My magic swept through the dark narrow halls. The small droplets of my blood stains on the walls sparkled in my mind’s eye like a tiny path of glowing moonstones.
The paths would lead me either outside or to Ilsa’s vault. Ilsa’s vault might be near the Duke’s study, so maybe if I followed that…
Then my magic picked up a glimmer of a new path…and it seemed fresh. I inched closer to a smear of blood on a brick—the blood was darker than mine, but still sparkled with magic.
I smiled—Daigen.
With the white light in my chest guiding me, I followed Daigen’s trail through the halls until I found a small “X” in smeared blood on the back of a large portrait.
I held my breath and placed my fingertips on the portrait, only pushing slightly forward…
“You got what you wanted, now I want the rest of it.”
Grigory’s voice made my arms freeze. I had only opened the portrait enough so that I saw a sliver of the Duke’s study on the other side.
A low chuckle echoed through the study and a shiver crawled down my spine. I did not need to see him to know it was Derrick but his voice sounded…rougher. “And what exactly did I pay you to do?”
My brows furrowed. Derrick had made a deal with Grigory?
I dared to push the portrait open only a sliver more. Grigory’s strong, folded arms were in view and I caught the corner of his sneer. “You wanted Bloodstone dead before he could seal that blood bond and you got it. Hand over the rest of the eight thousand marks.”
I held my breath so I would not gasp. No, Derrick would never—
Derrick slammed something that sounded like a goblet onto the desk. “The deal was one thousand up front to agree, then seven thousand when Riyan Bloodstone was eliminated and Serafina was safe at the palace.”
No. I could not,could not,believe my Derrick would have done it.
Boots thudded against the floor.
“And still,” Derrick said in a low growl, “I just overheard my uncle tell Baron Elvar that Riyan is still alive.”
Grigory shifted on his feet. “The Queen of the Giants took him, I saw it. He is as good as dead.”
“Not the same as dead.”
The cold truth sunk in and I could not deny it for a moment longer. I had patched up the wounds in his mind, stayed with him, and cherished him…
…and he paid Grigory Thornebow eight-thousand marks to murder my Riyan.
“I spent weeks hunting him!” Grigory shouted. “I shot at him in the lily field. I set off an avalanche on the mountain. I was even attacked by two birds, but everywhere I tracked him, he used your girl like a human shield!”
Every strange noise in the trees back in Bloodstone, every unsettling feeling…I had just written off Riyan’s heightened awareness as mere paranoia, or the strange feelings as magic, but no—it was Grigory Thornebow the whole time. He followed us through the mountain. His bootprints were in the snow at the peak of Nordingaard. He was the one who—
“I almost landed an arrow in his eye,” Grigory said, “but he moved at the last second and I got her instead!”
Hehad poisoned me. His arrows were tipped with Thornebow thistle.
A clatter echoed through the room and suddenly Derrick slammed Grigory into the wall. His white-knuckled fists gripped Grigory’s collar and his face was ruddy with drunkenness.
Had I not seen his corpse, I would have thought Anders had Grigory by the collar.
Alastar was taking over.
Derrick bared his teeth. “You shot my Serafina?”
Grigory threw Derrick off, twisting him against the wall, and slammed his forearm against Derrick’s throat. A flash of a bladeappeared in Grigory’s hand and he stabbed the wall next to Derrick’s cheek.
My heart raced but my blood ran cold.
