“Don’t worry,” Stellen whispers. “They may not converse with me, but they will speak enough amongst themselves.”
“Who are they?”
He stiffens, and I’m not sure why.
I clarify, “I mean, why did you choose them?”
“I didn’t. Their families have always served the Frost King.”
I consider the empty path ahead of us. The heavy silence.
“Do their families live here, too?”
“Their families are dead.”
Like Stellen’s family.
As we continue along the path, the hush around me is broken only by the distant hubbub of a city bustling back to life once more. But here…
Barely a sound.
“You live in this enormous space nearly completely alone.”
“I can hear an incoming attack better this way.”
And still, he doesn’t sleep well.
As if he reads my mind, he says, “This palace may be nearly empty, but it isn’t safe, Thyra. Prepare to sleep as badly as I do.”
Chapter Forty-One
Stellen
The safest place for Thyra to sleep is with me, but it’s also the most dangerous.
Once again, I have only bad choices.
Making a decision, I call softly to my wolf, “Nara, take us to the Rose Room.” And then to Thyra, “We should sleep in a different place each night.”
Not only can we remain unpredictable that way, but no assassin would think to look for me in the Rose Room.
At least for one night, Thyra may be able to get the rest she clearly needs. She doesn’t show it on the outside, her posture strong, her head held high, and her speech and gaze alert, but her breathing betrays the physical strain she’s hiding.
We both need sleep. The malfunction of my heart in the night and my unwilling collapse was a warning I can’t ignore.
Even if going near the Rose Room will be very difficult for me.
Nara takes a right turn and then a left, padding toward the eastern side of the palace grounds. My mother’s old wing. Where she raised me and my sister.
Nara pulls to a stop in front of the elegant stone building decorated with large roses carved into the exterior walls.
Many of the stone flowers are chipped now. Their petals were fragile to begin with, delicate works of art, but the onslaught the stone later endured is clear in the cracks extending across the exterior wall.
Despite myself, my body tenses, my arms clenching tightly around Thyra’s waist.
Maybe this was a bad idea.
Before I can rasp a change of command to Nara, Thyra leans harder against me, a subtle change in her posture I might have missed if I hadn’t been paying attention.
