“Why do the wolves want to kill the queen?” Jett asks Fox. “Is it just because of their issue with the magic?”
Fox barely moves his mouth as he answers. “Because she’s the one we’re all bound to serve.”
“Because she’s the one who made the law that all the shifters must be in the army?” I clarify.
Fox nods. “Essentially.”
He still doesn’t look entirely comfortable, and I can tell there’s more to it, but he clearly doesn’t want to explain it. Whether it’s me he doesn’t want to know or Jett and Connell, I’m not sure.
“I suppose we could always let them all believe we’re going to help them kill her and then change our minds if it turns out she’s your mother, Aurelia.” Jett says, looking pensive. “I can’t think of anything better than that right now.”
“Nor can I,” I admit.
“So it’s a revolution?” Connell asks, sounding excited. “I fucking love revolutions. Off with all their heads, I say.”
Fox’s eye twitches with irritation and he glances back and forth between Connell and Jett with narrowed eyes. “Why the fuck did you bring him?”
Jett’s grin doesn’t falter but his eyes turn hard. “What else was I supposed to do with him?”
“Leave him in Vernallis.”
“There wasn’t anyone there to make sure he didn’t escape, and before you say I could have left him with the soldiers, believe me, I thought of that.”
“I love the soldiers,” Connell says, grinning wickedly. “You’ve done a bang up job training them. Usually I could escape fromguard custody in ten minutes, but it took nearly an hour to escape your guards. I enjoyed the challenge.”
Jett raises his eyebrows at Fox as if to say,See?“I’m the only one who he hasn’t managed to escape from, yet” he mutters.
“Yet, being the key word here, mate,” Connell grins. “I’ll manage it eventually. Or you could just let me go and save yourself the embarrassment.”
“I can’t let you go,” Jet grumbles.
“So you keep saying, but see, typically when one is given a jail sentence there’s a specific term on it. I believe that what you are doing, sir, is against martial law and is a violation of my personhood under the Laws of the Hague.”
“Under the what?” Jett asks, sounding distracted.
“For fuck’s sake, this damned country has no decorum,” Connell mutters, speaking to no one in particular. “You cannot hold a man indefinitely without cause, it’s inhumane.”
“Weareinhumane,” I point out. “In a very literal sense. We are not human.”
“Oh I can see that, darling. You’re clearly an angel,” Connell says, winking at me.
Fox growls low in his throat and his eyes flash dangerously, his upper lip curling back to reveal the sharp edge of a canine.
Connell grimaces. “Yikes. Down boy.”
We return to camp, where Kai has clearly worked hard to get everyone to calm down because, although we attract a lot of suspicious glares, no one actually says anything.
As we walk through the center of camp, a woman sharpening her blade pauses mid-stroke, knuckles whitening around the whetstone. Two men by the fire pit exchange meaningful looksbefore quickly returning to their work. Kai stands at the center of it all, arms crossed, giving small nods to each wolf who looks his way. When one young male rises with a snarl forming on his lips, Kai’s hand settles on his shoulder, squeezing until he sits back down.
“Friendly lot, aren’t they?” Connell mutters under his breath. “Any chance there’s something to eat around here? I’m starving.”
Fox and I glance at each other. Dinner should be starting soon, but perhaps it would be better to send Jett and Connell back to our tent to eat, so as not to provoke the wolves more than they already are. We won’t be here long anyway—I’d been planning to try for a quick nap after dinner, and then we’ll all be leaving to go to the palace. We don’t want to start a fight in the final few hours before we have to leave.
That question gets resolved quickly though, because Kai strides over to tell us that it would be best if we are all visible at dinner, so no one worries that we “outsiders” are up to anything.
Sure enough, at dinner the wolves’ eyes track Jett and Connell’s every movement. If I were still under that type of scrutiny I would try to keep my head down and eat as quickly as possible, but neither Jett nor Connell seems capable of keeping a low profile.
Jett leans toward Kai’s young sons, his voice dropping to a theatrical whisper. “So there I was, knee-deep in a Hydrattan swamp, when I heard this horrible slithering sound.”
