The rain hammered down. Heavy, cold and saturating my clothes. Three headed snake. Was she referring to Paul, O’Reilly and their unknown accomplice? Or the king, the rogue hunters and something else? “Can you not speak in riddles? What do you mean when you say the three headed snake?”
“Water has no words, Daughter of Mab. I can only try to translate what it says with images.”
“I know my brother is involved,” I said. We also knew O’Reilly was in on the conspiracy. “Do you know who the others are?”
Ace wrapped his hand on my arm. “Mouse.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance and the sky darkened. The rain pelted down harder.
Avani shook her head. “I cannot see everything, but I can see enough to know you are very much in danger.” She turned to Ace, her gaze dropped to where he held me. “And I see enough to hate you a little less now.”
Ace tensed.
“You were never mine.” Avani tilted her head as she continued to study him. “You told me that since day one, but I thought you’d change like the tide or the colour of the sea after a storm. I see now how I was wrong.” She glanced at me. “You are the daughter of Mab and the rightful heir to the Phaanon throne. We may have played neutral in the last war, but we didn’t in our hearts. Water always remembers, and we remember the promise we made your mother. You may not be able to trust many around you, but you’ll find no enemy with me or the other naiads. Call on us if you’re in need of help.”
Ace tugged at my arm. I mumbled a thank you, but Avani had already dived beneath the surface.
23
“Where are we going?” I pulled free of Ace’s grip. “Your warm bed is that way.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of Perga.
Ace reached out for my hand and twined his fingers with mine. “Something Sley said.”
“Sley? What made you think of her?”
“Well, not so much what she said as something she had. That tapestry.” He pulled me forward. “We need to go to Vitor.”
“Vitor?” Gales, I sounded like a halfwit.
“That flirty loverboy from your brother’s army knew about Phaantasia. He said he was from Vitor, didn’t he?”
“He said they hadn’t destroyed everything about Phaantasia like Wast.”
Ace nodded. “I don’t think that tapestry showed a random fae woman. I think that’s Queen Mab. We need to go to Vitor.”
“Tonight?”
His lips quirked up in the corners. “There’s a hunting lodge ahead. We’ll stop there and then cut through the forest. We can be there in a few days.”
I knew very well where the hunting lodge was. I patrolled these woods. It wasn’t really a hunting lodge. It was more of an emergency shelter if caught out in the elements and it was too late, or the weather was too severe to make it to Perga or Wast.
Vitor usually took a week to travel to by road, but Ace was right. If we cut through the forest, we could halve the time. It was still a long time to be away from Nala.
I remained still on the path and let the wind whip around me as the rain pelted my skin. Ace turned fully toward me and sighed.
“If I promise I can make the bed warm, will you stop fighting me on this?” Ace arched a dark eyebrow.
My body instantly heated with the promise in his words. “Gales.”
He chuckled and pulled me along the path. But, in all honesty, there was little pulling now. He’d already convinced me to go along with the plan. “What about Nala?”
“She’s with a healer and she’s too sick to come with us. Maybe she’ll be better by the time we return. Maybe we’ll learn something about familiars that can help her.”
The rain was really coming down now, plastering my hair to my face. I had slid the map from O’Reily’s cabin back in my pocket before we left. Hopefully, the leather would protect it long enough to make it to the shelter.
My mind drifted back to the tapestry in Sley’s cabin. I’d stared at it countless of times, often with a glass of wine in my hand. I always felt drawn to it, but the tapestry didn’t have any words on it. No secrets inscribed along the cloth. “What was it about the tapestry that made you think about Queen Mab?”
“It was the way the artist depicted the woman,” Ace said. “Something about her expression like she knew something King Oberon didn’t. Now we know that thing was you and your brother.”
