Page 32 of The Umbra King

She still ripped at the grass. “They were black souls so suffocating itwas hard to be around them.” She could feel his attention focused solely on her. “I followed them, and—”

“Why?” he asked, cutting her off. “If they were difficult to be around, why would you follow them?”

She looked at him and wondered how he could be so old, yet so dense. “Because a black soul will commit a crime, eventually. They can’t help themselves.”

“You do not know that,” he argued. “You killed them because youassumedthey would commit a crime?”

“I followed them for days, sometimes weeks, to keep an eye on them,” she explained. “Some committed small crimes that were none of my business, and after a while, I left them alone.” It still bothered her, letting them go. What if the next day they hurt someone? “But some tried to hurt people in the worst ways, and I stopped them.” She quit messing with the grass and lifted her gaze. “Forever.”

He didn’t respond, and she wished something would make noise to fill the silence. Suddenly, music blasted through the room, and she startled like Keith in a phantom house. They were fun houses at carnivals where Eidolons popped through walls and scared the shit out of you.

She remembered she was dreaming and laughed quietly to herself.

Caius lifted a brow. “Discussing murder is funny to you?”

She motioned her hand around the room. “I wished for noise and conjured music.”

He stared at her. “There is no music.”

The music stopped, and she wished the chandelier would fall on his head, frowning when it didn’t. “How is it you have finagled your way into my dream? Leave.”

“Perhaps it is you who has intruded on mine,” he countered.

“I didn’t know the evil king slept.” His presence irritated her, but despite the hostility in the air, they had a sort of familiarity, and it unsettled her more than anything.

He bit his lip, and she could tell he was trying not to smile, which pissed her off more. “Is that what they’re calling me now?” he asked wryly.

“Is that not what they have always called you?” She hoped her taunting pissed him off, even if it was only a dream.

A humorless laugh escaped him.“They called me much worse.”

“Because you killed your sister?” Rory asked crossly.

His eyes were focused on a flower as he plucked it from the floor. “Things are not always as they seem.”

“I suppose you didn’t kill my sister, either, and my own eyes deceived me?” she asked through clenched teeth. They were headed toward dangerous territory.

His fist closed around the delicate petals in his hand, crushing them, and they fluttered to the ground. “If I said no, you wouldn’t believe me.”

Bells echoed through the enormous room, and Rory jumped to her feet, prepared for a fight. Instead of the danger she expected, Caius moved next to her and looked around. “Time to wake up.”

Rory reached blindlyfor her alarm clock,and when she couldn’t find the button to stop the bells, she knocked it to the floor. She vaguely remembered dreaming, but as dreams do, the memory of her wonderland faded away until it was nothing but a feeling in the back of her mind.

The palace was vast,and Rory’s feet ached as she explored every inch she could. She was still trying to adjust her sleep schedule and needed something to keep her awake until an appropriate hour. It would also help when she began her search of the palace.

There was a smaller staircase by the kitchens no one ever used that she never noticed before; the steps were dusty, and the torches were out. Intrigued, Rory grabbed a torch from the nearby wall and looked around before slinking up the abandoned stairwell. The last thing she needed was someone reporting her to the king.

The stairs ended on a small landing with a single door at the top. “Interesting,” she murmured and tried the handle. Locked.Shit.

Her curiosity was going to eat her alive if she didn’t find out what was behind that door. Running back downstairs, she hurried to her room, grabbed a few hairpins, and bolted back up the stairway, thankful no one was around.

Once in front of the door, she bent over as she gasped for breath. Her legs ached, and her lungs burned. Running laps around the palace courtyard for conditioning shot to the top of her to-do list.

Pulling the two pins out, she stuck them into the deadbolt. Lock picking was something she mastered years back after her first kill.

The news said she killed thirteen people, but she killed fourteen. After her first kill, she puked and cried, and abandoned the body in the alley where she killed him.

The enforcers found the body the same night but ruled it an illegal trade gone badly. Rory knew she needed better places to execute hervictimsand researched until she was blue in the face. Onenetsiteled her to a warehouse that used to house a butcher shop and meat packing plant.

---