“Teyla wouldn’t have done this.” Still in the doorway, a stunned expression on her face, Syla sounded like she was convincing herself.
Vorik finished his search without finding anyone and returned to her side. “Even if he was the one keeping her captive?”
“I’msureshe wouldn’t have killed her own father. They weren’t that close, but she didn’t dislike him.”
“What if he was the one to deliver those books to her?”
Syla shook her head. “She would have had caustic remarks for that, not daggers.”
“What if he agreed to marry her to Fograth?”
“Teyla might killhimbut not her father.” Syla returned to the other door in the hallway and reached for the knob, but she changed her mind and knocked first.
Vorik arched an eyebrow but didn’t blame her for being rattled and not sure what to do. Nobody answered the knock, and Syla tried the knob. It was locked.
“This is grounds to force our way in, right?” She looked at Vorik, back to the suite and the fallen lord, and then to him again.
“I don’t know proper Kingdom etiquette in such matters,” he offered.
“I’ll give you that book to read later. Will you?” She gestured to the door and stepped back.
Vorik thought about pointing out thatshecould likely force it open, but Syla probably hadn’t had much opportunity to explore her new dragon-gifted power. He kicked the door, and wood snapped as it flew open, revealing a spacious bedroom with walls painted in pinks and yellows with a mural of books with wings flying past clouds on the ceiling. The many bookcases along thewalls were also painted pink, as was a rocking horse in one corner.
“I don’t think Teyla came home much after she finished her studies and started working at the university,” Syla murmured, though she waved at a sword mounted above the fireplace, the one masculine item in the room. Raising her voice, she called, “Teyla? Are you in here?”
“Maybe she killed her father and fled,” Vorik suggested.
“Shedidn’tkill him.” Syla bit her lip and walked around the room.
“Are you sure she was ever here? And a captive? It was just the glassmaker who said that, right?”
“It was, but he seems reputable. He lent us his building and gave me a spare room, after all. Despite the questionable company I keep.”
“I’ll assume you refer to Wreylith.”
“My people are more offended by you. Trust me.”
“Idon’t hurl people’s weapons into lakes and breathe fire at them.”
“But you’re no innocent.”
“No.”
Vorik couldn’t deny that he’d been more of a thorn—a very prickly thorn—over the years to the Kingdom subjects than Wreylith had. Before the wild dragon had crossed paths with Syla, she probably hadn’t paid much attention to the Kingdom or humans at all.
“WeknowTeyla was here.” Syla opened an armoire to peek inside. “The maid wouldn’t have thrown those books out a window. Ah-hah.” Near the bed, Syla found kerchiefs that Vorik had noticed but not thought much of. “She might have been tied up with these, though I was imagining a guard standing outside her door, not that she was bound and gagged in her own room. Teyla?” she called again.
The room was smaller than the suite and didn’t take long to search. They didn’t find the cousin. And, as they looked around the rest of the manor, they didn’t find any of the staff either. Out a window, Vorik spotted a couple of people on the dock climbing into a canoe to paddle away. They looked like staff, not home invaders, and Vorik suspected that the lord’s murderer had come and gone hours earlier.
Since everyone had departed, Vorik liberated bread and cookies from the kitchen. Syla didn’t reprimand him, instead taking a cookie for herself before heading outside where she checked the stable. Wreylith remained in the area but hadn’t tried to eat any of the horses.
“It looks like a couple of the carriages are gone,” she murmured. “Maybe Teyla escaped after her father was killed and went… where? Into the city? She must have heard about the moon-marked people being rounded up and known she would be in danger there.”
“She was in dangerheretoo, wasn’t she?”
“I suppose so.” Syla looked up the winding drive that led to the highway. “Imay need to go to the city.”
“Your captain is there gathering intelligence for you, right? Maybe you should return to the glassworks and help your aunt.”
