The last of his silky strands left my fingers as he tipped his head back and...laughed. It was a deep, loud, hearty laughter that exploded through the vast, empty space, echoing under the grand ceiling.
Leslo frowned, looking both pissed and confused.
The guards appeared dumbfounded, as if they’d never heard their king laughing before. Their lips curved into polite smiles while they ever so subtly backed even further away from him.
His laughter stopped as abruptly as it had started. His initial shock had eased into an expression of surprise highlighted by genuine excitement.
“I’ll tell you what,brack,” he said over his shoulder to Leslo while keeping his eyes on me. “I’ll make a deal with you after all, but on slightly different terms. I don’t need a human pet, but I’ll keep this one as a pledge of your return after you complete an errand for me.”
Leslo’s frown deepened. “What kind of errand?”
“I want you to go up to the Sky Kingdom and fetch a bolt of spider silk for me.”
Confusion etched on Leslo’s face. “Don’t you already have—”
The king snapped his fingers impatiently, not letting him finish.
“It can’t be just any spider silk,” he explained. “You’ll have to fetch it the moment the spiders finish weaving it, then bring it to the Moon Goddess Monastery on the border between Sarnala and Olathana immediately after.”
“Immediately? Like right away?” The confusion on Leslo’s face deepened at that request.
The king eyed Leslo doubtfully, like he was calculating the chances of thebrackactually completing the mission he was sending him on.
He blew out a frustrated breath. “Exactly. I want the dew and the mist of the clouds still fresh on the silk when you deliver it to the monastery, do you understand? It’s very important. The dew is what binds magic to it. Otherwise, the silk is useless to me, and our deal is off.”
My mind raced, trying to decipher what this turn of events meant for me and my future, but I lacked the knowledge about anything the king was saying to predict the outcome.
Leslo scratched the back of his head. “Well, the sky king doesn’t want us in his kingdom, so...”
“Neither do I, but here you are, unwelcome and uninvited,” the king scoffed. “I trust you’ll find a way to get up there as well.”
“Like what? How am I supposed to get to the Sky Kingdom without any wings? Get a gargoyle to fly me?” Leslo mumbled. “Or wait until some sky fae drops out of the sky and agrees to take me back up to his homeland? Or maybe I should try my luck with the River of Mists again and hope that Ghata forgives my failure?”
Judging by his tone and expression, neither of the scenarios he listed particularly appealed to him. While mentioning the last one, a shudder ran across his shoulders, and his tanned face paled. Whoever that goddess woman was, she didn’t seem to be a benevolent boss. Leslo feared her so deeply, I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“You know what? Fuck it,” he grumbled. “I’ll try my luck with your uncle instead.”
Grabbing my arm again, he turned to leave. But the king caught up with him in two long strides.
“How dare you deny me,brack?” he growled threateningly, his voice dripping with so much disdain, I wondered how it didn’t burn his lips like acid.
Startled, Leslo flattened himself against a wall then drew his knife out. It was a wide, black blade. Red sparks crackled along it, looking strikingly out of place in the blue and green light inside the glass palace.
“Oh, God...” I sucked in a panicky breath and leaped away from them, afraid I was about to become a witness to a murder in addition to being the victim of a kidnapping.
Leslo didn’t just flash the weapon in warning. He aimed to kill as jammed the blade into the king’s side with force.
I slapped a hand over my mouth, trapping a scream of horror inside. Over my career as a criminal defense attorney, I’d had to deal with the gruesome aftermath of a murder. Never before, however, had I actually witnessed one. Terror struck me, rooting my feet in place.
The moment the blade touched the king’s body, the metal lost its color, turning transparent. The red sparks were gone, and the blade broke, dropping to the floor in flat shards of glass.
“What the...” Dumbfounded, Leslo stared at the knife’s glass handle left in his hand.
The king tilted his head with a mocking smirk.
“Aw, was it Nerifir iron? That’s too bad,” he chuckled with mock sympathy. “It must’ve been expensive. I guess you won’t be needingthisanymore either.”
He touched the knife’s leather sheath on Leslo’s hip. The leather turned to glass too. Leslo shifted with a sound that was both confused and terrified. The glass sheath broke from his belt and crashed to the floor with a small explosion of glass splinters.
