Page 64 of Enchanted Heir
Ididn’t bother asking Owen to ring for Silvia. I just got myself into a blue day dress and tried to listen to Owen and Krew’s conversation in the process, but it was too muffled from Krew’s lavatory to hear anything. That meant either they were talking quietly, or they had a sound barrier up.
Showered and dressed, I threw my hair into a quick braid and headed in to see what was going on. This morning had started out great. How had everything taken such a dark turn?
Sure enough, there was a sound barrier up. I stepped into the room, finding nothing was broken, so that was the good news. As soon as I hit the barrier, it immediately fell, but then Owen just put up another one as I walked through the door.
Krew was sitting at the table near the window with a bag of ice before him, and his coffee had been replaced with a small glass of whiskey.
“Hey,” Owen said gently from where he lounged on the couch, hands behind his head. “You okay?”
I shrugged. “I’m not honestly sure.”
Krew’s eyes met mine and stayed there. “You’re not doing it.”
I put up my hands. “I’m not saying I should, but he also did have a point, Krew. Your father is going to find out something is going on out there. He has too many eyes in this castle. And it’d look better coming from us than someone else.”
He downed the whiskey in one gulp.
I pulled out the chair next to him and sat down. “Wouldn’t it make the most sense to check my blood first to make sure I’m not some strange anomaly, and then present the information to your father? Don’t send him on a wild hunt until we know for certain there’s not much he will find?”
Krew gripped the glass hard. “But I do not trust anyone, not a single soul, to go near your blood, love. That is the problem.”
“So don’t use one of his scientists,” I offered. “Find someone else.”
“I don’t trust Hatchet’s either,” he snapped.
I cocked my head. “So use a doctor in Nerede. They can run whatever tests you’d like. And with a handsome tip, they’d be sure to keep quiet about it.”
Krew grunted.
“That’s not a bad idea, Krew,” Owen chipped in. “You could do it when you go to the Harvest Festival.”
“But we will surely have to take some of father’s men with us,” Krew argued.
“So I can give a vial or sample to my mother and have her do it for us,” I offered. “Surely the bakery is too small to have so many bodies crammed in at once. I should be able to slip it to her at some point.”
Owen snapped his fingers. “And she could also have Hattie give a sample. That’s brilliant! We’d have something to compare it to.”
“Hattie?” I asked, confused. What would the director of the orphanage have to do with this?
Krew stayed quiet, his jaw flexing with anger as Owen provided, “She also has Iron Will, Jorah.”
Oh.I remembered my mother saying she knew of someone who also had Iron Will, and I had assumed she meant a child, not Hattie. But that made a lot more sense knowing how Krew felt about protecting Warrick. When I had first figured everything out, he’d told me the reason I wasn’t dead already was because I had Iron Will.
Krew let out a sigh. “So we trust someone we barely know to do this? With both Hattie and Jorah’s blood?”
I shrugged. “The people of Nerede tore the words ‘Iron Will’ out of their vocabularies to protect their children. I trust them more with this than someone who has favor to gain in either Savaryn or Kavan Keep.”
“I still do not like it, but it is not my choice to make.” Krew said the words quietly, looking out the window and not at me. The sunshine was on his chest and face, yet he still looked so utterly miserable. If he were a portrait, he’d be called “Handsome Misery.”
I gave my head a shake. “Don’t you wish to know why my blood is doing this? Aren’t you even remotely curious?”
He looked back into my eyes. “Of course, but I didn’t ever wish for you to be drug further into this.”
“I drug myself further into it when I tried to run,” I reminded him. “But if you’d like for me to go home and stay away from the forest, I can do that too. I don’t wish to leave the forest now that I know I can somehow help heal it, but if it is what you think is best, or if it is what you need, then we can stage some sort of disagreement and I can go.”
He shook his head. “Not if I need you to help calm things down in Nerede.”
I cocked my head. “So we are at an impasse, My Prince.”
