“Yes,” she said. “My mother’s.”
His gaze combed over the room. “Why did you bring us here?”
“Because we need money,” she said, striding over to the nearest trunk and heaving the lid open. “And here it is.”
He turned a small circle in the middle of room. “You want to rob your mother’s grave?” He blinked, refocusing on her. “This is where you came, the other night.”
She nodded, mulling over the trunk’s contents. Gold coins enough to buy off every Pixie at the Spire, but she could hardly carry an entire cask of gold on Gur’s back.
“This seems wrong,” he said.
“Of course it seems wrong,” she said, closing the lid. The thud echoed around them. “But you didn’t know my mother. She thought it was wrong to bury wealth like this with the dead. This is only one chamber. There are hundreds of others. Radiants and Princes buried in gold and jewels, all of it rotting, useless. They don’t need it and we do. Besides, it’s not as though I’m some common thief. I need money to vie for Radiant. Believe me, my mother would approve.”
“Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to Cavan’s sarcophagus.
She frowned at the visage of Cavan, those dark flat eyes. “The Captain of my mother’s guard. It’s traditional for a Rae’s most trusted servant to be buried with her, usually it’s her Prince.”
“Princes are servants, are they?” Before she could retort, he asked, “Did you move this before?” He gestured to her mother’s tomb.
“Yes,” she said.
Stretching her neck, she attempted to loosen the knots, but the stone walls around them seemed to amplify Kaelan’s straining presence.
She leaned against a giant wooden horse bedecked in gold finery. “I’m not reading your emotions as clearly as before. Are you doing that on purpose?”
He raked his hand through the messy thatch of his hair. “Eris said my true self would become submerged the more often I changed form.”
“You haven’t changed form that often,” she said.
He shrugged. “I practiced a few times before we left Eris.”
She frowned. The ease with which she’d been able to sense his emotions and hear his thoughts was unusual. So perhaps it shouldn’t have irritated her that Eris’s magic had removed their peculiar connection, and yet, it did.
“Something is bothering you,” she said. “And we need to have it out.”
“Now? Here?”
“Why not? Are you afraid my mother will eavesdrop?”
He scowled, folding his arms, squaring off with her. “Why did you agree to let Honey continue with us?”
“Because she wanted to?”
“Hasn’t she suffered enough?”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?”
He looked back towards the chamber tunnel, jaw working. “I don’t know. I don’t feel as though I have anything to say to her anymore.”
“She would be more likely to listen to you—”
“Would she? Why? She’s not who she was and,”—he snatched up a golden goblet from the horde, eyeing it grimly—“neither am I.” He plunked the goblet back down. “You said you thought I was naïve before, and you were right. I was.”
A trickle of dark emotions rolled off of him, but they were so thin and distant, impossible to discern.
She moved closer. “I’m sorry this is so difficult for you. But I can’t promise that things will get easier. I may not be an oracle, but I can pretty much guarantee there’s more danger ahead of us.”
“Hard to imagine.”
