Page 65 of The Shadow Heir

“What did you really come here to say?” Cas asked, carefully rolling up his sleeves where they’d come undone.

Words were difficult to form as I studied his forearms, ridged with veins. When he’d finished with one sleeve, he glanced over at me, quirking his brows.

“Oh, I—the servant I spoke with seemed to know something of the poisons.” My cheeks had caught fire, and I looked away. “When I asked where you were, he wouldn’t tell me untilafterI suggested I had a poison to test on you. Maybe he’s working with whoever is poisoning them.”

Cas chuckled and looked up at the ceiling. My eyes raked over the point in his throat down to his open shirt collar. Stars above, I couldn’t stop staring at him.

“If he knows who is behind the poisoning, then I doubt he assumed you were involved,” he said.

“Maybe none of them know,” Alba said, materializing beside Cas. I started at her sudden appearance, and Alba giggled at my surprise. “I think whoever is behind this is working without the mortals’ help. They isolate a servant, administer the poison, then leave them to die with a spell to erase any memories, should they live.” She elbowed her brother. “Which, thanks to Cas, most of them have so far.”

The wordmostcaught my attention, as did Casimiro’s flinch at Alba’s words.

Alba cocked her head to the side, her long hair swishing beside her waist. “Cas usually finds them from the trace of magic left on them from the memory spell. But sometimes he’s away and…the poison takes them.”

“Alba,” Cas chided, clearly annoyed at how much information she was revealing. She rolled her eyes. “Speaking to the mortals is still our best bet, for now. I know my court, and I know they employ humans to hide secrets.” He stepped toward me. “Speakto Ariana. Giving her the stone might have been the smartest thing to do. She’ll feel the need to return the favor.”

I nodded and turned away, not waiting to be dismissed. I needed space to think, to breathe. With each step I took, however, the wordslittle sparkrepeated in my head.

“You were wrong about something else,” Alba said to her brother as I walked away. “You told me that all humans were weak.”

The side of my mouth flicked up despite the strange reminder that fae hated mortals. She thought I wasn’t weak. My calves burned from my hurried pace as I approached the small tunnel leading out of the large room. Behind me, their voices dropped to heated whispers, and I could no longer decipher their words.

The door handle cooled against my hand, and I yanked on the door.

A large hand reached over my shoulder and stopped the door from opening.

I didn’t turn around, didn’t let go of the door handle. I was breathing as hard as I had in the arena after a training round.

Casimiro’s forearm brushed against my shoulder as he kept his hand on the door, preventing my escape.

“Don’t listen to her,” he said, his voice low and closer to my ear than I’d have liked.

“Let go,” I said.

“She’s never really spoken to mortals, and all she knows of them is what our court has taught her.”

“What you taught her.”

Cas huffed, his cinnamon scent washing over me. “I too believed all mortals were the First and Last’s proof that we were not his worst creation. It is a myth we shadow fae cling to, trying always to prove it.”

My hand nearly slipped from the door handle, but I regripped it and kept pulling against Cas’s hold. “Believed?” I nearly choked on the word.

“I’m starting to change my mind.”

To hide my small gasp, I yanked harder on the door. Cas removed his hand, and I darted back out into the vaulted space bracketed with wide stairwells leading up and down. I wouldn’t stop until I was outside in the freezing air, bathed in blazing sunlight. Outside in the sun, I felt strong and safe. The shadow fae wouldn’t pursue me there.

My feet raced almost as fast as my heart as I scurried up the wide stone steps, away from the heir and his sister, trying to escape from the strange twist in my chest that his words had caused.

27

Zara

Hours later, I sat on a soft settee beside Ivy in the large room designed to offer us diversions that would weaken our resolve to hate the fae. Sleep had evaded me all day, and my tired eyes drifted as my mind wandered, again and again, over the words and actions of the fae prince since he’d dragged me from that table. In this smaller room—half natural cave, half constructed walls—were bookshelves, a piano, easels and paints, couches for reclining, and even windows that let in the starlight. Of course, we were only allowed to use this room at night, when these fae would accompany us, mixing that which we despised with that which we loved—a brilliant tactic that had likely worked on many a mortal who’d come through these cursed halls.

“Did he hurt you?” Ivy asked, looking up from a sketchbook in her lap. She nodded at my hand. “You keep holding your shoulder.”

My hand slipped down into my lap, where a book sat, unread. I shook my head and said nothing, again feeling Cas’s thumb as it had peeled from my sticky skin. The book sat ignored inmy lap, my mind replayinghimover and over and over—him leaning against the rock behind my head, him dueling with me, him saving me from that awful humiliation, him whispering that he was changing his mind about mortals.

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