What the fuck was that?
Archer stompedinto the dining room the following morning, disrupting my lonely breakfast. He pulled a chair right up beside me and lowered his eyebrows.
“Good morning?” My greeting came out as a skeptical question as I swirled my spoon through a hardly touched bowl of oatmeal. “Why do you look like you're about to ground me?”
“I’m not happy with what you had Venay do last night,” he answered amidst a grumble, leaning back in his seat.
“She offered?—”
“But—” He held a silencing palm up, “—I am happy that everyone is okay and that you got some answers about the journal. Hopefully it can be of some use in all of this.”
Setting my spoon down and replacing it for a mug, I scoffed into my steaming cup of coffee. “Don’t get your hopes up. I have no idea how to find the damned thing without getting caught or killed. And it won’t be able to help us with saving Sebastian, so the whole ritual thing last night is seeming pretty pointless right about now.”
Sawyer strolled into the room, his hands tucked into the pockets of a jacket that reminded me of his former winter training uniform. He granted me a slight grin, to which my gaze fell to my lap.
Archer’s eyes narrowed at my reaction, but he did not address it. Instead, he moved to the head of the table, leaving an open seat next to me that Delani thankfully took.
“Is Pia coming?” She reached for the fruit bowl in the center of the table, selecting a nectarine.
A drip splashed from my mug as I set it down. “No. She’s still with Kohen.”
“The boy hasn’t woken up yet?” Venay’s surprise was brazenly obvious in the way her cheeks sank.
My head shook, a sense of unease congesting my lungs. “No. Is that bad? Should he be awake by now?”
She brushed me off with a flick of her wrist. “I’m sure he is fine. It’s just taking him a bit longer to rouse than I'd expected. I’ll check on him after.”
“Well, that's reassuring,” Sawyer mumbled.
Once Jensen and Kade showed up, we commenced our meeting, Kade taking the lead by interrogating me. “I heard about your little, dark magic adventure last night. How’d it go?”
“Fine.”
“Did you feel little pieces of your soul dying while you watched?”
My eyes rolled. “No.”
“Did you have a revelation that the gods may not want you beyond the veil now?”
I blinked once, then glowered across the table at him.
“I’ll take that as a no. Well, what did you discover then?”
“Nothing that will help us save Sebastian, which is why we're gathered here. So, can we focus on that please?” I snapped.
Kade’s cocky grin faded. “Fine,” he snarled. “Venay already told me, anyway. But now that we know the journal can’t be factored into this mission, the only option is to go back without it. And I know we all want to keep Maeve safe, but hear me out.”
My posture straightened. “I’m listening.”
“We can use you as bait. Beaumont holds Sebastian in the hopes that either A, you’ll come save him, or B, that we will turnyou over in order to save him. So, I suggest we give him what he wants,” Kade said all too casually.
Finally, someone was suggesting an idea that made fucking sense.“That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. Why’d you change your mind?” I glanced at my father, noticing how Archer didn’t try to argue with Kade.
“If it were solely up to me, I’d suggest leaving him there to die,” Kade said with a shrug, pausing to try and make out Sawyer's mumbling. “But, besides Venay, he’s the only one who can get into that journal, and I have a feeling that inside the pages of that notebook lies the answer to destroying Beaumont. Maybe even the answers to saving Lumosia, Mealioria, and Caelestis—what's left of it, that is. So while we're there, we need to find that book.”
“So really you just want me as bait so we can find the journal.” I didn’t ask—I accused.
“Does it matter why I want to use you? We are getting Hawthorne out, too, which is what you wanted.”
