A curse slips through my thoughts. If lies and ambiguity won’t work, half-truths might. “It’s the invocation. I have holes in my memory.”
“What kind of holes?”
“Big ones.”
Voices in the hall grow louder.
He hesitates. “Then you need to find Ianca. She might be able to explain this.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s the one who summoned Aoife for you. But after you get what you need, make sure you kill her—”
“Zander, we need to talk!” Atticus’s deep voice echoes down the corridor.
Tyree’s head snaps in the direction before shifting back to me. I recognize the change in his expression—from caution to complete distrust.
I’ve lost him.
“He’s here, isn’t he? Listening to us. He brought you here.”
The next few seconds happen in a blur.
The space between the bars is just wide enough for Tyree to shoot his forearm through. He seizes the back of my head and yanks me forward. Pain explodes in my nose and left eye as my face crashes into the iron.
“Traitor!” Tyree seethes, spittle spraying against my cheek. But then he releases me with a yelp and stumbles backward. A deceptively small orange flame skips over his pant leg.
Zander is suddenly beside me. “Who helped Romeria poison the king and queen?” he demands, leveling Tyree with a cold, lethal stare.
Tyree smacks his hand against his thigh, trying to extinguish the fire.
“Who was she working with inside these walls?” Zander roars, and the tiny flame multiplies, crawling over Tyree like fast-moving bugs, flaring brighter.
“She never told me!” Tyree’s teeth are gritted as he struggles to hold back the scream, until the flames have converged and engulf the frayed fabric covering his body. Any second now, his restraint will break, and the bloodcurdling shrieks will begin.
I am instantly transported back to a wooded area outside the city years ago, with a pyre and a woman’s relentless screams. “Stop,” I croak, my head swirling. Zander will burn him alive in his cell if this continues.
Zander ignores me. “Lord Muirn?”
“A stooge looking for more power,” Tyree hisses.
“Adley?”
“Would rather die than trust a Ybarisan!”
The smell of blistering skin turns my stomach. It won’t be long before my knees give out and I collapse. I reach for Zander, squeezing his forearm as hard as I can to get his attention. “Please. Stop.” It’s barely a whisper, but between that and my death grip, Zander finally notices me. Something registers in his eyes, and the flames extinguish.
Tyree collapses within his cell.
“Looks like you don’t need Abarrane to do your questioning for you,” Atticus says from behind us, his nose curled with disgust. The warriors let him through, but they trail him.
Zander’s focus is on me, his brow furrowed, and I can’t tell if it’s on account of my mangled face or the terror that consumes me.
“Brother—”
“What are you doing here?” Zander snaps.
Atticus holds up two scrolls. “Messages from Meadwell and Hawkrest.”
“They couldn’t wait?”
Atticus squares off against his brother. “No, they couldn’t, Your Highness.” It’s a sarcastic address, Atticus’s anger flaring.
Zander’s attention turns back to me. My nose is likely shattered, and my left eye is swelling shut, a steady stream of blood gushes down my lip. Yet there’s something oddly warm in his gaze.
“Let’s get you fixed up,” he whispers, slipping an arm around my shoulders in a protective move that I’m in too much pain to shrink away from.
The Legion warriors fall back against cell doors, allowing us room to pass.
“What about him?” Atticus asks, nodding toward the cell.
“He will heal. Eventually.”
With a shrug, Atticus leads the way down the corridor. The commotion has stirred the prisoners. Soiled faces peek out from behind the bars, their forlorn eyes on my bloodied face.
“Did you get anything out of him?” Atticus asks.
“Nothing of use,” Zander answers without missing a beat.
I wouldn’t call what Tyree told us of no use—far from it—but it’s a conversation better had when a dozen ears can’t listen in.
To the Legion soldiers trailing us out, Zander commands, “Move him to the tower. No one is to see or talk to him unless I am present. Under no circumstances. No one.”
Atticus peers over his shoulder, his attention on me now. “Do you wish to parade her through the castle looking like that?”
Zander sighs with resignation. “No.”
Atticus nods at the guard as we exit through the main door, but instead of ascending the stairs, he reaches for the panel of weapons mounted on the wall. It swings open with a creak.
Even wrapped in the throbbing pain of my face, I feel a spike of delight at the discovery of a secret passage.
“Tell Elisaf to send for Wendeline,” Zander instructs his brother before guiding me in. Behind us, the hidden door shuts with a loud thud, throwing us into inky darkness. The air is dank from lack of ventilation and oddly cool.
“You can’t see anything at all, can you?” Zander asks.
“No?” I wouldn’t be able to, even if my left eye wasn’t swollen shut. “You can?”
“I told you already, Islorians are far superior to Ybarisans.” He shifts into me. I gasp with surprise as he collects me in his arms, sweeping my legs from under me. “I’d prefer not to spend the day crawling behind the castle walls,” he explains, pulling me tight against his chest. “Stay close to me. The passage is narrow.”
I curl my body in as we move forward at what feels like a clipped pace.
To be able to see in the pitch-black … it reminds me of Sofie traversing those winding stairs down to her dungeon with such ease. In fact, there are many similarities between them besides that—her speed, the way she moves, her affinity to fire. A thought pricks me. She claimed she could navigate those stairs in her sleep because she used them every day, but what if it had nothing to do with that? She must be an elemental, but what else is she?
Could Sofie be like Ailill? An immortal elemental, bound to Malachi? It would explain the way she spoke of missing her husband, as if she hadn’t seen him in decades—or longer.
“What troubles you now?” Zander asks.
I hate that he’s able to read me the way he does. It makes something as simple as thinking dangerous. Part of me is growing tired of hiding my secret from him. Maybe I should tell him who I really am. Maybe Sofie was being paranoid. Maybe she was deceiving me as she did with the truth about the stone.
Or maybe telling Zander will change everything for the worst, just when things aren’t horrible between us. And they’re not, I admit, even given my current excruciating predicament. But I need to understand what I am and what my purpose here is before I trust anyone with the truth.
I need to find Ianca.
“Just wondering how often you’ve watched me in the dark.”
His low, deep chuckle vibrates inside me. “Only a few times. And I wasn’t the one skulking on your terrace the other night.”