Page 122 of Moonmarked

White noise in my ears.

He thought the woman who gave me that knife had attacked me.

He thought the man who broke that lock had come to kill me, and…he hadn’t.

My eyes closed and his face was there in the very center. He hadn’t looked like he was here to attack me. He’d smiled. He’d been about to speak.

“I’m so glad I got here in time,” Lyall was whispering, shaking his head as he looked at the knives in his hands. So clearly in distress. Nervous. Pissed off.

Tooclearly, perhaps?

For the life of me I couldn’t bring myself to either believe his reaction was completely genuine or that he was faking it.

It doesn’t matter,I reminded myself. “This day,” I said, shaking my head, rubbing my eyes. “This whole day, Lyall, was wrong. Rune was never supposed to be in the Hollow.”

Suddenly he was in front of me again, the knives gone, probably in his pocket.

“He wasn’t,” he said. “I…I keep thinking…I should have never sent him down there—never. Just that there was nobody else I could trust, Nilah. I’ll never forgive myself. He was my friend. I knew him a lifetime. I’llneverforgive myself for sending him down there.”

Tears in his eyes.

I realized Lyall didn’t know that Rune was alive.

Well, fuck.

“I’m so sorry,” he said another three times, more like he was speaking to himself than me. Hedefinitelydidn’t know that Rune was still alive.

I looked out at the sky again for a moment, at a loss for what to do next.

“And I’m sorry that you were dragged down here in this hole—I will make it up to you, Nilah. It’s over now.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he looked at me again, they were dry. He looked…composed. “Everything is over. He was the last one. I no longer have to pretend to be dead. Everything can finally go back to normal.”

Normal,he said.

I moved without really realizing it, and I found myself in front of the barred opening, eyes searching the dark sky for the bird that I knew wouldn’t be there. Other than some lights in the distance, I couldn’t really see anything from here, not even on which side of the palace we were.Ifwe were even in the palace still. Whoever had hit me on the back of my head, they’d done a very thorough job. I’d passed out right away and I hadn’t heard or seen anything at all before I woke up.

So many things rushed through my mind at once, and I wasn’t certain about most of it, but I was very sure about one: I wasnotgoing to tell Lyall about Rune. I was not going to mention the bird, simply because if Rune was capable of sending me that message, he’d have sent one to Lyall, too. That he hadn’t could only mean that he didn’t want to.

And maybe I was just making this whole thing up. Maybe my instincts were off and maybe I’d felt too much in such a short time—maybe.But if Rune wanted Lyall to know, he’d find his way to him. He knew this palace. He would know how to find him at any time.

“How do you know?” I asked, and again, I surprised myself with my own voice.

I sounded detached. Trulycold,like Lyall accused me of being just a couple of days ago.

“Know what?”

“That he was the last one. How do you know there aren’t more?”

“The seer saw all four men behind those masks,” Lyall said.

I paused together with my heart. “Men?”

“Yes, men. And I have now killed the fourth.”

I looked at the open cell door, at the golden mask on the floor.

Was his seer lying to him, I wondered, or did she simply not know?

Because that knife was given to me by a woman, not a man.

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