Stewart had lost his battles with the queen, no matter what he had tried. Warrick was the most important piece in the game, all that had and all that could keep Inara from Trust hands.
Rhen had given Nim an ultimatum. Unlike Calum, his motives had not been merely to tease and torment. Nim had found a slip of parchment in her pocket, so very like the ones she’d received with Calum’s tasks. It had felt of Rhen, smelled of his person and his magic, and gave the sensation of fingers sliding over her skin. She had opened the folded parchment to reveal a message in what she could only assume was Rhen’s hand: Time’s up.
They were coming for Warrick before tomorrow’s moon.
It was a warning that Rhen would not let her ignore his threat. Whatever Warrick had planned would not work. He might succeed in secreting her away or sneaking her out of Inara, but if Nim did not surrender herself to the Trust, they would come for Warrick to claim recompense for the magic Nim had used to wound Rhen and to destroy whatever chance he had of taking Stewart’s place. Rhen would do it—she knew he would. He had already called Warrick “brother” in front of the king’s guard, had walked into the ballroom and withdrew his mask right under the king’s nose.
He might have been enjoying it, but Rhen was not toying with any of them. He meant to tear Inara down.
“My lady?” Wes’s voice from the doorway was hesitant. It was barely past dawn, and he could plainly see that Nim was more than a bit unsettled.
She brushed her hands over the false skirt of her new constable wardrobe to straighten out a mess she may have felt more than seen. “Thank you for coming.” She prayed he had not told Warrick, but it was no accident that she’d not requested Wes’s visit until after the seneschal would have left to attend to his work.
Crossing to the table where she’d stashed her documents, Nim gestured Wes over. He stood opposite her, his concern evident.
She slid the documents regarding Lord Preston across to him. Wes glanced down, brows furrowing as he scanned the correspondence and Nim’s report. There was no way out of the trap Rhen had laid for them. Lord Preston may have been put into position to take Warrick’s place as heir but he could only do so if Warrick was removed. Warrick was too valuable to Stewart and to the kingdom. But she needed to know what Wesley knew and that her friends would understand what was at stake, even if it was impossible for them to forgive her for what she meant to do.
Wes released an unsteady breath then pushed the documents back. “Don’t pursue what you’ve dug up with Lord Preston, Nim. Please. There are things you don’t understand. Things beyond any of us. I know he can’t share everything with you, but you need to trust Warrick.”
Margery had been right about Preston, then. And Wes did not want her to interfere in whatever the king or Warrick had planned for the man. Except Wes had one thing wrong: Nim did trust Warrick, which was why she knew without a doubt that he would risk everything to protect her. He’d proven he would do what it took without thought to her wishes. He had knocked her out with magic before and placed her in a wagon to be carted from the kingdom.
Rhen was coming for them, one way or another, and when Warrick tried to save her, it would destroy him and Inara. Stewart’s heir could not be replaced by someone owned by the Trust. The queen would win. Warrick was all that held the kingdom’s protection, the only thing that kept Inara from being devoured by magic.
But Nim was expendable. She had one chance to make things right, one chance to make a deal before Warrick could stop her. The kingdom had given up on her long ago, turned her out. The few who hadn’t were her father and those like him, men and women who put Inara’s safety above all else, who had sacrificed everything on a gamble, a child who might someday tip the balance. It was time to repay that debt.
Nim had heard of other kingdoms, far away, where magic ran free and the suffering was endless and dark, unspeakable acts were carried out by those who had no restraints placed on their power outside of magic’s own laws. She could not let that happen to Inara.
She straightened to face Wesley, hands suddenly steady, voice too calm. “I need you to deliver a message.”
Chapter 20
Nim left the dagger on the mantel in her room. Warrick would find it—sooner than she might like, if the fates had anything to say about it—and know that she had gone through the secret passageway, an escape he had given her, to steal out of the castle while Wes and Maris had been distracted by her tasks. It was underhanded, she knew, but she could not take the time for regret when the Trust intended to take down Warrick and with him the future of the kingdom.
Dawn’s light had chased long shadows across the square, and the morning sun warmed the block that lined the streets. Nim kept to the narrow walk at the storefronts, her pace swift and sure to a place she’d been countless times, a place to which she’d thought she would never have to return. The ring of hammer against anvil and the songs of the clothier echoed from shops on her way past. The streets smelled of baking bread and stinking dyes over lingering woodsmoke. To the people of Inara, it was like any other day. Turning down an alley, Nim tipped her head at passersby, only to be met with gazes that darted from her to anything else. It was not likely that she’d been recognized as an agent of the king, but she was near enough the gates to the Trust that no one wished to pay her mind.
Not thinking of them or looking at them were things that kept Inarans safe. They were living beside a den of monsters and knew all too well what waited inside. The long stretch of street before the gates to the undercity was empty of traffic. Trust business was conducted under the darkness of night, and even the last of the revelers would have cleared from the streets by the midmorning hours.
Two guards stood at the entrance, their trim jackets in accountant black. The gates were closed.
Nim swallowed hard, forcing down the instinct that told her to flee. She could not remember the last time she’d seen the iron gates down. Her boots were silent on the stones, coming to rest before the latticework of bars. “Nimona Weston,” she said. Eyes forward, not allowing the sentries even an attempt to snare her, she waited. Neither replied.
“I am here upon invitation,” she tried, biting down the oath that wanted to follow. The sentries did not flinch. Granted, most who knew Nim in the Trust tended toward loathing her, but she was not usually ignored. “I come unarmed.” It wasn’t entirely accurate or even applicable to her situation but worth a shot. She’d never considered they might not let her in—it had certainly been the least of her concerns. She sighed, resigned that she might have to give one of the guards her eyes before they paid her mind, and a laugh echoed from beyond the wall.
Rhen. She’d not even felt him. Fates, she didn’t understand how he could hide from her so thoroughly.
Leaning against a stone column in the way he’d stood the first time she’d encountered him, Rhen rolled lazily from the shadows and into view, a finger tapping lightly against his chin. “Let her pass.”
Neither sentry moved, but the gate jolted then raised before her. A realization rose with it that if she stepped through the arch, the gate would close again. Nim would be trapped inside. Her fingers trembled. Her feet itched to run. On the other side of the archway, Rhen’s power swam. It did not reach for her, did not call or bind. He was letting her make the choice. Letting her, Nim thought, so that he would see what she might do. Not because he couldn’t make her do as he bid. Not because he hadn’t trapped her. Because he was curious.