“Of course I am. You looked mighty comfortable playing the part of a smug High King.” She couldn’t stop the words from pouring out of her mouth. She’d never been particularly good at biting her tongue, and she’d struggled all day with the urge to storm up to him, shove a finger into his chest, and demand to know what the hell was going on with him.
Where was her gruff, mischievous warrior?
Lorcan chuckled. “I have to present an image to the kingdoms or they will not take me seriously. There has been a lot of king killings lately. I wouldn’t want anyone to get any grand ideas into their little heads.”
“You speak as though you weren’t involved in both those king killings,” she said hotly, and then immediately regretted her words. Nollaig had been the one to kill Bolg Rothach and for good reason. And if Reyna had been given the choice, she would have stabbed Ulaid Molt in the chest herself. “And anyway, I don’t think most fae would be brave or foolish enough to risk the curse.”
“Ah, the curse.” Lorcan shook his head, his brows pinched. “I daresay the threat of the king killing curse doesn’t hold as much weight as it once did. Three king murders in the past fifty years and what? Sloane Selkirk withered away over several decades. Nollaig is the same as she has always been. And I’m the High King of two courts.”
Reyna frowned. “You don’t believe in the curse?”
“Maybe it doesn’t exist. And ifIdoubt it exists, others do as well.”
Dread washed down her spine. He was right. She’d scarcely taken the curse seriously herself. If a bolt of lightning slammed down from the skies, sent by the gods, the fae might take it seriously. But it almost seemed as if nothing happened at all. Sloane’s fate could be tied to many things. His destruction might have been his own damn fault all this time.
But even as a new bolt of unease slammed into her gut, warmth and hope flooded through her, washing it away. There might be danger ahead. They might not be out of the woods yet. But Lorcan was finally speaking to her again.
“Is this what’s been troubling you?” she asked, popping a berry into her mouth. “You know you don’t have to hide your worries from me, Lorcan. You can speak to me about anything.”
His eyes shuttered, and he twisted away. “Nothing is troubling me at all.”
Her heart flipped. She shouldn’t have mentioned anything. It had only set him on edge again. If he was going to talk to her about whatever was going on, it would have to be on his terms. She pushed the plate toward him. “Stay and eat with me. I had the servants put together a plate of all your favorite—”
He stood from the table. The chair scraped against the stone floor, releasing a screech that cut through the conversation like a knife. “I have something I need to do. I’ll likely be quite late. Don’t wait up on me.”
Lorcan strode out of the Great Hall, his cloak billowing behind him like an emerald cloud. Reyna stared after him, her hope shattered like ice glass. As soon as he vanished through the doorway, she pushed up from the table and followed after him. If he wouldn’t tell her what was wrong, she’d find out herself. It was enough to transform him into someone she didn’t even recognize as Lorcan Rothach, which meant it was far worse than he wanted her to know.
And so she followed him, her feet like mice against the ground.
* * *
Lorcan returned to the throne room and settled into his Seat of Power. Reyna watched from behind a pillar, her breath steady in her lungs. He dropped back his head to gaze up at the ceiling. The branches disappeared into the stone above where they grew through each floor of the tower, sprouting through the roof and into the sky.
He sighed and closed his eyes. Reyna frowned.Thiswas what he had to attend to?Thiswas his urgent business?
After several long moments of brutal silence, Lorcan’s hand drifted toward the table on his right, the one that had once held all of Molt’s notes and books. Nothing more than a chalice of wine sat there now. Lorcan took it and drank deeply, downing the contents in a single swig.
Her frown deepened. Ever since his coronation, he hadn’t stop drinking that damn wine as if it were made of water itself. Hopelessness settled over her, heavy and dark.
Suddenly, he pushed up from the throne and strode through a door at the back, leading to the ground floor of the tower. She waited until his footsteps began to fade, and then flew from the shadows to follow after him.
When she reached the doorframe, she poked one eye around the corner. Her heart raced; her palms were sweaty. Lorcan hovered outside of an open doorway, his fists clenched by his sides. Reyna frowned. If she were right, that was Molt’s study.
Lorcan pushed inside.
Reyna tiptoed after him, holding her breath tight in her throat. She whispered down the corridor, as silent as a mouse. When she reached the door to Molt’s study, she pressed her back against the wall and waited, listening.
“Where the hell is it?” Lorcan growled.
Goosebumps shimmered across her skin as she heard something clatter to the floor. Who the hell was he shouting out? Should she rush in there and stop this? Or would that only make things worse?
“It has to be here somewhere,” he muttered.
Glass crashed onto the floor.
Steeling herself, Reyna peeked around the edge of the doorframe before jerking her head back to the wall. Lorcan was alone in there. He was only shouting at himself.
Or something in his head.
