I nodded, though my head was spinning. “You?”
“I’ve had worse,” he said. “Being burned by furyfire, for example.”
I snorted.
Slade flexed his fingers. Shadow leaked between them like smoke.
“You okay?” Thorne asked him.
“Just taking in the sights,” Slade drawled.
He grabbed our arms again, shadows swallowed the world, and we lurched into another clearing. My stomach roiled, but I clamped down on the nausea, shut my eyes, and let the world shift to greet us.
By the third jump—shorter, rougher—Slade’s knees buckled, and he dropped to all fours.
“That’s it,” he rasped. “Unless you want my corpse as a travel companion.”
Thorne handed him a flask. “Tempting. But I think I’ll pass. You’d stink, and I’m not carrying you.”
Slade took the flask and drank.
When we’d all regained our balance, we set off on foot through the trees, the leaves drifting down in gold spirals. The air smelled like pine and early frost, and every mile closer to the palace felt like time slipping through my hands.
The others felt it too. Our steps were too quick. Our breaths too sharp.
Slade finally broke the silence.
“So… question.”
“Seven Hels,” Thorne muttered. “Here we go.”
He ignored Thorne and nudged me. “Why the theatrics?Why bother with a wedding? If Heliconia wants Autumn, she could just kill Callan and take it.”
“I wondered the same,” I admitted.
Thorne answered first, voice low. “Maybe the throne won’t unlock for her if she takes it through assassination.”
I frowned, ignoring my own discomfort at the word. Technically, out of the pair of us, I was the assassin of kings—not her. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Thrones are imbued with old magic gifted by the gods. And don’t the gods all love their rules? The kind you don’t break so much as work around.”
“And marrying the king counts as working around?” Slade asked skeptically.
“If she’s queen,” Thorne said, “she sits beside him. Or on the throne when he’s away. Maybe that’s all she needs.”
“Or,” Slade said, “maybe Callan’s harder to kill than we gave the brat credit for.”
That made my throat tighten unexpectedly.
Hewasa brat. Spoiled, arrogant, manipulative. But he’d helped me. And he’d tried—tried not to be his father. Tried to stand between Heliconia and his throne.
More importantly, Heliconia didn’t waste time on preserving a life if taking it was an option.
“Maybe,” I said softly, “she needs him alive.”
Slade’s expression shifted—not joking now. “For what purpose?”
I shrugged. “The throne’s magic. The courts’ recognition of her as queen. Who knows?”
