Skylar’s heart lurches. “You can find Cam?”
“I can try. There’s a spell. I’d need something of his.”
Skylar twists the ring on her index finger, nods. Her heart is beating fast against her chest, a sickening mix of hope and guilt swelling in her stomach. Cam. Astrid is going to find him. If she’d told Astrid sooner…
“Let’s do it,” Skylar says, shoving that thought aside. “What do you need? Can we do it here? Now?”
“Afraid not. I need time to brew it. And the spell is better under moonslight.”
“?’Course it bloody is,” Skylar mutters. Then she straightens. “Okay, fine. Later it is. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can find any intel on the assassins. There must besomeoneI can beat the information out of around here.”
“And I’ll go to the library, see if I can find anything useful there.”
Skylar shakes her head. “You’re such a nerd.” Astrid nearly smiles at that.
“Can you get your hands on a map of Vatra?” Astrid asks. “As big as you can find?”
“I’m sure I can do that.”
“Good. Then meet me in my room tonight.”
“Let me guess. At midnight?”
Another huff of those almost laughs. “Sure, midnight works.”
“Okay.” They both turn, leaving the Covenant where it is. As Skylar puts her hand on the door handle, she glances at Astrid. “Little Witch?” She hesitates. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Astrid says firmly. “Thank me when we find him.”
42Astrid
The library is wasted on the Vatrans. No one’s ever in it. She was always in the library at the Moon Palace, mainly with her dad. It was where they both went to think as well as read, and that’s why she’s here now. She needs to think. Needs to scratch that itch inside her skull.
Fionn was surprisingly amenable to her breaking into the library and is keeping watch outside—more surprisingly, they promised not to tell her mother she’s here or that she’s been with the Custodian this afternoon. Pity will do that to people. Make them more biddable, more patient. She feels guilty for taking advantage of Fionn’s sympathy, but ultimately she doesn’t have the luxury of sparing people’s feelings, nor does she have the luxury of time. Too much has happened and there’s too much to do before the duel. Like finding out who killed Jessa.
The wording of the Covenant and the Blood Binding seems clear enough, but there’s a vagueness to the clause pertaining to the murder of one’s own heir. Personally, she struggles to believe that the Vatran king would risk breaching the magic, risk the Heart with how much they rely on it, by hiring an assassin from outside the court. But why would the king jeopardize his kingdom like that? And who else could it be? Not the republican rebels, not when the assassin confessed that whoever had hired him had returned to The Rok—was known to the guards here.
So who was it who killed Jessa? Because none of this makessense.
She rubs her chest to ease the dull ache that emerges whenever she thinks of Jessa. She just hopes she can help Skylar’s friend the way she couldn’t help hers. And, if she’s being honest, she’s agreed to cast the locator spell to help herself as well. If Cam is at the Heart, then the spellwon’t just find him—it’ll tell her the location of the very thing that could be the solution to Arturea’s problems. She’ll be able to give her mother the coordinates before she duels, knowing that if she doesn’t make it out of that cage, at least her queendom has a chance of surviving.
She pushes to her feet from where she’s been sitting cross-legged in front of the tapestry for the past half an hour, knees popping in protest. No matter how long she stares at it, she’s not discerning the truth that’s supposed to be hidden there. And Nyx’s mate mark is still flummoxing her. A golden semicircle? As symbols go, it’s pretty underwhelming. Why didn’t she ever talk to Jessa about this? Why did Astrid keep so much from her?
Astrid homes in on Artemia. She looks so like Bastet. The same blue-black fur, the same iridescent feathered wings. The only difference is her eyes—Artemia’s are a rich indigo. Her mother’s voice cuts through her thoughts.It means something. And looking at the tapestry, Astrid tries to puzzle it out. What does it mean? And why her? Why, in all the centuries, hasshebonded with a familiar of Artemia’s genus? Is it because Skylar is the Chosen Heir of the dragons? Is Astrid meant to stop that legend from becoming a reality?
She steps over the rope cordon and walks to the right-hand side of the tapestry, where the great canyon of Sarkan can be seen in the distance. The army of black-robed soldiers look like the Primes that roam the castle with the queen, putting the heebie-jeebies up everyone, only on the tapestry there are thousands of them rather than a few. The land they march on is bleached white, the same as the castle gardens when Skylar was pursuing that assassin.
She strains her neck to look at Aeloria and Cuatra far above her, but she can’t make out details; they’re too high up. She peers around, spotting a ladder leaning against one of the stacks. She heads over to it, casts “Lofte,” and levitates it off the railing, cringing at the racket it makes. She guides it over to the tapestry, resting it along the wall. Next, she takes a vial and pours a potion along the bottom of the tapestry, just to make sure there aren’t any wards. She shakes the ladder, ensuring it’s stable—not wholly so, but it’ll do—and then begins to climb. She stops when she reaches eye level with the golden queen. And frowns.
The queen’s arm, wreathed in swirling cloud and shards of lightning, is raised above her head, and now that Astrid’s closer, she realizes that Aeloria’s not looking at Nyx, certainly not aiming at him as Astrid originally thought—she’s focused on that dark army below them. And it hits her, why the land being leached of all color reminded her of what Skylar did. Because that army is a mass of Exhausters.
What. The. Hel. The Exhausters raised an army? But then why battle their own queen? Wouldn’t they have fought Nyx, Arturea? She looks at the queen again, studies her face. And sees it.
Queen Aeloria has a mate mark.
It’s partially obscured by her arm, but it’s there. Astrid leans in closer, squinting, tilting her head to try and make out what it is.
She jolts back in disbelief at what she’s seeing, losing her footing. She scrabbles for a rung, but the ladder is out of reach, and she’s falling, air whooshing past her. No scream comes out, she just braces for impact, when a pair of arms pulls her from midair, the person attached to them grunting as they catch her plummeting weight.
