“What the hell was that?” I raised an eyebrow of irritation at him.
“I’ll be honest, that was not how I was planning for the conversation to go.”
“You need to apologize,” I demanded. “And so does he.”
Sebastian opened his mouth to argue, but I stopped him. “He isn’t the only guilty one in this situation. I kissed him, too,” Itried to reason, though the reminder was surely an unwelcome one.
“As I said before, I’m not in love with him,” Sebastian replied as if that truly made all the difference.
“AsIsaid before,yes, but you stilllovehim.”
A low grumble poured from Sebastian's throat.
I pulled open the door to the meeting room to see Archer already sitting at the table, his hands folded on top of it. We waited for Kohen and Sawyer to join, and I elbowed Sebastian in the abs when I saw the way his gaze raked over hisfriend.
With everyone present, Archer looked up, drawing a shallow breath before getting right to the point of why he called us here. “I was going through Venay’s belongings.”
I forgot how to breathe. Oh gods, hedidfind out what we had done.
“And it seems I owe you,” Archer's gaze found me, “an apology.”
What?
My head shook in utter confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“You were right. About Venay,” he said, fighting to keep his attention on me. “I found her enchantment book, and inside of it were letters.”
“Letters about what?” Kade asked before Archer could continue.
Archer cleared his throat and adjusted his seating, tucking his hands together. “Letters Beaumont had sent to her over the years. She was working with him. For a long while, it seems.”
When none of us seemed surprised, he inquired, “By your silence, I’m assuming you all already knew this?”
I didn’t have the guts to explain, and thankfully, Kade took the fall for the rest of us. “We do. We had suspicions that she was working with Beaumont and we questioned her about it. Wewere able to get the truth out of her and also information about the journal and the creatures Beaumont’s been creating.”
Archer lifted a brow. “Creatures?”
When Kade finished explaining to him everything we knew, my father looked like he had aged an additional twenty years. Eyes sealed, he rubbed a finger along the bridge of his nose. “How did I not see this sooner?”
“Honestly, man, I dunno. I thought she was weird as hell from the moment I met her,” Sawyer answered, not sugarcoating it at all.
Archer leaned forward. “I’m going to regret asking this, but did you guys…kill her?”
He didn’t ask the question to anyone specific, but once again, Kade took the fall. “I did. She needed to die. She was a threat to Lumosia and Maeve. She couldn’t be allowed to live knowing what she knew.”
Archer fell still, his only bodily movements being the rise and fall of his chest. When he spoke again, his words were so light that they were hard to understand. “Do we know what Beaumont is doing with these creatures or how he creates them?”
“Venay said that he’s planning to use them to claim the empire,” I answered, standing up and leaning over the table. “If what she said was true, and I would bet my life that it was—” I added, not exactly disclosing that I had something to do with the whole thing, but still admitting my faith in the information. “Then we need to figure out how Beaumont’s creating these creatures and how to destroy them before he does exactly as he plans.”
Leighton, who had been quiet the whole conversation, spoke up at last. “She gave or sent him notes from the journal, right?”
I nodded. “That’s what she implied—that Beaumont had notes from the journal.”
“Okay. So send me back to Draemor. I can get into his office. As a bookkeeper, we have a set of master keys. I know where they are stored. Maybe I’ll be able to find what she copied from the journal.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Kohen gave his opinion while tossing his fingers through his brown hair, ruffling it in the way he only did when he was stressed. “You’ve been gone for a while. Beaumont probably thinks that you are either dead or have fled the kingdom. If you just return unharmed, he’ll kill you for treason.”
“So I’ll returnharmed.”Leighton put air quotes around the last word. “I’ll make up a whole story about how you forced me to help you out of the dungeon. I’ll say that I was kidnapped by roaming Caelestians afterwards, but just managed to break free. I only need a day or so to get back into the archives. Then I can search his office and see if I find anything useful.”
