"Until next time,"I said as she launched into the air.
"Commander Ravel was here," Morgateth observed.
"He was." I climbed up to my place between his wings and buckled in."Checking on me because Alar asked him to."
Morgateth launched, and the mountain fell away beneath us. For a while, he said nothing, banking lazily through the high currents while I leaned into the wind and let it scour me clean.
"He wants you,"Morgateth said."The want comes off him like heat off a stone."
I knew he was right, but I chose to deny it because to acknowledge it was to admit a thing I wasn't ready to even turn over in my head.
"He's just keeping a promise to Alar,"I said instead.
Morgateth huffed, and a plume of fire and smoke rolled back past my shoulder, warm against the cold air.
"You humans love to complicate things that are not complicated."
25
ALAR
"The threat of the enemy at the gates is answered by the defenders on the walls. The threat of the enemy within is insidious and far deadlier to the throne."
—King Aldric III of Catonia, Letters to My Queen
"This time, they very nearly succeeded."
The shockwave of these words was still reverberating through me.
I had braced for bad news on the long road home, imagining all kinds of scenarios, and I'd even postulated an assassination attempt. It wouldn't have been the first one. But none of the previous attempts had managed to come close. My father was extremely well protected, always surrounded by multiple guards, and no one could come close enough to him to inflict real harm.
"What do you mean they nearly succeeded?" I said. "How? Are you injured? I've noticed that you are favoring one side."
My father waved a hand, but it wasn't the usual grand gesture. "My injuries are minor. Some metal in the shoulder and a couple of cracked ribs. They will mend." He paused, and the careful way he held himself, along with his shallow breathing, told me the ribs were troubling him more than he admitted. "Arlen saved my life, taking the brunt of it, and his injuries are far more severe."
The cold in my chest turned to ice.
"Where is he?"
"Recuperating," my mother said, the wineglass in her hand shaking slightly, a few red drops landing on the pristine napkin. "We are keeping him out of public view as much as possible."
I'd never seen my mother's hands shake before, and the dread in my gut grew to dangerous proportions.
"That doesn't answer my question, Mother." I pinned her with a hard stare because I had more chance of breaking through to her than to my father. "What happened to Arlen?"
She opened her mouth, but my father lifted his hand to stop her.
"Let me, Hanith." My father drew a breath that visibly pained him.
"Arlen and I were in the gymnasium," he said. "Just the two of us, with guards posted outside the doors as usual. We were practicing hand-to-hand drills, or I should rather say that Arlen was humoring me, because I'm no longer a match for him." He winced. "That was before he got hurt. Now he can't fight off a fly."
"How bad is it?" I choked out the words.
Arlen was a strong man, well-trained, so if he couldn't fight off a fly, he was on his deathbed, and I was wasting time with my parents instead of rushing to be by his side.
"You know where the royal family's private gymnasium is. It's on the fourth floor of the palace," my father continued, asif he hadn't heard my question. "That's thirty-two meters above ground. It's still not clear how the assassin managed to throw an explosive device through the window."
I could think of a number of ways it could have been done, although that would have meant the assassin infiltrating the palace gardens with a projectile tube, which wasn't likely. But right now, I wasn't interested in the operational details of the assassination attempt. I wanted to know what had happened to my brother.
