My head felt groggy, like I’d been willed to sleep.Has she sleep-charmed me?A lump grew in my throat—maybe Asterie regretted what we’d done. Maybe she was reeling from the intimacy.That would be the simplest explanation. But it didn’t seem like her to leave me jilted after the night we’d spent together.
No,if she left and hadn’t returned, then there was a reason. I threw myself out of bed and pulled on my breeches and a tunic so quickly that I stumbled into the wall. As I shoved my feet into my boots, my fingers tried to reach for my green cloak but didn’t find it.She’d taken it…she went willingly.
Yet something felt irrevocably wrong. My heart wanted her to simply be outside the bedroom door, returning to me with a glass of water or breakfast. The hairs on my arms were on edge.
I pushed the doors open to the hallway—she wasn’t there.
Van appeared before me in the hallway as though responding to my panic.
“Find her.”
He leaped down the Corridor, eliciting a shriek and a clambering of dropped metal trays from maids passing by. I sunk my fingers into my hair—my throat closed, utter helplessness washed over me.You are overreacting.
“Let me see her if you find her,” I whispered to Van through the bond.
She likely just got an early start on her day.
“Will you be here in the morning?”she’d asked. I’d thought the question implied that she would be too.But what had she been up to in the middle of the night? And why hadn’t she returned?
I paced the halls for what felt like hours, yet it was likely only minutes before I felt the press of Van trying to show me something at my temples. I let him in.
Blood.
Vangard’s eyes were on a pool of blood staining the rain-dabbled cobblestone of the garden path. My stomach turned.
It can’t be hers.
To spill that amount of blood, it could have been a fatal wound.I’m still standing. She must be alive.I couldn’t breathe.
Vangard sniffed at something else.
There, on the blood-puddled ground, lay a recognizable patch of fabric. An emblem—an eye, a scale and a ring of thorns. The patch that I had ripped from Asterie’s robes that awful day in Kullworth and tucked into my cloak pocket.
The once-white embroidered scale was now stained red.
* * *
After racingup the palace staircase to the third floor, taking steps in twos, I was out of breath. A cold pit ofemptinesssettled in my chest—that empty feeling that told me Asterie was not near. It was an unpleasant yet familiar sensation that I’d grown numb to for the centuries spent without her. That feeling was now ripped raw.
When I burst through the doors, Queen Sybilla was sitting at her desk—a grand oak piece, more art than function. Her head was collapsed into her hands.Was she weeping?
“Where is Asterie?” I hadn’t meant it to be a snarl.
I kicked the door closed behind me, hard. My vision was in hues of red. Flames licked from my fingertips—it wouldn’t take much to set me over the edge. Just a spark.Go ahead,say the wrong thing.
I would burn this palace to the fucking ground if the Queen didn’t start talking.
She lifted her head and barked back, “Mind your tone.”
Ready to strike, I crossed the room. The Queen didn’t flinch as I neared, and though her nostrils flared, tears threatened to fall down her cheeks.
Sources, how I loathed seeing women cry.Fisting my hands, I extinguished the flames on my fingertips.
“Where is she? I’m not going to ask a third time.”
The Queen circled the desk to stand before me, hands shaking but otherwise holding her posture.
“Firose Van Gran has taken my Constable and your Source Match.” Her voice cracked onConstable.My heart cracked atSource Match.
