“Take us to Thane and the others,” Reyna said evenly, hoping her calm, steady voice would soothe some of his panic. “If Thane can manage to undo the exile, we’ll tell you which one of us is Reyna. Right?” She elbowed her sister.
Glencora’s lips flattened. “Sure. We’ll tell you which one of us is Reyna. Hell, we’ll even walk into the Tower of Thorns willingly if Thane undoes the exile. It would mean that the High King of the Shadow and Wood Courts couldn’t lie to us.”
Reyna smiled up at the Urisk. “So, what do you say? Will you take us to Thane?”
“Hmm.” Urisk turned toward the ledge across the bridge. He held up a finger. “Wait here one moment. I need to speak with my advisors about this.”
Glencora hissed as soon as he was across the bridge. “You’re not really going to agree to this, are you?”
“I don’t think we have another choice.”
“They’re our enemy! They captured us!”
“I think they’re harmless really. They just want their people to be safe.”
The bridge creaked as the Urisk—who Reyna was starting to suspect was their king—crossed the gap between the ledges to reach them. Just as she twisted toward the sound, a sharp nettle stung her neck. She slammed her hand against her skin only for her fingers to brush against a dart.
“Dammit,” she muttered as darkness closed in. They’d only gone and poisoned her again.
35
Lorcan
“Your Highness.” Lord Illernan met Lorcan at the edge of Murias. It was all Lorcan could do not to rip the fae’s head off and drink his blood on the spot. He hadn’t tasted a single drop for days. He was starting to feel like the world was spinning around him. Colors melted together. Light blinded his eyes. Distant words and memories echoed in his ears.
He thought it had been days. Truthfully, he couldn’t tell.
“Yes, yes,” he muttered, waving his hand dismissively at the lord. “I know I’ve been gone a long time, but I’ll explain tomorrow. I need some rest.” And his stash of blood.
Illernan frowned. Or smiled. Lorcan couldn’t tell which. Either way, his lips twisted in a weird, bouncing way that made Lorcan’s eyes roll into the back of his head.
“You will want to hear this, Your Highness,” Illernan said, prattling on as if nothing at all odd was happening. Maybe his eyes weren’t really rolling into the back of his head. Maybe he was merely imagining it. Was Illernan even here? He could test it, actually. If he ripped off his head and drank his blood, he’d know the lord was real.
“Just go on and tell me,” Lorcan said gruffly. “I really need to get to my chambers as soon as possible.”
The blood was in there. That would set his mind straight.
“The Urisks have sent word. You won’t believe who they’ve captured.” Illernan’s voice sounded very eager. Lorcan wet his lips.
“The Urisks? I thought they lived underground. Do they even know how to write?”
“Apparently so.” A pause.
Lorcan huffed. He was quickly losing interest in this. The Urisks weren’t anyone important to him. They hadn’t even been seen in decades. He’d read about them in Molt’s journals. At one time, the old High King had gone in search of them, hoping to make a pact. But he’d come up empty. Wherever they hid, it was deep beneath the dirt.
“They have the ice princesses, my lord. We’ve finally tracked them down.”
That caught Lorcan’s attention. He snapped his gaze to the lord’s face, and suddenly, the fog cleared from his eyes. “He has Reyna?”
“And the eldest, Glencora.”
Lorcan rolled his eyes. “We don’t care about Glencora. Where are they?”
“They wouldn’t disclose their location, but we had one of our birds track theirs. It seems they’re living in some caves only a day’s journey northwest. There are symbols carved into the nearby trees. Six dots in a perfectly-formed circle.”
Eagerness tore through him. Reyna had never even made it to the castle. Her plot to take him down had burnt to ash. Now, she was trapped beneath the ground, and those idiot Urisks were just waiting to hand her over to them. They had made a grave error, sending a letter to Lorcan. If they thought he would parley with them, they were sorely mistaken.
He wondered if their blood would soothe the ache in his gut. He bet it would.
