“Maybe, but this surprise Naming and the way the royal family has been acting has my father worried. He hasn’t said anything, but I can tell,” a voice declares, but it must be coming from someone I can’t see, because none of the women framed in the mirror are talking.
“My mother thinks something weird is going on too,” the pale woman with bright red makeup and matching hair agrees. “She said the king and scions have been cancelling meetings and seem especially tense about something. And my stylist swears up and down that Aeson Noctis has a female staying in his rookery with him.”
Her bright red eyebrows almost reach her hairline, and she gives the other females a knowing look. The other person I can see, the one with the platinum blonde hair, suddenly scoots to the edge of her seat and leans in conspiratorially.
“I heard the same thing as Dasha,” the blonde tells the others. “But my uncle saw a woman being escorted through Thrasher Keep by the scion’s Wing. He said she didn’t smell like anything he’d ever scented before.” She leans in a little more and drops her voice dramatically, but I can still hear her. “He thinks she’s fae.”
Silence fills the room for a beat and then another. Laughter suddenly rips through the quiet as everyone but the blonde starts to cackle and guffaw. I almost join them. The blonde scowls at the others, clearly not pleased at being the focus of their tittering.
“Blair, even if there were fae sneaking around Drameric—which there aren’t, I’d like to point out—they wouldn’t be escorted around the keeps by the scion’s men. They’d be dead and in pieces. Or in the scion’s case, ash on the wind. Your uncle was just trying to freak you out,” the beautiful black woman dismisses.
I listen for a little longer, but when the conversation turns to what the females are wearing to tomorrow’s gathering, I change the channel again.
I note that there are more active Ports than I thought there’d be. Lorn mentioned that King Noctis kept some of my father’s collection around. From the look of things, I probably have him to thank for the larger than expected network. It’s hard to tell if all of the mirrors are in King’s Keep, as it’s night time and many of the channels only show darkness at the moment. I’ll need to scry through them during the day and catalogue what I find and where.
The night I used the one in my father’s room, Enslee and I jumped to the first place that looked empty and quiet. We got incredibly lucky when, just a few halls down on the lower decks of the keep, we ran into the group of other Syphon kids and the wyvern guards with them from The Wells. I remember my father telling me and Ens that the longest recorded jump by our ancestors between Vitric Ports was just under five miles. So while the Syphon Glass won’t let me sneak out of Four Tiers altogether, it will let me slip in and out of my room and possibly the keep undetected, which is all I need.
I flip through a few more places I can’t identify, and then, to my surprise, Aeson Noctis ripples into existence across the surface of the Syphon Glass.
Stunned, I reel back and land on my ass. My eyes dart frantically to the door between our rooms, expecting it to be open and for Aeson to have used it to be standing right in front of me, but the white wood door is still firmly closed. Which means wherever the commander is, there’s a Vitric Port in the room with him.
I cover my mouth with my hand, afraid to breathe or make a noise even though he can’t see me.
“What on your com is so interesting that you’ve been ignoring me since you got here?” Aeson asks as he claims a chair that’s positioned in front of a fireplace, judging by the way the light is flickering over his features. “Sit down at least. You’re making me jumpy.”
Lorn steps into the frame, his eyes fixed on a screen floating above a portable com resting in his palm. He leans against the desk behind him for a long moment, and then the com screen disappears and he tucks the device in his pocket.
“He’ll get on you about sitting on his desk if you’re doing it when he gets here,” Aeson chastises his brother.
Lorn rolls his eyes, but he gets up and moves to sit in a seat across from the commander.
“She got a call from her stylist. I was reading the transcript,” Lorn tells his brother.
“Anything good?” Aeson asks, sounding disinterested.
“Something about lasers and dancing, but you interrupted me with your whining, so I have no idea what it means,” Lorn huffs, but it’s more playful than annoyed.
My mouth drops open when I realize they’re talking about me. I lean closer to the mirror, hanging on every word.
“Is Chastain any closer to figuring out what was interfering with his affinity in the wyvern’s studio?” Lorn queries, and my stomach drops.
Shit.
“He thinks it was some kind of bastardized magi-tech, but he still isn’t sure what. We’ve been watching Fenox Lael and everyone she employs, but nothing has been flagged as a concern. No calls. No money in any accounts that’s unaccounted for. No one that has any family with ties to the insurrectionists. No questionable dealings with anyone. Even her mail is tidy. Everything looks clean,” Aeson declares.
“Which probably means it isn’t,” Lorn adds, and Aeson chuckles.
“My thoughts exactly,” Aeson agrees. “But the tech could have been used by someone else to spy on that excursion. My Wing confirmed that they picked up on a strange scent there, the same one the others mentioned in Lairwood with that ambush. Farrow’s looking into it.”
Lorn nods and rubs his thumb across his lower lip, his gaze thoughtful.
“How’d today go?” Aeson inquires.
Lorn shrugs. “She fought it at first, but I got her there eventually. She wasn’t interested in much, which I thought was odd. Every dragoness we know would have tried on every piece of jewelry in those vaults or at least started to reorganize things to their liking.”
Aeson looks thoughtful. “Did you talk to her about Novak’s secret? Tell her about our suspicions that there might be other survivors?”
Lorn nods solemnly.
