“What happens then?”
“We declare that Sai has protected the beast, which means it will live out its life and never be hunted again. And then we feast on pheasant or something and pretend it never happened.”
Ronan takes the entire endeavor with about as much irreverence as I had expected from him, at least when he’s speaking with me. He’s much more effusive to the rest of the court, giving a stirring speech about Sai’s champions and their noble cause in slaying the foul beast. From that, I glean that thecreature is part eagle, partlion. I see now what he means about turning up empty handed. King of the beasts and king of the birds in one.
Ronan is pulled away to talk to some courtier or another, with his guards trailing behind, and he calls over his aunt to join him, leaving me alone with Lucas.
Lucas is around my age, maybe a few years older, with narrow blue eyes that are a bit too close together. He’s lean and of average height, although he holds himself up higher, his jaw jutting upwards as he speaks. “You have them all fooled,” he says.
I startle when I realize he’s speaking to me. “Come again?”
“The king. His aunt. All of them. But I was there that night in the arena. You missed.”
He says it with a high degree of confidence. I know I should walk away from him and tell Ronan what he said immediately, but I would like to know why he was hanging around Ronan’s chambers, so I keep talking.
“If you believe that’s the case, why tell me?”
“So that you know that I’m watching you. So that you know that if you try again, I’ll be there.”
Well, I guess that’s good news for Ronan. It seems unlikely that Lucas is trying to act against him, unless he’s telling me this now to throw me off his trail.
Which isn’t a bad strategy, come to think of it.
This isexhausting. When I was thinking last night of how I wanted a life with Ronan, I wasn’t thinking about this. Never knowing who your friends are. Having enemies lurking around every corner. Treating every interaction with suspicion, always looking for some secondary meaning in the things people say.
It's terrible.
I decide to leave it to Taran to keep an eye on Lucas. I can’t deal with him today.
Most of the hunting parties head off in the northwest direction the scouts indicated, but Ronan doesn’t want to go that way. I wonder if he picked up on a feeling from one of the scouts, or if he has another reason for avoiding the rest of the court.
We head over a ridge to the north and down a rocky path into a canyon. A narrow blue stream runs along the smooth stones at its bottom, meandering around bends out to meet the ocean. There are signs of griffin activity here: discarded fish bones, desiccated piles of droppings. Abandoned nests as big as our chariot.
Ronan examines these, trying to see if any are fresh. We march up and down the stream for nearly an hour with no sign of anything.
“We should head back to the hills,” says Lucas, shifting the quiver on his back. “There’s nothing out here.”
“You can go,” says Ronan. “Rhodes, go with him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m with him,” says Nona. “I think we all ought to go.”
Ronan shakes his head at his aunt. “Not yet. But we’ll meet you soon. Go ahead.”
“Suit yourselves,” she says with a curtsy and a meaningful glance at me.
Taran backs away a little as the others leave to give us some space.
“I thought they’d never leave,” Ronan says once they’re well out of earshot on the path out of the canyon.
“Did you bring us here on purpose so that they’d get bored and leave us alone?”
He winks.
I glance back at Taran. He’s looking at a pebble near his foot as if it’s very interesting, only glancing up on occasion to make sure Ronan is still safe. Poor man. I don’t want to makehim uncomfortable, but I’m not certain I can keep my hands off Ronan for long now that we’re almost alone together.
I’m getting ready to reach for him when I hear the clatter of a small rock falling into the canyon.
