I woke late in the afternoon. My head still hurt, but it was nothing like the night before. The healer seemed to have done a good job, for which I was grateful. Clive was sleeping beside me, his arm still wrapped around my waist.
Dropping a kiss on his nose, I said, “I have to get up now.”
He pulled me in tighter and mumbled, “No.”
“Unless you want me to wet the bed, you really need to let me move.” I pushed his arm and he relented.
I took a long moment to process my face, the huge black bruising over half of it, my left eye swollen shut. When Cadmael spiked my head into the tile floor, it must have been tilted so I went left-side down. That probably saved me from a broken nose to go with my cracked skull.
I’d trained myself not to look in mirrors for years. I could do it again. Finishing getting ready, I tied my hair up in a braid and considered what I could do before sunset.
I looked in the mirror, tapped into my necromancy, and said, “Léna? I know you can’t understand me, but I want to do what I can to help before we leave. Is there something more you need from me?”
I waited a moment, staring into the mirror and seeing only myself—which was not a pretty sight.
“Okay,” I said, giving up. I flicked off the light and then saw something appear in the mirror. Stepping closer, I tried to make it out and recognized the fireplace in the prince’s study.
Léna’s face floated beside the fireplace and she waved me toward her, asking me to go to the prince’s room again. My heart sank. Oh, no. Not that. I glanced over my shoulder at Clive in bed before closing the bathroom door and whispering, “I barely survived last time.”
Léna waved me to her more urgently and then she and the fireplace disappeared.
Shit. Now what was I going to do? The fae axe seemed to have broken the tie to Cadmael, so I didn’t have him to worry about. Hopefully. Vlad—wait. Vlad was up. He could go with me to help if stuff got out of control again.
Feeling better about it, I gave Clive a kiss on the cheek, left the room, and went down the halls to the basement door. Shoot. I didn’t have the ring to trip the door. Well, hell. I knocked instead.
“Vlad?” I called, and then added, “Can you come out and play?”
“Depends,” he said, directly behind me, making me jump, “and shouldn’t you be in bed?”
Twenty-Nine
The Prince’s Secret Punishments
I spun and found Vlad smirking. “Sure. Cool. Go ahead and give me a heart attack.”
He gestured to my face. “I thought the healer took care of that.”
Shrugging, I said, “I’m assuming it was worse. I wasn’t awake for it. Clive said the guy knitted my skull back together. My ribs don’t hurt, so he must have worked on them too.”
“Fragile, aren’t you?” he said.
“Dude, are you going to come with me or not?” I was really hoping yes. I didn’t want to go back alone.
“Where to this time?” he asked, brushing his fingers over his mustache.
“This way.” I waved him with me and headed to reception and the hidden door. “Léna still needs something from me.”
“Yes,” he said, walking beside me. “She came to me too. Not as strongly as before, though.” When we got to reception, he paused at the door of the gathering room, gesturing in. “She showed me the fireplace.”
I looked in and saw my axe embedded right between the prince’s eyes. Dang. Was I going to have to leave that there? I didn’t want to lose my axe.
“Not that one,” I said. “We’re going to the prince’s study upstairs.”
Vlad grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Isn’t that where all of this happened?” He gestured to my face.
“Technically, no. He caught me in the hall and slammed my head onto the floor there, not in his room.” I stopped right inside the hall to the Guild offices and looked at the walls. “Cadmael popped open one of these walls to reveal the stairway up.”
“Oh, that’s here.” Vlad tapped a panel on the left and the panel opened.
