Page 124 of Moonmarked

“On the contrary. I think you were made for it, Nilah. I honestly count myself lucky to have ever come across you in the first place.”

Something about hiswords.

“I’m going to go now, and I’m going to clean up and rest. And when I wake up, I’m going to call for you, Lyall. We’re going to sit down and talk.”

This surprised him, but he recovered less than a second later. Nodded deeply, his hand to his chest.

“Call for me whenever you’re ready, and I will come.”

“Good.” I stepped closer to the door, pushed down the handle. “Good luck planning your coming back to life, then.”

I slipped inside the room, but I almostheardhim smile in the air as his lips stretched.

“Thank you, beautiful Nilah,” I thought he whispered when I closed the door.

And finally, I was alone.

forty

I bathed alone,scrubbed my skin raw, then sat in the water that refused to get cold so long as I was in it. I stayed there for possibly an hour, crying. Letting it all out. Coming back to myself.

That’s exactly what it felt like—coming back to myself,like I hadn’t been me in that jail cell since I saw my bird. Like something had shifted, both inside me and in the world, but now I was okay. I could think clearly. I was no longer in that slightlynumbedstate. I was just me, and I remembered.

I didn’t cry just for what Rune had to go through and for thinking he was dead.

I also cried about being dragged to that jail cell unconscious, for the pain I felt when I thought Rune was dead, even if I never actually admitted it to myself, for the hopelessness I felt, for Lyall, who was not at all the man I thought he’d grown up to be. For the life of that man with the mask in his pocket—who’d come tosaveme.

My God, he hadn’t come to kill me at all, he’d come to save me, and the fact that he made it all the way to my cell,and Lyall so conveniently found him and killed him just before he spoke to me…

I cried for the other jail cells outside of the one I had been in, that I’d completely ignored while walking back here with Lyall. I cried for the three people I’d seen in them, lying on the floor, in the corners, in the dark, watching us as we passed, unable to even move properly. I’d ignored them then because I hadn’t been strong enough to acknowledge them yet, but in that tub, I did.

In that tub, I came to terms with a lot of things I’d been running from since they brought me back here to the Seelie Court.

The room hadn’t changed a bit, not a thing out of place, and even though I knew that someone had actually been to this very bed and had pulled the pillows up and had searched the sheets, I had no choice but to lie down and sleep because I needed to clear my head.

I did sleep a little, but the moment the sun fell on my face through the windows, I was wide awake.

And God help me, I knew exactly what I was going to do.

When I toldthe guards to take me to see the prince, they didn’t hesitate. I thought he might be asleep considering the sun had come up not an hour ago, but the soldiers nodded and moved ahead, and now we were walking up the stairs to the eighth floor.

I was fully dressed in pants and a shirt, my hair still a bit wet from the bath because the chambermaids hadn’t been there to dry it with their hands like usual. I didn’t mind. Couldn’t if I tried because there were too many things going through my mind right now.

I expected the guards to take me back to Lyall’s bedroom, the same room where I saw him for the first time when I healed him and he woke up. The same place where he faked his death.

They didn’t, though. Instead, we walked down hallways and through a narrow corridor with no windows and no paintings on its walls, which was strange for the palace. I’d gotten so used to seeing the windows and flowers and vivid paintings everywhere I went, and I never realized it until I walked down that corridor, toward the single door at the end, so polished it reflected our silhouette as we approached. The lanterns on the walls at its side burned with golden fae magic.

The guard didn’t knock, didn’t wait for an invitation, simply pulled the door open and stepped aside to let me through. No words, no instruction, which was the usual, but when I went through and they closed the door behind me without following, that certainly was a bit strange. Those soldiers had loved to play my shadow for days now, but they weren’t going to follow me in here?

Then I looked around me and I saw wherein herewas.

A wide space that could have been a lot of things but was most likely an office. It had a large desk made out of rich brown wood, decorated with golden vines around the legs and the corners. On the shiny tabletop, a golden crown seemed to have been carved out of the wood underneath, and it looked real enough to touch if I focused hard enough.

Bookshelves lined most of the walls, full of books and scrolls and these small figurines that glowed golden. On the rest were paintings of landscapes, a beautiful fireplace shaped like the head of a feline animal with large fangs coming out of its upper jaw. Maybe a sabertooth tiger? It was my best guess, and the artwork was incredible. Fireburned atop the tiger’s tongue and at the back of its throat, and every line carved on the pale stone was done exactly right.

Come to think of it, every detail in this place was precise and perfectly arranged, and itscreamedLyall’s name.

On the left, high arching windows let in slants of golden light across dark polished floors. The fire seemed to give off no warmth, just a flickering light against the silver and gold ornaments. Above it, a rack of ceremonial blades was displayed on the wall like art.

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