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“Excuse me?” I sputter at his words.

“I knew Eagan was keeping something from me, but I thought it was town gossip. I should have known when I saw Eagan following her around,” Garret admits, but Kylian waves him off.

“Need to know. She still hasn’t come around to the idea of being my bond, nor does she understand it yet. I will make formal arrangements once she is ready to announce it. So for now, I don’t want that knowledge getting off the island.”

“Of course,” Garret assures him.

“Now, where are Draven’s men?”

“Collared and sedated in the bunkers along the coastline. We got lucky catching them. They appear weak, sickly even.”

Kylian’s eyes darken. The crimson deepens to something closer to black. The veins beneath the skin of his temples pulse in a way that tells me the predator side of him is very close to the surface.

“How much did they see?” Kylian asks, and his gaze cuts to me before returning to Garret.

“The fields were in full view from their position,” Garret says quietly.

Kylian turns without another word and moves toward the door. Garret falls into step beside him, already speaking in rapid low tones about interrogation, security, and doubling the coastal patrol. Their voices fade as they disappear down the corridor.

Eagan stands by the ballroom door, his worried gaze fixed on the corridor where Kylian vanished.

“This is bad isn’t it?” I ask Eagan as I approach him.

“The king will handle it,” he says.

“But what if they’ve already alerted King Draven.”

“There is a chance they haven’t. The mindlink only works so far for all creatures. Dragons aren’t much different than vampires in that sense. I am more worried about the . . .” He doesn’t finish, but I know he was going to say sirens.

“Why does that worry you?”

“Because it can only mean one of two things. They were spying for one of the kingdoms . . . or something is drawing them out that has them willing to expose themselves.”

His words remind me of the fish washing up on Purgatory. Could that be why they are willing to expose themselves? Perhaps the sirens didn’t survive unscathed by the curse. If their food supply is running low, it would explain why they attempted to come back on land.

“Come, you should rest. It’s been a long day,” Eagan tells me, leading me down the hall.

***

I’m dressed for sleep by the time a servant brings dinner to our room, but there is no sign of Kylian. He still hasn’t returned, and I find the solitude maddening. I pick over the food apathetically as I think of Arlo, somewhere in this castle, maybe barely clinging to life, hungry, alone, in pain.

He wasn’t in the ballroom or the infirmary, and I have not seen his face among the workers I pass daily. He has to be locked up still. Otherwise, I’ve been lying in a comfortable bed, eating like royalty, mending sick strangers, letting another man touch me, and at some point during it all, Arlo took his last, labored breath beneath my feet, alone, assuming no one would come for him.

I can’t take this anymore! I have to do something. I have to know.

Slamming my spoon down, I gather a cloak from the back of a chair and grab the warm slice of bread off the side of my plate. The floor is cold beneath my bare feet as I slip out of the bedroom, bread in hand, I quietly creep down the corridor. I expected Eagan to be waiting for me, or a guard at least, but there is no one.

I’m not sure where I’m going exactly, but Kylian ordered his men to take Arlo to the cells the day he arrived. So every winding hallway, I search for a set of stairs that will take me down to the lowest point of the castle.

My heart pounds erratically as I find the end of a corridor and take a sharp left. I’ve been walking for such a long time—maybe in circles, I think—when a set of winding stone stairs opens in front of me. I take off at full speed. I am so focused on closing the distance between me and the castle cells that I don’t see the shadow moving until he’s right in front of me.

Eagan.

His body is like a drawbridge slamming closed over the door, blocking the stairs completely. His eyes travel from my bare feet to the cloak thrown over my night clothes, then land on the slice of bread in my trembling hand.

His brow furrows, and his eyes finally meet mine. “Do you have somewhere to be?” he asks.

The words don’t come fast enough, but he’s looking at me as if nothing I say will change the assumption he’s already made.