The urn stood near the bed, and I crept toward it. Only now did creaks ring out, the ancient floorboards announcing that a thief stalked in their midst.
Pausing, I studied the made bed, grateful the king didn’t lie beneath the blankets.
We have a surprise coming for you, you nasty thing,I whispered in my mind to one certain king. My feral grin rose as I stooped down and cupped the sides of the urn with both hands.
So many bone coins. They whispered of the past and the future, their words making the droplets of sweat on my temples razor down my cheeks faster.
I straightened with the urn in my hands, finding it surprisingly heavy.
I gathered power to flit back to Lydel . . .
Someone grabbed me, binding me with magic too much like Delaine’s. The High Advisor was dead but—
“Stealing, are you?” Kerune purred by my ear.
My flit didn’t work, but everything inside me had not yet frozen. I flung my power at the urn, and it shifted from my hands, moving to Lydel.
With a grunt, Kerune flitted us to the king’s dungeon.
A blink, and I hung on the very same wall where I’d found Vexxion, my hands stretched overhead, chains linking around my wrists.
I shrieked toward my well, but I could no longer call my magic.
63
VEXXION
Ibolted upright in bed and touched the empty blankets beside me, finding them warm but chilling much too quickly.
Fury?I whispered in my mind.
She didn’t reply.
Something dreadful had happened to her. I knew it.
Where are you, Fury?I asked.Answer.Please.
Stone cold silence echoed in my mind.
Closing my eyes, I reached out to her and was stunned to find her far from here.
Bledmire.
I flitted to the aerie, startling the dragon penned within the stall Glim used when we stayed here. Hushing it, I backed to the gate.
Show me if you can’t tell me.I barked.
An image of the dungeonappeared in my mind, the very cell where Ivenrail had hung me so many times to deal out his version of punishment. The same cell where he’d murdered my mother.
Through her eyes, I watched as Kerune paced back and forth on the stone floor in front of her. He paused and waved a blade in her face, a snake about to strike.
I flitted, landing behind him and snapped out my threads, coiling them around his throat, jerking them tight.
Fury’s eyes widened, but she didn’t call out.
A quick glance suggested she hadn’t been injured—yet.
I sent power roaring toward Kerune, but it slid around him. Warded. He’d quickly discover I was as well. Each attempt would drain us slower than an attack on someone with lesser magical defense.
