“Who’s Foley?”
“The headmaster. You haven’t met him?”
“I don’t think so. Mick took me from the cell. He’s the only tutor who has given me their name.”
“You were being held in a cell?” No wonder I couldn’t find her. I never went down to the dungeons.
She nods. “I’m not sure how long I was there, but it felt like it was a few days at least.”
“Eleven,” I divulge, not sure if it’s one hundred percent accurate, but it has to be pretty damn close.
“How do you know?” She leans back a little.
“I heard we had a new arrival on the same day Taggert went missing, but nothing else. Eventually, I started looking.”
“Why?”
“I thought it was just to satisfy my curiosity, since you don’t stay on top of the pack by allowing shit to happen around you, but now I realize there was more driving me to look for you than I understood at the time.”
“You were looking for me?” Her voice is soft and hopeful.
“I was.” It’s the truth, and she needs to hear it.
She doesn’t say anything, but her features soften. “Eleven days… That’s a long time, but it still felt longer.”
“It is a long time.” I don’t tell her I didn’t start looking for her right away. Her knowing all the details isn’t nearly as important as her knowing someone was out here searching for her. “What happened while you were there?” This is a question I don’t want to ask but I must. I need to know if I need to kill anyone.
“Nothing. Someone would push a tray into the room every once in a while, but I didn’t see them or anything. The onlyperson I saw was Mick when he told me the Ivy had accepted the trade and released me.”
“So it was a trade.” I suspected as much, but before now, I didn’t have any proof.
“Do they do them often?”
“Never before that I’m aware of. It doesn’t really make a ton of sense. Sure, there are things you can learn from the emissary, but could you ever trust them? Taggert was in the top ten of the elites. He knows things about all of us, maybe even some weaknesses, but they gave you up.” I search her face, wanting to trace her lips with my fingertips. Even if she wasn’t my everything, she is still far more valuable than Taggert.
“Sorry you guys got the shitty end of the deal.”
I shake my head. “We didn’t, which is why I can’t understand why they would let you go.”
“You might not think that later,” she warns.
“I will always think that. I might not have found you until the Undertaking if you hadn’t been sent here, and every day I’m with you, I will be grateful. However, I need to understand why they would give you up. Were you sent here as a spy?”
“No,” she replies quickly. “Not only would I be the worst spy ever, since I constantly get lost, but I think they would have trained me for it or at least told me what to look for.”
There isn’t a hint of deception in her words, no increase of her heartbeat or anxiety. She could have trained to hide some of those reactions, but not all. Besides, there would be no reason for her to lie to me. If she needed to learn every detail about Frostburn and report back to ensure her safety, I would give her every piece of information I had and find the rest. “Any other ideas?” I ask.
Her shoulders lift when she inhales deeply. “I really think she just finally understood I wasn’t going to be what she hoped.There was a lot of effort put into training me. It used up a ton of their strongest resources.”
“How? What kind of resources?”
“An instructor. He spent all his time training me physically, not working with any of the other novices. He was trying to make me stronger so I could survive the Undertaking. Plus, someone tried to kill me, and that was after I was framed for murder. I was more trouble than I was worth.”
That could never be the case, but she certainly seems to believe it. What I’m curious about is this instructor who seemed so invested in her. “Who was he? I thought Syrinx was a female.” She wouldn’t even need to respond for me to know the answer. The way her eyes drop tells me enough, but she answers, confirming my thoughts.
“Him.”
Her mate. “He was an instructor?” I know these are hard questions for her, but I need to know.
