He unfolded his arms and turned away from me, moving a few paces down the corridor before turning back. The motion was controlled, but I knew him well enough to read what was underneath it. When Malric needed to move, things had gotten under his skin.
“You’re letting her scent cloud your judgment,” he said.
“You’ve said that.”
“Because it continues to apply.”
“Malric.” I kept my voice low, not because I was managing my temper. I was handling it, but that wasn’t the point. “You cornered her in her own chamber and told her we were going to kill her father. In those words. In that order.”
“I told her the truth.”
“You threw the truth at her like a blade and watched to see where it landed.” I stepped closer. “She’s been in this tower her entire life. Her father has been the only person she’s spoken to in years. Every piece of information she has about herself came from him, and none of it is accurate, and you expected her to receive all of that in one conversation and immediately become a useful asset.”
Malric’s eyes were sharp in the low light. “I expected her to be honest.”
“She was honest, as honest as she could be under the circumstances,” I said. “She told us to leave. She told us we’d get hurt. She told us she hurt someone and believed every word of it.” I paused. “That’s not a liar. That’s a woman who has been conditioned so thoroughly she can’t distinguish between truth or lies. And we may never know the truth. Only her father knows reality.”
Something moved behind his eyes. Not agreement—not yet. But the quality of his attention shifted, became less pointed, which from Malric was as close to concession as I was likely to get in a corridor at whatever hour this was.
“The tower,” he said, after a moment.
“Tell me what you found.”
He was quiet for a beat, and I recognized this version of him too—the one that had been turning information over while I sat with Aveline, building a model of the place and testing it against what he knew.
“No guards,” he said. “No hidden rooms. No ritual chamber. The binding work is in the stones themselves, not maintained by any fae or human—it runs on its own, fed by something internal.” He paused. “No exit.”
I looked at him.
“The wall gave way for us when I pressed it,” he continued. “It doesn’t give way now. I tested the entry chamber, the outer ring, every point where the stone might yield. Nothing.” He said the word with a flatness that told me he had tested it more than once and found it equally impassable each time. “The tower opens when she allows it. Or when it decides to. The distinction may not be meaningful.”
“She said she’s tried to leave,” I said.
“I know.”
“She’s been here since she was a child.”
“I know that, too.” He leaned his shoulder against the wall, but he was tense, the movement not as casual as he made it look. “There are wards in the tower, suppression wards to keep her omega side, to keep her from awakening. I can sense them, but I can’t do anything about them.” Frustration laced his voice. “She’s been held in a suppressed pre-heat state for over a century.”
The realization of her situation settled over me.
“He kept her from ever awakening.”
“Because a fully awakened omega,” Malric said, “would have required an alpha, or alphas, to bond with, to mate. If she is the last Unseelie omega, she is worth a great deal. Even more if you consider she is the king’s only heir.” He looked at the closed door. “He needed her compliant. Isolated. Convinced of her own danger. All three of those requirements served the same function.”
The cold of it moved through me.
“I don’t remember the king having a mate or an heir. Has he hidden her all these years?”
Malric grew thoughtful. “The king is far older than you or I. Over two centuries in age. My mother told me the king had an omega early in his reign and she had a daughter. When she died, it was assumed the daughter died with her. There were rumors that the daughter killed the mother.”
I glanced at the almost-closed door. “Could she be Aveline? She doesn’t look old enough to be that old.”
“The king could have maintained her age, lengthened her life through unnatural means like he did himself. But to what end? He has never allowed her to bond with an alpha. He has never brought her to court or groomed her for the throne,” he mused, thinking aloud. “What is her role?”
I started at the door, the questions tumbling through my brain.
“She’s starting to wake up,” I said.
