I smile but shake my head. “I was paralyzed. I stayed under the supervision of a healer until I could move again this morning.”
Mostly true.
Adria exchanges a look with Larus, something from an earlier conversation of theirs that I can’t interpret. I find myself wishing I could feel them just as I can feel Ronan when I’m near him.
“Do you think…is there a chance he’d ask you to stay longer? After the festival is over?”
“Why?” Has Larus come through for me? Is something wrong with the plan?
She smiles weakly, her annoyance underneath apparent. “Our brother is giving me grief. I gave him one task—”
“Adria,” Larus warns as her voice rises.
She composes herself. “We may need a bit longer than we imagined. The festival ends in ten days, and we aren’t ready. And not only Seth, but the ships aren’t willing to risk the storm—”
“There’s a storm coming?” There hasn’t been a drop of rain since we left Nithyria.
“It’s far from here, out on the southern reaches of the Blue Sea,” says Larus. “Some of the ships coming in warned my mother, and she won’t send her ships out of harbor until it passes. I doubt it will even come here, but there’s no arguing with her once she’s made up her mind.”
I could hug him. Larus did it. I don’t know how, but he’s managed to delay the plan at least. It’s not the end of it, but it gives me enough time to think of something to make Adria change her mind.
But I need to suppress my joy if I want to keep Ronan alive. “So you’re saying I need to…keep doing what I’m doing?” I feign disgust. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep him from…” I shudder. I hope it’s convincing.
“You can do it,” says Adria. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of. Now that you have him, push him away again. He’ll come back.”
Larus nods in agreement. “She’s right. I don’t think there’s much you can do now to dissuade him if what you said happened last night is true. He killed for you, Sylvie.”
He had. I hadn’t truly thought about what that must have cost him.
“It won’t be much longer,” promises Larus. Adria looks at him skeptically, but she doesn’t argue with him. “Tell him you need to spend some time with us, if you need an excuse to get away. We’ve missed you.”
Adria does her best “I’ve missed you” face, which is closer to “If you fuck this up for me, I’ll murder you in your sleep,” but that’s about what I expected.
I do end up spending the day with them. Having been entertained nearly to death by the previous weeks of the Festival of Arts, we go for a walk along the River Mara instead, following a paved path down to the sea.
“Just…there,” says Larus, pointing to the southeast. “If you keep going, you’ll reach Port Limin.”
Adria looks out over the waves as if willing the storm away. Her eyes are filled with determination, even with this setback. I can’t imagine how to convince her to change her course.
What would I do to stop her? How far would I go for the sake of Ronan? For the sake of Selara and Nithyria both?
How far would I go for the greater good?
Wherever my limits lie, I suspect I’ll find out soon enough.
One way or another.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The next day, I run into Quinn as she’s leaving the dungeons. Her hair is matted to her head, and she looks as though she hasn’t slept in a couple of days.
“They’re lucky,” she says, thumbing over her shoulder towards the stairs to the incarcerated alchemists, the same stairs she carried me up after I’d been wrongfully imprisoned. “The guards that took care of you were put in a cell themselves for a couple of weeks, and then they were given a chance to improve the conditions down there. They must have been pretty motivated because it’s as clean as I’ve ever seen it.”
“Are they talking?” I ask her.
“Endlessly,” she says with a smile. “I wouldn’t have been pulled in—not really my area; I’m more of a court jester than anything official—but so many of them were involved, they really had no choice. It’s a mess. The Alchemists’ Guild, foreign merchants. Even some of the nobility. You helped him uncover the biggest fucking scheme to take control of the crown in the history of Selara.”
Well, one of the biggest schemes. I’m still working on taking down the other one. I’ll be forever grateful to Larus for whateverhe did to delay things. The Alchemists’ Guild crisis would have made for the perfect opportunity to strike amid the chaos.
