Of course the Shadow Queen would have a wraith out here to prevent a bunch of old Wardens from getting the valuables she wanted. What didn’t make sense was why such a powerful spirit seemed to be trying to kill them when they were technically on the same team for now—unless Kage and Her Dreadful Majesty had set him up to fail from the start, knowing this thing would be the death of him. Maybe this was their sick way of entertaining themselves.
Another betrayal. Now itwasmaking a certain sense. There was always betrayal, as sure and constant as the sunrise.
But then he thought again of the wraith’s hollow eyes. Pits like voids, no glowing green light like what always shone from the gaze of any spirit under the queen’s command. Which meant this wraith had broken free of her enchantment. It was—like Wynnie and Vic, like him and Alys and Griff—on its own side now. Capable of acting on its own whims, which currently seemed to include trying to kill them.
No wonder there weren’t any green-eyed ghosts at the borders of their camp, silently counting down the days that were rapidly slipping through his fingers. They were probably just as afraid of the rogue wraith as he was, making themselves scarce while it was around so that they didn’t end up injured by the more powerful spirit that was now in business for itself.
It seemed the Shadow Queen was the one who had been betrayed this time.
Before he could voice any of this out loud, Alys said suddenly within the bounds of his awareness, “I dreamed about Papa last night.” Her voice was heavy as she met his searching gaze. “His last moments.” Her eyes shifted to roam over Griff’s face as she spoke, following the curve of his cheek, the angle of his jaw. “I was going to tell you sooner, but—I wanted to tell you together, if I could. You look so much like your father sometimes, Griff. Like Uncle Seimon,” she continued softly. “Not just like him of course, but—like a Warden. The way you carry yourself. The wraith must see it too. Maybe that makes it angry.”
“Speak up,” Griff urged her, signing for Mal’s benefit all the while. “Louder, for Mal.”
“It was like when I dreamed about what happened to you in the Wood, Griff,” Alys continued, louder. “It felt that real; I felt a burning—here.” She touched a shaking hand to her throat, sliding her flattened palm down to the center of her chest. “Thewraith must have drowned him. It tricked him. While his friends were sleeping, it made him see … me. Or what he thought was me, slipping into the lake, and he dove in after me and never came up. When he realized what was happening, an invisible hand held him down, and …” She shook her head, pausing to steady herself. “You both know how he was. It was probably easy to confuse him, since he didn’t know real from his daydreams most of the time. But … that’s not going to happen to us, is it? That’s not what we signed up for.”
Now she turned her gaze back to Mal, her eyes fully present and damp.
“Nope. No way,” Mal said hotly. He filled them both in on what he had just realized about the wraith and its allegiance—or lack thereof—though only Alys would truly understand the significance. Then he raised his voice over the eerie singing, making sure every spirit and raven hiding out in the dusk could damn well hear him. “That wraith can try all it likes to get rid of us, but we have the spirit blade and we aren’t afraid to use it, so we’re going to succeed no matter what anyone else wants. We’re going to show everyone what we’re capable of, even if they’re all fucking betting against us. We’ll grab the treasure at dawn, and then we’re out of here.”
“Of course. You’re right,” Alys said, forever on his side.
But she and Griff both looked so worried that Mal had guilt burning his throat instead of whiskey as he tried to lighten the mood, to ease some of the lines from their troubled faces as he glanced at the cookpot near his bedroll. “What’s with the turtle, by the way? Does turtle soup have some curative properties I don’t know about?”
It was Alys who answered. “It’s not for eating. You kept asking for it.”
Mal pulled the pot a little closer, treating the creature with a fair amount of gentleness as he picked up it up by the shell withboth hands to greet it eye to eye. “I don’t know what that was about,” he admitted, unable to remember much of the past few days. “But there was a turtle … a puppet … back in Thrallkeld that my friend Ella liked. Guess it was some weird dream.”
“I named it Muffin,” Alys said, sounding calmer. “An early birthday present, I suppose.”
“What was that?” Mal asked, frustration with his hearing flaring anew as he scowled at the empty cookpot.
“Muffin,” Alys shouted. “The turtle—is named—Muffin!” Apparently getting frustrated herself, she added, “You’re going to need an ear horn!”
“I won’t. I’m fine,” Mal said in his usual dismissive way. But then he tried for teasing, hoping to reach some easier place between them tonight after how hard the past few days must have been for her. “You sure you don’t want to name this thing Leo the Second? Looks a bit like him when you stare at it dead on.”
Alys laughed, however reluctantly. Mal couldn’t hear it, but he saw her smile and the slight shake of her shoulders.
Encouraged, he tried again with Griff, wrapping an arm around the other man’s waist. “So, Mister Healer … going to look at these stitches for me after I eat?”
“I thought it was Mister Foreman,” Griff murmured, the words decipherable only because he kept on using sign language. And though his upset still showed plainly on his face, he added, “I made something for you, by the way. While you were out of it.”
He leaned away from Mal for a moment, grabbing something lying just a few feet away—Alys’s sketch pad. He hesitated, then pulled off a scrap of paper and handed it to Mal, who recognized the words and markings right away as Griff’s work. He studied it closely.
It was a blueprint. For a house.
Fit for a king.
“It would be a lot of work,” Griff said as Mal held the paper to the firelight.
It was more than anyone had ever given him, and it hadn’t cost a thing.
“I’m sure it’s a long way off,” Griff continued, the nerves evident in his voice, “but … I thought we could add to it, change it together when we have ideas. We’ve got plenty of time. Plenty of room to dream—if we’re stillalive.” His eyes glistened as he added, “I could be back in Linden right now with Liam, planning a wedding.Hewouldn’t ask me to risk life and limb for some gold when we make plenty of money working our boring straight jobs.”
Mal pulled himself from Griff’s embrace, stung by the mention of Liam and weddings. Griff had been engaged to the locksmith and not bothered to breathe a word about it. Typical. Betrayal. Had he been thinking of going home on his own while Mal was out cold? It seemed just like the sort of thing Mayfair’s Most Eligible would do, having a second option in his back pocket. Not fully choosing Mal, even now.
“The point isn’t to get rich anyway,” Griff went on, signing the words and then flexing his now-empty fingers as if they already missed Mal’s warmth. “The point is to come home to each other. I don’t give a damn about the money. That’s why I’ve been training as a Warden—to make the world a little better and safer. To protect our future.” He sighed. “Or at least I was until the stabbing forced me to take a step back. And look, I know you’re not their biggest fan, but you’d be safer doing your, uh,odd jobsif I could throw the heat off you and keep the Wardens’ focus on the things that really matter, like making sure Wills doesn’t stab anyone else in the Wood.”
Mal didn’t voice any of the questions about Liam now running through his mind. Refused to have that name on his lips. Couldn’t bear to know.
