Page 83 of Prisoner of Darkness and Dreams
“How rude,” I mutter to Damia, playing my part. “Come on, darling.”
I tug her back across the grounds, my skin still singing where her hand clutches mine. When we reach the palace, she grabs my sleeve with a look of excitement and leans in to murmur in my ear.
My desire flares again, and I imagine spiriting her away to our room to continue what we started outside.
“I know how to do it,” she says.
“What?” I ask, intrigued.
“The distraction. We’ll use Barb and her friends. A nest of snakes will cause more than enough chaos on the street to draw people away from the wall.”
“I see,” I reply, trying to process my disappointment.
“Three yards over from where we were, there’s a second bit of wall that isn’t visible from the palace,” she continues. “That’swhere we’ll bring them over.”
I pull back and smile at her, trying to look as triumphant as she does. Of course, that’s where her mind is, and I shouldn’t be surprised. Damia’s already told me many times—she’s a soldier, and she’ll always put the mission first, last, and everywhere in between.
Chapter 27
Leon
“Does it really take this long to bring around horses?” Alastor sighs, tapping his fingers against his knee.
“They’re probably making us wait on purpose,” Mal says darkly. “To punish us for daring to suggest they help us stop a war.”
“Perhaps,” Alastor comments. “Although you think they’d want to see the back of us as soon as possible.”
He’s right. The dryads want us gone, and my guess is their slowness in getting rid of us is simply because they’re not used to the logistics of playing hosts. So here we are, sitting around in the hall of the residences, ready and packed but not yet able to go. Tira and Phaia are discussing the Agathyrian decor while Mal and Alastor exchange complaints.
“Any particular reason you’re so impatient to leave, Alastor?” I ask mildly.
He throws me an annoyed look. “Yes, I have reasons,” he says but doesn’t elaborate. I’m surprised, actually, that he hasn’t brought the subject up to me by now. It’s not in Alastor’s nature to be secretive. As Ana comes in, I make a mental note to speak to him when we have a moment of privacy.
I stand, scanning over Ana to see if everything’s okay. But I don’t really need tolookat her to gauge her mood. I can feel it. Sometimes even before she does.
Right now, she’s sad. Unexpectedly so.
“I was just saying goodbye to Etusca,” she says. “She offered to make the journey back to the border with us, but I turned her down.” She sighs, her shoulder sagging. “It’s harder than I thought it would be to leave her now that we’re trying to mend things.”
“You didn’t get to say a proper goodbye last time when there was so much hurt between you,” I point out. “And when you parted ways before that, you didn’t have any choice in the matter.” Because I’d dragged her out of the palace—but no need to say that. “This is your first time parting when you’re actually on good terms.”
She nods, accepting my explanation.
“Tell me about what happened with you in the meeting,” she says, clearly looking for a distraction. “You had an idea when we were talking about the tokens of Ethira.”
“Ah, yes,” I say, sweeping my eyes across the room, then bringing her to sit down with the others when I’m sure it’s only our party around.
“I was thinking about Caledon looking for the artifacts, and whether he might have found any yet. Then it occurred to me: that’s what Parvus must have been doing at Vastamae.”
Her eyes widen. “Do you think so?”
“Remember Proctor Gallis saying that he’d been searching through the archives? My guess is Caledon sent him there because he wanted to find out about one of Ethira’s artifacts. Either there’s information there about where one of the objects is hidden or maybe they were hoping to find the object itself.”
“You really think it’s possible there was one there, hidden right under our noses?” she asks.
“The Lyceum holds many important magical objects for Filusia, not just books and records,” I explain. “There’s so many secrets buried in that place, they could be holding one of the artifacts and not realize it.”
“Then we have to thank the gods Parvus was killed before he could find anything to take to Caledon,” Ana says.
