“Then I’ll gather as much information as I can and present it to the other royals on the Alpha Council. If we deliver enough proof to warrant an investigation, they’ll take on a case against Queen Tris.”
“Do we have enough time to do all that?” My stomach churns as I consider how little time we have left. Ten full days remain between now and the seventeenth. Even if Torben can convince the Alpha Council to investigate Tris as a potential murder suspect, will they be able to force her to revoke her bargain with Torben before it kills him? Or…or is he still planning on taking me back to her regardless of the outcome?
My chest tightens as I remind myself of the promise I made to him—that I’d go with him when the time came to fulfill his bargain. When I made that promise, doing so had seemed essential. A desperate offer to convince Torben to make me a temporary ally. Then again…he and I never made a binding pact. I may have offered the promise, but he never officially accepted it.
As we reach the top of the stairs, Torben heads straight for a closed door and pushes it open. I follow him into the room. It holds more furnishings than the other rooms I glimpsed on the floor below. Based on the cloth-covered shapes, there’s a four-poster bed, a dresser, a chest, and a wardrobe.
Torben sets the crate and luggage on the bed and crosses the room to draw open moth-eaten drapes. Four sash windows line the far wall. Each is boarded up with a single plank crosswise, allowing plenty of sunlight into the room. He proceeds to lift each bottom sash open, inviting some relief from the stifling, moldy air. Once he’s finished opening all the windows, he pauses at the last one. His expression takes on a distant quality as he stares outside.
A heavy silence falls between us until it’s pierced with waking kitten cries. I set Madeline on the bed and open the door of the crate. Mama Cat extends her body in a long stretch that ends in a yawn. Abernathy remains asleep while Natalie and Grigg happily pounce from the crate and begin investigating the bed. “Whose room was this?”
“Mine,” he says, still looking out the window.
“So is this where you’ll be staying while we’re here?”
“No. I’ll be staying in the parlor. This room is for you.”
I’m about to ask why he’d stay in the parlor when there are bedrooms available, but his somber mood has me holding my tongue. After everything he told me on the train, it isn’t hard to imagine how difficult it must be to be here. This is the home his deceased father left him. The home he lost in a reckless bet. A bet he’d made in the name of misplaced love. He must ache to see the manor in such disrepair, not to mention any painful memories it might hold.
I’m struck by a sudden urge to stand beside him, to offer him a consoling pat or weave my fingers through his. I shake the thought from my mind and approach the window farthest from him instead. Still, the space between us feels heavy. Weighted. Perhaps it’s because of all that he divulged today. I’d be a fool to think sharing such private matters with me meant anything to him.
And yet…I can’t help seeing him differently. Seeing a softness to his harsh edges. A warmth in his gruff bearing. A tender heart hiding inside that muscled chest. In this moment, I can almost see that strange impression I somehow formed on him—a weakness, a vulnerability. But like it always is when I manage to glimpse it, it feels thin, as if it doesn’t truly represent him at all. Before my eyes, it fades away, replaced by an awareness of his broad shoulders, his sculpted thighs, his chiseled jaw. No, this man isn’t weak at all. He’s strong. Stoic, yes, but powerful. Intelligent. And that beautiful shade of copper in his hair—
Realizing I’m staring, I shift my gaze to the window. Thankfully, Torben doesn’t seem to have noticed me at all and continues to look out at the scenery. The breeze funneling inside cools the sudden heat flushing my body and carries with it the scent of freshly cut grass and cherry blossoms. Beneath the plank crossing the window, I catch sight of the sunlit countryside. In the distance, rolling green hills span the width of my view. The shape of the hills has me tilting my head to the side. They look…familiar. But everything has looked familiar since we left the station at our stop.
I face Torben. “What part of the Spring Court is this?”
He shakes his head as if to clear it, then turns away from the window. Crossing his arms, he leans casually against the sill. “We’re in Dewberry. It’s just outside the city of—”
“Larklawn,” I say at the same time he does. “That’s the city you first lived in after you took seelie form?”
“Yes.”
“After your mother died…when you were six years old.”
A nod.
“Which was nineteen years ago.”
“Roughly.” He gives me an assessing look. “Have you been here before?”
I blink at him a few times, assessing everything he told me about his past under a new light. “Yes, I was born here. At Dewberry Lake.”
He pulls his head back in surprise. “You were?”
I give a reluctant nod. My birthplace isn’t something I like to think about much less talk about. But after all the personal details Torben has shared with me, I suppose I can do the same. “My mother was a lake sprite—the very spirit of Dewberry Lake.”
“Your mother was the Dewberry Lake sprite? The sprite known for—”
“Making people fall in love with their own reflections and drowning,” I finish for him, my lips pulled into a grimace. “That’s her. Now you see where I get my awful magic from.”
Torben stares at me with wide eyes. “How did your father come to sire a child with her?”
I shrug. “Father never explained the details and I certainly wasn’t going to ask. All I know is that they fell in love while he was painting her. At first, he thought his subject was just a lake like any other and wanted to paint the source of the haunting tales that had circulated the city of Larklawn. What he didn’t know was that the lake was my mother in her unseelie form. But when he returned to finish his painting, he got to see her seelie form. He always said she was terrifyingly beautiful and that he was never in danger of her. I’ve always assumed that he’s immune to fae magic since he was always able to see me for who I really am.”
“Didn’t you tell me your mother abandoned you?” His brows knit with sympathy.
“I sure did,” I say, tone wry to hide the anger that always fills my heart when I think about my mother. “I made such a poor impression on the female who birthed me that she didn’t last a year with me. She eventually left me on the lakeshore for my father to find. He visited almost every day, but when he found me alone with Mother refusing to emerge from the lake, Father took me home. That’s the memory I told you about, the one involving Father wrapping me in fur.”
