That’s a little too close to what Alek himself said right to my face, and I scowl. “I shouldn’t have threatened him.”
“He shouldn’t have laid a hand on you.” Jake frowns. “We searched his fabric shipments. Lia Mara thought we’d find messages like those from Emberfall.”
I snap my head around. “Really.”
He nods. “Grey might have told you if you weren’t working so hard to avoid him.”
That has the sound of a trap waiting to be sprung, and I’m no fool. “Did you find anything?”
“No,” he admits. “Not among Alek’s shipments. Not among anything that can be traced to the Royal Houses. But Grey suspects threats about the Royal Challenge.”
“Threats to him, or to Lia Mara?”
“To him.” He pauses, and his voice drops further. “The people are always vocal in their love for her. They’re afraid of him.”
I think about that evening with Jax, when Alek stopped to pick up a message. Would he be so bold as to pick up some kind of treasonous message right in front of me?
Maybe Ishouldhave stopped in Briarlock. Maybe I should have tried to find out.
Maybe I’m just looking for a reason to stop.
“What are you thinking?” says Jake.
I look up. “Rhen thought perhaps the different shipments weren’t about passing messages of worth. That they’re trying to establish a method that’snotcaught.”
“So when we find it in a sack of grain, they stop sending them that way.”
“Yes.” I hesitate. “Alek was picking up a message from the blacksmith in Briarlock.”
Jake studies me. “You think maybe all these messages in shipments are a decoy? That they’re using trade workers in the towns for therealones?”
I think of Jax, his hazel-green eyes boring into mine as I bled all over the floor of his workshop—just after Alek had thrown a handful of coins at him for holding a sealed message.
It’s not enough. That message could’ve been from anything.
I consider the first day I walked into the bakery, the first time I saw Alek in Briarlock. The tension was thick enough that I worried I’d walked right into a battle.
And then the next time I was there, Callyn was scrambling to pick up all those coins from the floor.
Look at all that silver!little Nora said.We made that much today?
My heart clenches. Her voice was so bright. I remember what it was like to be desperate.
“Maybe,” I say to Jake, my mood darkening. “Or maybe I just hate Alek enough to want a reason for someone to lock him up.”
He doesn’t say anything to that, and I pick at my food.
“Something else is up with you,” he says.
“Nothing,” I say, tearing a biscuit into pieces that I gracelessly shove into my mouth. “Truly.”
But as I say the words, again I’m reminded of what Noah said, how I keep people at arm’s length. I almost wish someonewouldstart a brawl while we’re sitting here, just so I could escape Jake’s careful scrutiny.
I should have stopped. I should have asked.
I should have done a lot of things.
“What’s his name?” Jake says, and I choke on a mouthful of biscuit.
