It hadn’t been a very inventive pseudonym, but I needed to use something to indicate the truth without being too obvious. When I broke the seal, the page revealed more of the same scrawling script, and I scanned the words, taking in King Siro’s demands.
“Well?” Eleanor asked from the lounge, and I met her hazel gaze. “What did he say?”
“He’s willing to work with us, but he has a condition.” I stalked to the fireplace and threw the letter into the flames, watching it burn to ash and destroy any evidence of the treason I was about to commit.
“Not surprising, he would be stupid not to. What does he want?” Eleanor asked, folding her arms across her chest.
“We have to stop Terym’s sentient army.”
Her mouth dropped open, eyes wide with shock. Shade pursed his lips, brow furrowing slightly, while Wista twisted her hands in her skirts. All of them looked at me.
“How does he even know you can do that?” Eleanor asked.
“It could be a test,” Shade rumbled, making a good point. According to what I’d just seen, Siro did indeed have a number of spies within the castle. If there were others who had escaped Pierce’s notice, they could be feeding Siro information, and he was using it to test us.
“Can you do it?” Eleanor’s brows furrowed, and she eyed me with concern.
“Maybe?” I rubbed my palms down my pants. “I could write a letter, but the instructions would need to be clear. If one of Terym’s men read it out, well, they wouldn’t read it aloud and the king would find out. Unless I go there myself, I don’t know how to stop them.”
“What if someone else read the letter? Someone we could trust?” Wista asked, a hint of excitement in her tone.
“Well, sure. But who could we trust with this?”
“Fallon. He’s headed to Yinora tomorrow, they need more cooks since Terym is sending more of his men there.” Her words raised more concerns than just her trust in Fallon, like why his forces were converging in Yinora if he already had the sentient army. It was the largest trade route between our kingdoms, therefore the most heavily guarded on both sides.
“He can be trusted?” I asked Wista. I would trust her judgment. I had no other choice but to if we wanted to get out. When she nodded, I accepted it, her loyalty to me was clear from the moment we met, even before we knew each other properly.
I quickly wrote a letter instructing the army since Fallon was due to leave early in the morning. I also added instructions to not listen to any of my future letters unless a certain phrase was spoken first. A meaningless quote from an old fairytale no one would understand, then signed the letter with my own name. An unavoidable risk since the army wouldn’t follow the commands otherwise. If the worst happened and Fallon was caught—I couldn’t think about it, I just prayed to all four Gods it would work.
Days turned into weeks, and we continued in a strange routine, waiting to hear from King Siro and to travel to Ferveem Forest. Despite the king’s best efforts to keep us separated, Eleanor had already enlisted Harkin’s help to see each other. It seemed she was right to trust him after all.
Since my meal and little trip to the dungeons, Terym had forbade me to leave the castle walls, so we’d begun to walk through the many galleries within the castle. All manner of paintings and tapestries covered the walls of the large room, the pale-yellow paint fading away as you studied the exquisite details of the artwork.
Harkin had left us alone this morning, helping Eleanor to meet me here then begging off to complete some task for the king. Thankfully, Pierce and Nathanial waited just outside the door, giving us some privacy.
“Are you being careful around Pierce?” I asked, standing in front of my favorite painting, the landscape eerily similar to the field of everlasting flowers I’d destroyed.
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “Yes, you’ve already told me this. I still don’t believe it, there’s no way Pierce could be bad.”
It was hard for me to believe too, but he had been with me in that room of horrors.
“And Harkin? You’re being careful with him too?”
She blushed then, tucking a stray curl behind her ear.
“I understand what it is to have male attention, Eleanor. It can be exciting, especially the first time, but you need to protect yourself, we are surrounded by enemies here.”
She waved away my concern, moving to the next painting.
“Like you and Shade?”
I scowled at her change of subject; trust Eleanor to direct the attention back to me when she wanted to avoid something. “He’s not the first.”
“How can I forget that simp Ergo. Why you even entertained him to begin with I’ll never know.”
My mouth dropped open. She’d never told me of her dislike for Ergo before. “He was kind.”
Eleanor raised a brow. “Yeah, until he wasn’t.”
