Page 98 of Tower of Tempest
Emory’s head snapped to him. “What?”
Loch pressed his fingers to his temple. “The shadow king, he said I needed to find her weakness in order to find her.”
Four sets of eyes turned on me.
“I-I don’t know,” I sputtered. “I’m starting to think I didn’t knowmy gran at all. Certainly not any weaknesses she might have.” If Gran had escaped, I had no clue where she’d gone.
She could’ve fled to the human lands or gone into hiding in the Dragonstone Mountains or the Frost Mountains, somewhere not heavily populated.
I groaned. At least when we thought she was in the shadow court, we had a specific location. Now I had no idea where she might be, which meantI was never going to find her. Despair swallowed me up.
“Hey, don’t start spiraling,” Loch said. “We’ll figure this out.”
His gentle words broke through that building despair and threaded it with the smallest amount of hope. “How?” I asked.
“Was there anything your gran loved?” Emory asked. “Anything she mentioned that she truly cared about?”
My mind reeled with memory after memory of me and Gran, filtering through everything I knew about her, everything she’d revealed of herself over the years. “She loved flowers,” I said, grasping.
Emory grabbed a journal and pen from the shelf and scribbled into it.
“So the earth court, maybe?” Leoni asked.
“That’s a stretch,” Loch said. “There’s pretty flowers everywhere.”
“Well, the water court isn’t known for their greenery,” Emory commented, “and neither is my home, the frost court.” She frowned down at the journal that she’d just written in. “But he’s right. It’s definitely not enough to go on.”
That helpless feeling began rising again, and Loch shot me a gentle smile.
“Besides, you said the shadow king mentioned a weakness,” Leoni said. “Flowers wouldn’t be a weakness.”
I bit my lip. She was right.
Driscoll leaned forward. “Maybe it would help if we talked about our own weaknesses? Except me. I don’t have one. Obviously.”
Leoni wrinkled her nose. “Your weakness is your mouth.”
Driscoll raised his nose. “Well, your weakness is rules. Ms. Goody Two Shoes has to follow the rules at any cost.”
Loch pinched the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t helping.”
“What’s Prince Lochlan’s weakness?” Emory asked.
Driscoll’s gaze flicked to me. “Well, that’s easy.”
Loch cleared his throat. “Can we focus on Poppy’s gran?—”
“It’s obvious to anyone who has eyes,” Driscoll said, waggling his eyebrows in my direction.
I wasn’t Loch’s weakness. I was just his latest conquest. Surely Driscoll saw that.
“Wait a minute.” Leoni snapped her fingers. “That’s it. Poppy. Your gran’s weakness isn’t flowers.”
The journal dropped from Emory’s hand and thumped against the stone floor. She turned her wide ice-blue eyes on me. “It’s you.”
I stepped back at that. “I doubt it. She kidnapped me and kept me in a tower my entire life. Why would she ever do something like that? She always told me it was to protect me. But clearly that was a lie. She had to have hated my parents, had to have hated me.”
Emory shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. If there’s anything I’ve learned from studying history, from learning about vengeance and anger, it’s those who are seeking both don’t let it end there. They cause pain. Torture. Death.” She tapped her chin. “Your gran might have hated the king and queen of the sky court, but if she’d hated you, she would’ve killed you or hurt you. Why did she never go back to the shadow court and claim her crown? Why not challenge this new king?”
