Page 299 of Night's Fall
I hastened to them too.
After we embraced,Ilooked toGayle. “Yourmom?”
“She refused to come up.Somehow, she got her hands on a coupleMedi-Aidsand she’s slapping those babies on anyone who has the faintest bruise.”
Gods,IadoredMrs.Vinestrong.
“Did either of you seeSirk?”Iasked.
Cat nodded. “Isaw him.Hewas helping to load wounded onto ambu-lifts.”
Okay.
All nine were good.
I could relax, at least a little.
“Now that we’re all together, can someone tell meIhad a drug slipped into my drink andI’mhallucinating the fact that there are a slew of dead trolls with blast holes strewn all over the west garden of theCelestialPalace?”Catdrawled.
“I wishIcould,”Itold her.
“I can’t believe you flew,”Gaylesaid.
I shrugged. “They’ddownedAleksei.”
“Wow.Really?” she asked, obviously having missed that part.
“He was down for less than five seconds,”QueenCalisaannounced.Shenarrowed her gaze on me. “Ifit wasn’t so magnificent what you did,Laura,Iwould be lecturing you on how tremendously foolish it was, you doing it without a hint of training.”
“What it was, was fuckingepic,”Timotheemuttered.
The queen whirled on him and snapped, “Timothee.”
“Mom, you said it yourself,” he retorted.
AlthoughIfelt the breakthroughTimandIhad in the mural room strengthening, andIthought that was awesome, there were other, more important things afoot.
“What’d you do?”Catasked me.
“One of the trolls that downedLexis fish food, for starters,”Timtold her.
Cat,GayleandMoniqueall gaped at me.
We’d get into that later.
“Um, can we talk about the trolls”—and not me—“for a bit?”Irequested.
“I would like to talk about that too,”QueenCalisasniffed. “Butsince they haven’t been sighted in nearly eight hundred years, until tonight,Idon’t have that first clue what to say.”
“Credits to croissants, those demons up at theEdgehave been breeding them forforever,”Catremarked.
This would be my guess.
But wouldn’tTanynhave known about that?
Though, perhaps not, considering he was banished fromBergCastlewhen he was only a year old and confined on an island until he was old enough to go to school.Andhe’d famously never been let back into theCastle, or his father’s orbit, even if he’d been given a prince’s education, and he and his mother lived in a citadel on the island that wasn’t a castle, as such, but it was nothing to sneeze at.
“Timothee, your mother needs a brandy, if you would be so kind,”QueenCalisaordered.
