Page 60 of Winter's Fate

“My spies have reported no indication that Silerith is stirring,” Hawk finally said.

A retort sprang to the tip of Callum’s tongue, but for once he managed to suppress it. Hawk was opening a door, invitingCallum into a conversation that, if his silent exchange with Thaddeus was any indication, had been going on for some time.

He wondered what the king had seen in his brother’s face that convinced him it was safe to speak.

“The crystal—” Callum began, but Thaddeus shook his head.

“It isn’t a Sil crystal,” he said. His voice was soft, as though he were attempting to talk down a pair of unruly horses. Or hounds. “It’s from the Miragelands. We cannot know who planted it there.”

Without realizing what he was doing, Callum reached for the wine. More for something to hold onto than anything else, as if the goblet could tether him to this world. It was one thing to suspect the thing was evidence of the Miragelands. For Thaddeus to confirm it had come directly from that place? He shuddered, wishing he could banish the thought.

Demons, he wished Laena were here. Should they not be holding this conversation with her? She was the one who had discovered the crystal.

Shewas the one who’d discovered the crystal. And her country claimed increased activity out of Silerith was a threat. Callum’s head snapped up, suspicion sending renewed sparks of anger through his chest. “You cannot be implying that Princess Laena is in league with the mages.”

Thaddeus looked at his hands. “We don’t have enough information to determine who planted it,” he said carefully.

They didn’t know of Laena’s magic. Theycouldn’tknow of it. Her magic was not a heart-tithe. It was born of the Vales, not mage-made poison. Even had he not trusted her to tell him the truth—and demons, hedid—he knew what a heart-tithe felt like. And her magic wasn’t it.

Aside from the physical proof, the smell and the feeling of it, he had never seen a heart-tither rendered unconscious by their own magic.

His fingers tightened around the stem of the goblet. “But you cannot rule out her involvement, either?”

“That’s not how evidence works, brother.” Thaddeus’s eyes were sympathetic, as if he knew far more than he was saying, even more than Callum would admit to himself. As if it were no great task at all to reach into his very heart and examine his feelings.

The thought was disconcerting. Callum wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know what Thaddeus would see there.

Hawk only sighed. Clearly, they’d been in communication about all of this, while Callum had been left in the dark. “You’d best show me,” the king said.

They did not tryto prevent Callum from accompanying them to the magepool. He’d never seen it; he didn’t want to see it, even now. It was a place for poisonkeepers and kings, not disgraced captains. Not commoners. The guards taking up the rear of the group kept casting anxious glances at one another, and Callum had to suppress the urge to give them a few words of encouragement.

They would not want to hear it from him.

Thaddeus led them deeper into the monastery, down narrow staircases where Callum’s shoulders brushed both walls and into the ancient part of the keep. It was damp here, musty, and Thaddeus sneezed several times before they’d reached the bottom.

At which point he unlocked a door that led to the longest passageway Callum had ever seen. The ceiling was low enough that he had to duck, the walls pressing in on either side. They walked for long enough that he thought they must have exited the outer walls of the city. The only sound was the shuffling oftheir footsteps, and the occasional drop of water splashing to the stone floor.

Not even the rats wanted to hang out here.

At length—great length, during which Callum remembered how late he had been up searching the bars for Laena, how late it had been when he’d finally laid his head down and how he’d stayed awake even longer, afraid to move lest he disturb her sleep—the passage finally opened onto a forest.

This was not like the forest where they’d met the bandits, with young trees and great amounts of underbrush. This forest was old, the trunks wide, with so many leafy vines snaking up them that it was difficult to tell one tree from another. The canopy was so thick, the clearing so dark, that for a moment he wondered whether they’d spent the day in the tunnel and emerged into evening. But the occasional pocket of blue sky told him the afternoon was still young.

This forest did not feel like it was in Aglye at all. A deep, frightened part of Callum’s mind wondered if it was in the Vales at all.

The forest floor here was paved in well-kept stone. No weeds poking up from between the cracks, no vines snaking along the ground.

And straight ahead, up a shallow set of steps, the pool.

It was the size of a small pond, the water too black, too still. It seemed impossible that no branches could have fallen to the surface, no seeds, not even a yellow streak of pollen. The surface didn’t even reflect the trees above; it was a block of uninterrupted obsidian, more like stone than water.

At the far end, a single torch burned, its flame an unnatural purple. It looked so much like Laena’s crystal that Callum could not help but shudder.

“The magepool,” Thaddeus said, his voice little more than a whisper. There was awe in his tone, but it was the kind of frightened awe that promised even the poisonkeeper—thesupposed protector of this place, and of all the Vales—would rather have been somewhere else. Anywhere else.

This was the place where the mages had entered the Vales. Many centuries ago, they’d been driven back by a band of rebellious humans who’d found a way to break their enthrallment just long enough to drive the mages back into the Miragelands.

This was the place, both holy and corrupt, that the poisonkeepers guarded. To prevent the mages from rising again.

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