I consider the truth of that. “Which fae brought the message?”
Tamra clasps her hands together, and I don’t miss the way her knuckles turn white. “It was Dusana. She followed us all the way here. There were others with her, but they turned back once they had Gallium.”
Dusana is the fae warrior who was publicly beaten and cast out for attacking me.
“Karasi sent a message within a message,” I murmur. “Dusana is the lowest of the low in fae society. Karasi means to tell me she will bring me low, too.”
My grip on my hammer only tightens, but when I look at Tamra, she’s studying me with a grave expression.
“The choices you make will determine all of our fates, Asha,” she says. “You, alone, have the power to end all of this. Whether or not that end involves our deaths will be entirely up to you.”
My eyes widen. She speaks with such gravity that my heartbeats become heavy, and my hammer feels like a weight in my hands.
“No matter what Karasi wants you to do, no matter what decisions await you, for you to choose your path wisely, you need answers. When you’re ready to step outside, the answers are waiting. Then the choices you make will be up to you.”
My blood is thumping in my ears by the time she slips through the door and out into the sunlight. It’s such a sudden influx of light through the door, especially after the night on the mountain and then the morning under the crimson sky, that my eyes have trouble adjusting.
A glowing line remains in my vision even as the door closes behind her. The golden light only serves to remind me of Graviter Rex’s scales. His fire raging toward us. The sight of Erik leaping onto his back, forcing Graviter off course.
I press the heel of my palm to my chest.
I’m afraid for Erik. As strong and determined as he is, he attacked the dragon king in full view of other dragons and their riders. Graviter Rex had clearly lost his mind to rage, and the other dragons will see Erik as an enemy.
Fuck answers. I need to get back to him!
It takes a mental clamp around my heart to stop myself from rushing to the door and trying to leave this place immediately. It’s only because of the way my sister spoke that I pause.
The fact that she talked of our deaths and laid them squarely at my feet…
I struggle to breathe out my fears, telling myself that Erik is the Vandawolf. He survived Malak. He will survive the dragons.
Reaching the table, I first check the contents of my toolbox, refraining from touching anything but verifying that nothing has been removed. Malak’s tools are still in there.
Next, I reach for the water flask on the table and drink my fill, and then I head cautiously to the bathroom, finding it as simply laid out as the main room.
When I emerge, I’m dressed in a clean tunic and pants, much better-fitting than I expected.
I pause at the wall of metal objects. If I had to guess, I’d say they were set out according to when they’d been made. The ones on the bottom shelf are rudimentary, simple cones and cubes, but still beautifully made.
The ones on the higher shelves are fantastically intricate. One of them looks to be some kind of timekeeper with moving parts that make a soft, clicking noise. Then there’s a figurine of a stag, every piece of its body made of tiny cogs that I suspect might move if I were to bump them.
And finally, there’s the cloaked figurine without a face.
“That’s you.” The soft rumble sounds from the doorway a second before light spills into the room.
Thaden’s form is so tall and his chest so broad that he must have blocked out most of the sunlight, and the glow from my hammer will have done the rest to conceal his presence before now.
He continues. “I didn’t know what you look like, so I left the face blank.”
My hand was raised toward the figurine, and now I lower it, turning to him. “Why me?”
“Because you’re the linchpin of my life, Asha Silverspun. Without you, it all falls apart.”
I’m not sure what to make of his statement or the seriousness of his tone, the same solemnity with which Tamra spoke.
All I can do is consider him with increasing wariness.
He’s dressed in a short-sleeved tunic but pants of a heavier material, along with leather boots. There’s a smudge of ash across his left cheek and several smears on his left forearm. He smells like a forge, but a regular one, the kind the human metalworkers used. There is no honeyed scent clinging to the air around him.
