Page 108 of Fragile Oath

Something felt off.

The more I thought about it, the more confused I got, especially as my rage from the attack ebbed away.

MacBay might be blind, but we had questioned him extensively about Fiona once he was cooperative. He was in her bed nearly every night, which, if he was to be believed, would have included the night the Viper met with the carriage driver and the night that Tavish died.

Ifhe was to be believed.

“What if we were wrong about Fiona?” I asked out loud, my fingers coming up to rub the tension from my temples.

A migraine was steadily forming there, intensifying every time I came back to this subject. There were too many things that still weren’t adding up, things that were nearly impossible to parse through in my mind.

“Then why did she disappear?” Gwyn countered.

Avani shook her head. “I think you’re letting MacBay get to you. Maybe he isn’t lying, but Gracie said herself he was blinded by Fiona, and stars know he must have been to risk his family and his reputation just to have her in his bed.”

I tapped my pen furiously against the table, going over the notes I had made from the various letters that had come in this morning. None of this conversation was new. We had been talking in circles for the better part of an hour.

Fiona was the likeliest person, given the facts we had. Besides, without her, the list of possibilities was too long to consider. Every wife, sister, daughter…

The door swung open to emit Gallagher, who was scowling openly at Gwyn.

“Next time you send for me, don’t run all over the castle,” he groused. “Stars, I thought something had happened when I couldn’t find you.”

She shot him a look between confusion and irritation. “I didn’t send for you.”

The feeling of wrongness intensified, spreading through my body like the Viper’s favorite poison. Avani met my eyes, the same alarm flashing in hers.

“Who told you Gwyn sent for you?” she asked.

“Where’s Galina?” I said at the same time.

Gallagher looked between us. “One of Uncle Logan’s soldiers. And Galina’s still in the library, or was, when I left half an hour—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence before I was out of my chair, already halfway to the door.

“Go track down the soldier,” I called over my shoulder. “I’m going to check on the library, just to be sure.” My attempt at casualness was fooling no one.

Gal nodded, taking Gwyn in the other direction, and Avani came after me.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Dav. This is why she has Malishka,” my cousin tried to reassure me.

But a thread of uncertainty tainted the edge of her words.

Logically, I knew the chances of something happening to Galina in the library were low. She had a dog trained both to protect her and to sound an alert for danger. She also had Ewan standing guard nearby.

I was probably worried over nothing, still on edge from the intruder in her rooms and the attack shortly after, from our main suspect as the Viper on the loose probably terrorizing people somewhere.

I had almost managed to convince myself of that when we emerged into the main hall just in time to hear a piercing, panicked scream.

My heart dropped into my stomach. I had never heard Galina scream before. Would I recognize it if I did?

If I had been all but running before, I was sprinting now. Down the hall that led to the guest wing, propriety be damned. The hallway was already crowded with courtiers trying to see what was going on and soldiers trying to block off the room in question. It was toward the end of the hall, in the few remaining empty guest suites where no one had any reason to be.

Please, don’t be Galina. Don’t be her. Don’t let something have happened to her.

I chanted the words like a mantra, knowing they were selfish, that something terrible had happened to someone and I was effectively wishing it had happened to anyone else. I didn’t care, though. I couldn’t lose her now. Not when I had just gotten her back.

“Let me through,” I demanded, hearing Avani make some similarly imperious remarks beside me. The crowd parted, and my heartbeat thundered in my chest so loud it drowned out the murmurs of the courtiers around me.

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