The wards hummed faintly beneath everything, aware rather than failing, and the corridor around them had already found its new arrangement without asking anyone’s permission.
“Mother, what is your special phrase?” she asked. “For Yorali humans. The way you make them obey. I’ve been practicing mine.”
Nox looks at her. “Be careful.”
Aviaryn pauses. Then a small, pleased smile forms. “King Axar will want to know if you found what he was looking for,” she adds.
Nox smiles. “More than he asked for.”
“I see.”
Nox turned. “Come.”
Aviaryn fell into step beside her without hesitation, her presence aligning with Nox’s as though the question of where she belonged had never been a question at all, and together they moved deeper into Morrath while the dark closed quietly behind them. Flag sank back through the floor without a sound, his chains the last thing to disappear.
CHAPTER 82
The Decision
We both stand there, letting the silence stretch between us.
“We do not know if that is all that is there,” I push back. “We do not know how it functions, what else exists within it?—”
“And you think he is going to show you?” Colsar cuts in. “You think it is safe to go anywhere alone with him?”
He laughs bitterly. “I bet he fed you half-truths about how you could enter Morrath, but said nothing about how you could leave.”
Cold runs through me as I realize he is right. But I refuse to give in.
“Do you think I cannot take care of myself?” I ask.
“That is not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
“You’re not going.”
I glare at him. “I am.”
He moves his head just enough to acknowledge the words. Nothing else. “No.”
I let out a breath through my nose, something edging through it before I smooth it away. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“Asharin—”
“Colsar, we do not know what is inside Morrath. Once you take the throne, how do we destroy it if we cannot enter? If we don’t know what’s inside? We cannot rule here without understanding it.”
“That isn’t a place you walk into for answers.”
“I’m not going just for answers.”
The words come faster than I intend, heat threading through them. I don’t pull it back. “Our daughter is about to be named his heir,” I say, each word placed clean and separate. “And you expect me to sit here and trust whatever version of it he decides to show me?”
His jaw tightens. “He is not going to show you anything of importance,” Colsar says.
I feel it. He sees that I feel it. I straighten before either of us can acknowledge it.
“You left,” I say.
