Page 61 of Luca

I frowned, looking to Cair for context. My mate gritted his fangs as if he was trying to keep a specific detail hidden, but after another insistent eyebrow raise, he sighed. “The poison that killed you was Father’s,” he growled, the tie between our souls trembling with rage. “He was the one who sent the reapers.”

“Holy shit,” I murmured. Though… why did that revelation seem almost anticlimactic? As if I’d already known, and just hearing it aloud was like confirmation that a theory loitering in the back of my mind had been right all along. I mean, the king was transparent in his disdain for me, and I’d stressed over his capabilities with my mate more than once, but that wasn’t it. It was a voice, a sentence rattling around my brain, growing more and more coherent.

“You never know who’s in the shadows, waiting to pounce.”

The lightbulb flared. “Maeve.”

“What?”

“The day we left, Maeve warned me that this was going to happen,” I revealed before staring off to the side, a disbelieving scoff whipping out of me.

That sneaky little… She had smirked in my face as she’d agreed to my deal not to tell the king about our journey, all while she already knew about the plot on my life. Technically, she didn’t lie, but she must have had a real villain giggle to herself later on. Actually, it was probably my fault for not picking up the clues. She may have said something to that effect too, but the exact details were foggy.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cair asked, urging my attention back to him. He didn’t seem disappointed, but there was a slight snarl tugging at his lips, which suggested he was concealing irritation. It wasn’t directed at me, though.

“I thought it was another one of her idle threats, a way to get under my skin. She didn’t outright mention your father, so I didn’t think it worth mentioning. I’d just wanted to forget about that whole interaction at the time.”

She had threatened to kill us both, and Teighan, if I let slip about the whole dagger malarky, so I’d been a little preoccupied with that to ponder any hidden meaning in her words. I also distinctly remembered already being on edge because I was finally leaving the palace. Lapses in focus were to be expected.

Cair cursed under his breath. “I will wring her neck if she is involved.”

“If she is, then she’s playing both sides,” I said, struggling to stifle the note of awe in my tone. “Carrying out the king’s scheme while working covertly to ensure its failure? That would take a lot of nerve, even for someone as brazen as Maeve.” I shrugged. I wanted to know her motives, of course I did, but whether she was with us or against us, it wasn’t of great importance now. There was no point in digging deeper and riling Cair up when answers wouldn’t be forthcoming. It could be shelved for later. “Whatever her reasoning, if I had listened to her, this wouldn’t have happened. She wanted me alive, and even if she was under orders to help assassinate me, that fact can’t be overlooked.”

My mate released a heavy sigh. “I shall confront her in due course. Orian too. If my sister knew, chances are, my brother was associated in some capacity. They are both my father’s closest confidantes, after all.”

“Orian didn’t know.”

Cair tilted his head. “How can you be so sure?”

“I…” I hesitated. “Guess I can’t, but he offered to help me find my dad before the door appeared in the library. Orian may be a lot of things, but he doesn’t strike me as the type to offer niceties under false pretences. I don’t think he has the same inclination for deception as Maeve or your father. Not saying he’s incapable—or had the choice to refuse—but if he’d known, I truly believe he would have avoided me completely rather than feign cluelessness.”

Unless he was a better actor than I give him credit for. Who knew?

“Hm, I agree that his nature is to be avoidant rather than bothering with all the unnecessary theatrics, and you are an intelligent creature.” He grazed his thumb across the back of my hand. “You can read people better than anyone I’ve ever seen. If my brother has a hidden conniving streak, he will have misled us all.”

“Still, if it eases you, you should talk to them when we return.”

Cair nodded, and I was content knowing it would be resolved eventually.

“Why would the king send us here, though?” I asked, glancing at Zadok—who’d observed our interaction silently, and with avid engrossment. “He could’ve killed me at the palace. Or did he not want to dirty the floors?”

The older Fae hung his head in shame. “I created the poison for him over a hundred years ago,” he admitted. “He wanted to make sure to punish me too.”

NowthatI hadn’t expected.

He really was fucking unhinged.

“I’m sorry,” Zadok muttered, visibly distressed. “I never meant to?—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I assured him, hoping he picked up on my sincerity. “He’s the one who should be sorry, though I know finding an ounce of remorse in the king is as likely as getting shit from a rocking horse.” He’d probably double-down and kill me again to be sure his point was made. “You’re not to blame, and you should never have been forced to feel like you were.”

Cair nodded in agreement.

“In a roundabout way, I’m glad he did what he did.” I shrugged, snorting at Cair’s bewildered expression. “Not killing me, that was too much, but leading me to you…” I gazed up at Zadok again, who seemed on the cusp of shedding tears. “We wouldn’t have found you otherwise. We saw your name on a ledger, then there was a diary that mentioned this place, and we went off that.”

His face stuttered over the worddiary, but he recovered quickly. “Ah yes. The ledger he made me keep of all the creatures he deemed a threat to the throne. Those written in there typically ended up banished or killed.”

My brow furrowed. “You wrote your own name? Even the last entry?”

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