The nest was empty.
I stood in the doorway and looked at the undisturbed furs—the space where she should have been—and the lightness that I’d had vanished.
“She’s not here.” Thane was already moving past me, into the bathing chamber adjacent. He checked it quickly and came out, shaking his head, panic etched on his face.
“Bedchamber,” I said, and he took the stairs two at a time while I stayed at the nest entrance and looked at the room. Nothing disturbed. Nothing overturned. The food we’d brought up was still on the low table, partially eaten. She hadn’t left in distress. Or she had, but not in a way that expressed itself physically. Could her father have found a way in to take her?
Thane appeared back in the doorway. “Empty.”
I was already at the staircase.
The candle on the first landing was doing something candles didn’t do. I stopped and looked at it. The flame bent at aconsistent angle, pointing downward, and I looked at the next one below it and found the same thing, and the one below that.
“Thane.” I didn’t need to say anything else. He was at my shoulder in seconds, following my gaze.
“All the way down?” he asked.
“All the way down.”
We went fast. Not running—the stairs were old and the footing uneven in places, and arriving at the bottom with a broken ankle would help no one. I counted the floors as we passed them. Library. Dining room. The bathing chamber we had discovered early on and used to clean the grime from our travels. And then to the entry hall where we’d slept. And there was where we found a door that we’d never seen before—we’d searched the space thoroughly. Or so I thought.
We hadn’t even crossed the space when we heard her.
Not words. Sobs—raw and exhausted and unguarded. Not dainty, simple, performed for effect. These were from the soul, deep inside, as if her heart was broken.
We exchanged glances and rushed into the small room. It was hardly more than an alcove with a low ceiling, a single shelf, and Aveline on the floor with her back against the shelf and her knees drawn up and her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with heaving sobs, and a stone disc dangled from her fingers. The room was cold and smelled musty and of old magic, like the air after lightning.
And underneath it, cutting through was a rich, deep scent of honey and silver blossom that made my attention snap into a different kind of focus. I noted it. Filed it for later.
Thane reached her first and dropped to his knees, and gathered her to him without hesitation, the way he always moved toward her. He always knew exactly what to do and what she needed, and Aveline curled into him with a low sob. Shemade a sound against his chest that cracked something behind my sternum.
I crouched in front of her.
“Aveline.” I kept my voice low. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
She shook her head against Thane’s shoulder. Not hurt. Something else.
“Talk to us,” Thane said into her hair. “Take your time.”
She pulled back enough to breathe properly. Her eyes were swollen, her face red and puffy, and she looked at me with so many emotions flashing through it—grief and relief and anger, I thought.
She opened her hand and showed me the disc.
“There was a memory spell.” Her voice was unsteady but gaining strength as she spoke. “I touched the rune, and the door opened. There was a shelf with a book and this, and when I picked it up—” She stopped. Swallowed. “My mother was here.”
Thane froze, his arms still around her.
“A projection. Or an old spell triggered by my touch. Something she left behind.” She pressed the disc against her sternum. “She built this tower. Not my father. She built it to keep me safe until the right people came through, and she built the wards to recognize—” Her voice broke briefly, and she held it together by apparent force of will. “She said it would let my true mates through. Only them. That was the design.”
I looked at the room around us: the shelf, the book, the carved runes on the door. Someone who knew what they were doing had built this, had built it with intention and love, had built it as a long-term promise to a child who wouldn’t be able to understand the terms of it for years.
“She knew what my father was planning,” Aveline continued. “The binding he was trying to build. She interfered. She died attempting to stop him from doing to me what he’s been doinganyway since.” The brightness underneath her grief sharpened. “And she told me.”
I waited.
Aveline looked at me directly. “She told me she stopped him. I don’t think I killed her. He did it. He killed her because she got in his way.”
The room was quiet.
