workshop goes dark. Jax cries out, and my head whips around.
“Tycho!” Grey says. He’s got blades in his hands now, too. “You need to find Lia Mara,” he says. His breathing is quick and ragged. “You don’t know what other weapons he has.” He winces. “Go now, while you can.”
I don’t want to leave him. I don’t want to leave Jax.
Ellis has another bolt loaded. I hear the click of a crossbow, and time seems to stop right in that moment. There are too many people at risk.
“I’ll do my best to keep him alive,” says the king. “Tycho. If they’ve taken the royal family, they’ve taken Syhl Shallow.”
He’s right.
I run.
CHAPTER 52
CALLYN
I’m woken by shouting.
No, cheering. The soldiers in the barnyard are cheering. Excited whoops and victorious hollers that are definitely going to wake Nora.
I try to make sense of the noise to figure out why they’re so happy. I move to the window to look down. Several lanterns have been lit, and the soldiers are excitedly milling about.
“Callyn.”
Nora stands in the doorway of my bedroom, her face tight and worried. She knows who’s in our barn—and she knows that cheering from the queen’s captors is likely not good news.
“Go get dressed,” I say to her quickly, then move to do the same for myself. I press a hand to my mother’s pendant. I don’t know what’s going on, but after what happened with the princess, I don’t want to deal with it in a sleeping shift.
Minutes later, we’re down in the bakery. Nora draws close and clutches at my fingers as we hide just inside the door to peek out.
The soldiers are still cheering. There are dozens of them now. Maybe over a hundred.
Where did they all come from? Were they sleeping in the woods?
“What are they saying?” Nora whispers. “They keep chanting.We caught…”
“The king,” I say breathlessly. “They caught the king.”
And the queen is held prisoner in my barn.
Alek asked me where my loyalties lie. He said he was loyal to the queen—but now she’s been imprisoned by the very people who were supposedly protecting her.
I want to honor my mother’s memory, but I can’t imagine she’d be doingthis.
My father did.
The memory burns. If this was his plan when they raided the palace the first time … then he was wrong.
The guards and soldiers are everywhere now, but they’ve been allowing me to bring food to the queen since I first learned of her presence. I don’t see why that would change if they’ve caught their quarry.
