It’s your underclothes or the nightgown.
There wasn’t much of a choice.
Tempest spared no time in slipping it over her head and sighed when the fabric whispered over her skin. It was the softest thing she’d ever worn. She stood and hissed as her toes touched cold stone. Her skin pebbled, and she yanked the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders before padding across the floor to a patchwork rug in green-and-gold thread near the hearth.
“Briggs,” she whispered.
His dark eyes flashed open, and he immediately grinned. “I was wondering when you would wake up,” he said.
“You were the one sleeping.”
His smile widened as he stood. “I was just waiting for you.” He pulled her into a crushing hug. For the first time since she’d left the capital, she felt comfortable and safe.
“It’s good to see you, too, Briggs,” she wheezed against his chest. After a few seconds, she pushed out of his arms and smoothed down the skirt of her borrowed nightgown. “How long have I been out?”
“Long enough,” he paused and then added, “Pyre will be with you soon.”
No, the dark prince would grace her with his presence now.
She shook her head. “No, not soon. Now. Take me to him now. I’ve jumped through all these hoops—I nearly died on the road and got sold off to a smuggler—just to follow his stupid orders. He will see me now, or he will not see me at all.”
Briggs pulled a face. “He won’t like this.”
She was counting on it.
“I will disappear and cause more mischief,” Tempest said, smiling slightly. “You know I will.”
He sighed. “There’s no stopping you. Might as well save myself the trouble. Your satchel is on the floor.” He chuckled. “Plus, Pyre hasn’t been needled in a while. Follow me.”
Tempest grabbed her satchel, which lay by the base of the bed, and followed Briggs out of her room. He led her through a network of arching hallways made of dark, imposing stone. The place seemed grander than King Destin’s palace, though it lacked the same polish. It was rougher; Tempest could tell that the place was carved from the literal mountains themselves. But that only served to make her like the place. There was something wild and beautiful about the stone walls and the cold wind that blew through the corridors whenever they turned a corner.
The only drawback was that the stone beneath her bare feet was bitter and freezing, and the tingle of pain in her toes reminded her that she had not arrived at this strange place by herself. “How are Brine and Swiftly?” she asked, keeping her voice small and quiet in case it echoed off the walls as it had done outside.
“Recovering,” he said, smiling reassuringly. “It’ll take more than that to knock them down. And their injuries were nothing a good dose of mimkia couldn’t solve.”
She flinched at the mention of the drug.
Essential for medicine, yet deadly.
“How strange it is,” Briggs murmured, reading Tempest’s mind, “that the very thing that has been causing us so much strife can just as easily save our lives. Don’t you think, Temp?”
She nodded and pulled her blanket closer, the tail end of it dragging like a train behind her. The rest of their wandering was done in silence as they traversed the labyrinth of hallways. The lanterns flickered eerily as Briggs brought her through a doorway, into a dark, shadowy corner at the rear of a cavernous room.
It was bigger than even the ballroom in Dotae. Nothing she’d ever seen compared in size. Near the end of the room, a group of people sat in luxurious chairs.
She surveyed the gathering with curious eyes. At the front, presiding over the rest of the group on a carved, stone plinth, was a man with white hair and skin the color of milk. Or moonlight. Even from her position at the back of the room, Tempest could see that his eyes were a piercing shade of blue. Tempest supposed he was beautiful, but there was an ethereal quality to him that she found unsettling instead of alluring.
Who was he?
Forcing herself to turn her attention to the rest of the group, she noted that there was a giant of a man sitting on the floor. He was immense. A giant from Kopal. Another man sat beside him with broad shoulders and scales imprinted on his skin. She blanched, knowing immediately what he was. A dragon.
The woman beside the dragon shifter chuckled and waved her hand, her skin a strange aqua, almost an iridescent quality to it that seemed to move like water itself. Beside this woman was Nyx, and, behind them all, a further group of shifters that Tempest did not know. Who were these people? Criminals? Rebels? Allies?
The white-haired man cleared his throat, pulling Tempest’s gaze back to him. “Destin has sent his sons as ambassadors to your nation,” he said to the giant. “Clearly, it’s a ploy of some sort. I would not be surprised if they are bringing in purified mimkia or other dangerous substances to your kingdom.”
Tempest grew rigid. The man was speaking about well-kept secrets, and he was speaking about it to a room full of shifters.
“Who is he?” she asked Briggs.
He bent low to talk directly into her ear. “That’s the Jester’s right-hand man, Mal.”
“I thought Brine was his second?”
A flash of something Tempest couldn't quite understand crossed Briggs’s face. “That’s what a lot of people think,” he said. “Brine is more like… his man on the ground, as it were. Mal is Pyre’s political partner.”
Political partner. She didn’t like the sound of that.
Anyone who was conspiring to gain power was bound to be corrupt. And she didn’t like Mal’s smile. It was too perfect. His words were smooth. Too smooth. Even she was inclined to believe what he said was the truth even though she knew it was based on mere conjecture.
He’s good.
She knew there was something more to the king’s plan of sending off his sons than a mere ambassadorship. But she doubted very much it was to make an enemy of the giant kingdom. Heimserya did not have enough allies to fight both Talagan insurgents and the giants, especially when the Hinterlands were already an antagonistic nation. They needed allies. Who better than the Kopal brutes?
“You will have to do something about the princes,” Mal continued, “but, for now, it is best for your people to simply observe them. I am sure they will make a mistake, eventually. The boys are fools.”
She drew closer, Briggs at her side. They drifted closer as the giant drank up every word Mal said.
He wasn’t wrong. The princes were idiots, but she did not like the tone in which Mal spoke about the boys. It felt cruel, though he painted it as a joke that everyone laughed at. He continued to address the crowd, spinning lies around kernels of truth—often information Tempest herself had passed onto Pyre—and Tempest’s initial dislike for the man grew, along with disgust. He sold lies as truth.
Just like Destin.
Mal cast his pale eyes across the entire room. “And now, I suppose, we should turn our heads to a happier topic of conversation: The masquerade.” A murmur of excitement buzzed across the room. “It is but a few weeks away, and I sincerely hope to see every faction there. Earlier today, I even managed to make last-minute negotiations with the merfolk to attend. This will be an exciting event for all of us!”