Page 96 of Vale of Dreams

I have been searching for your would-be assassins. I’ve found nothing except that two soldiers are missing—and so is Arwenna. I believe she has been conspiring to kill you and is now in hiding. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Stay in your room until you hear from me. I’m sending soldiers to guard your door.

I crumple up the note and throw it into the fire.

When I pull my door open again, I find two soldiers marching toward me.

I’m more a prisoner here than ever.

CHAPTER 35

Irestlessly stalk around my room. The moons outside my windows are huge, a ruby and diamond in the sky.

It’s been almost a week since I received a message from Avalon Tower. I still have no answer to my report about the Blue Dragon Project, and I’ve heard nothing about Talan’s human spy suspicions. When I leave my room now, I have to get past soldiers.

I’ve managed to sneak out a few times, but it wasn’t easy. I haven’t been able to get to the Shadowed Thicket or find Meriadoc or Raphael.

I grab my midnight blue cloak and pull it over me, raising the cowl.

Flinging my door open, I smile at the two guards. “Just going out for a walk.”

“My lady,” one of them says, “I thought we were supposed to guard you.”

My eyebrows flick up. “I was told you were supposed to guard the room. You’re the same soldiers who were here two nights ago, aren’t you? We’ve covered this already. Remember? You’re supposed to guard the room.”

“Well, obviously…” he begins, stammering.

He seems like the one calling the shots. And he needs more encouragement.

Smiling coquettishly, I touch his arm. Sharp pain rips through my skull, hammering at my brain, but I push through it, sending tendrils of my magic into him. His defenses are minimal. He’s young, inexperienced, and fairly lazy. Listen to me, I whisper in his mind. I know what the prince wants.

I clear my throat. “I’m sure you’ll agree that the prince…” I almost can’t get the words out for the pain, and I’m struggling to remember how words work at all. “Prince wants you to guard the room, not to imprison me…his favored mistress. He was very clear that I’m not a prisoner here.”

My fingers tighten into fists, and I break out in a cold sweat, but to my relief, it works.

“Yes,” he says with a nod, “you’re right.”

His friend looks unconvinced, and I brace myself. Would I need to mind control him, too? I don’t think I’d be able to stand the pain.

But then he shrugs and looks at the other guard. “Okay, whatever you think.”

“Guarding the room,” the first one mumbles.

I hurry away before they realize that anything is amiss.

My head is throbbing by the time I reach the stairs, and nausea turns my stomach. I touch the stone wall as I stumble down the steps, wishing—not for the first time—that this place had elevators.

From the corner of my eye, I see movement, a shadowy figure. I turn to look, but it’s gone, and spots dance before my eyes.

By the time I reach the bottom floor, the throbbing in my skull starts to dull. I step outside into the crisp air, heading for the garden, where the white-petaled snowdrops droop over the icy earth and blood-red witch hazel dapples the landscape.

Reaching a gnarled oak, I sit on a stone bench, as I did the night before, and breathe in the floral air, which is faintly scented with moss.

With a quick glance around to make sure no one is looking, I lift a broken flagstone with the tip of my shoe. This is one of our drop-off locations. My heart sinks. Nothing, again.

Something is wrong, I’m certain of it. Things in Scotland have gone off course for the human allies.

Worry and frustration have been coiling and twisting inside me for weeks, ready to spring. I feel trapped here.

---