Keres set the folded bandages aside. “If we’d meant you harm, Princess, I wouldn’t have bothered with the tea, which contained a healing tonic to help speed up your recovery, nor the food, which means less resources for us, by the way.”
“Or blankets,” Thorne added. “Or letting you attempt to set fire to our house.”
How did he know I’d tried it?
“Or giving you the nicest guest room with the bathing chamber attached,” Daegel said with what I could have sworn was a pout.
Okay, these were fair points. This entire scenario was so far from what I’d imagined waiting for me on the other side of that carriage. But I couldn’t letmy guard down—not yet.
“Why bring me here then? Why not let me take my chances escaping Autumn on my own? Did Rydian pay you? Did you pay him? What kind of secrets do you think I possess?”
“You think Rydian paid us?” Thorne asked, and I could have sworn he looked amused by the idea.
“Unbelievable,” Keres muttered.
Amanti glanced toward the female fae, the firelight catching in the dark sweep of her lashes. “Rydian sent a request to extricate you somewhere Autumn couldn’t reach you,” she said at last. “He was worried what would happen after your wedding to Callan.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Rydian had come to me. That final night…everything between us had felt like a goodbye. I’d assumed he was giving up on his feelings because I would soon be wed. But now I wondered… had he been saying farewell before sending me away?
What would happen to him now as a servant of his new king? His brother? Would he continue following orders, fighting to protect Autumn from Heliconia’s attacks?
Would I ever see him again?
I shook off the last thought, reminding myself I shouldn’t want to.
Amanti squeezed my hand. “You weren’t taken for punishment or torture, Aurelia. You were taken because Heliconia’s scouts were already hunting you. This was the only way to keep them from finding you.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Our spies in Grey Oak found a trail not long after you arrived at Grey Oak,” Daegel said grimly. “Obsidians entered Sunspire when the ward lines fell?—”
“You found their trail back in Sunspire?” I cut him off sharply.
“They followed us back to Grey Oak,” he went on, eyesglittering with a regret that made me wonder if he felt responsible somehow.
“The attack in the Emerald Forest,” I murmured.
He nodded. “A few got away. They likely reported back to her. And then a couple of weeks after you arrived in Grey Oak, they infiltrated the city. Got inside the castle walls, in fact.”
“Duron blamed Callan for it,” I remembered. The black eye he’d brandished when he’d come to my room that night. Drunk, no less. And wanting me to comfort him. To forgive him everything that had happened between us like it was nothing at all.
“How do you know they were looking for me?” I asked. “Maybe they were trying to get to the king.”
“You mean besides the fact that they kept hissing your name?” Thorne asked pointedly.
Daegel slid a small oilskin packet from his vest and set it on the table. “Because we took this off one of them.”
I flipped the flap with two fingers and eased out a square of vellum, edges singed. A charcoal likeness stared up at me—my face, hastily but unmistakably sketched. A braid over one shoulder. The small moon-and-stars tattoo inked on my neck.
Beneath the sketch, symbols had been etched with dark ink.
“What does this say?” I asked, frowning. That made twice I’d seen a language in the old tongue in the past hour.
Thorne translated. “Alive if possible. If not, return the heart.”
The room went silent.
Keres took the vellum and slid it back into its case. “You should know that we intercepted a royal emissary from Grey Oak headed for the Spring Court on our way here. He carried news of Autumn’s recent coronation,” she added, mouth flattening, “and a bounty.”
