Page 160 of A Warrior's Fate

Once again, he didn’t answer, but Isla figured it wouldn’t be long before her mate walked through the hotel room door.

She shook her head as if to clear it. It was nice having him there, but was linking with your mate supposed to feel like that? So…invasive? It hadn’t been that way when they shifted.

While she waited for Kai, Isla inched back to the edge of the mattress. There was a scent coming from the blood on the diadem, but it wasn’t one she recognized. It was dry and flecked onto her skin as she picked it up, just as gentle as she had its twin in the alleyway. Flakes of red fell like snow across the white of the blankets. As its other half, the crown was silver and gold and bejeweled with black crystal, sister to the dagger. It was clear where the two pieces had been severed, the metal jagged and caved in.

Isla pictured bringing the two pieces together, envisioning them whole—but that image was still incomplete. Another piece was missing. One last ornament, another large jewel perhaps, was absent from its center.

There was a creak, and Isla snapped her head in the doorway’s direction. Kai peeked his head through first, and for a second, all faded and washed away. It was just him and the way she felt for him. But the moment was brief, as it needed to be.

“He isn’t here,” Isla reminded him quietly, catching how he’d been training his eyes across the room. When he broke the threshold inside, she motioned to close the door behind him, to which he obliged.

“Where is he?” Kai’s voice was just as soft as hers. He took a glance back at the bathroom—nose twitching at the wafting of smoke—before his eyes honed on the papers strewn along the bed.

“I don’t know,” Isla said. “All of his stuff is still here.”

“And there’s blood on the door.”

So he’d also noticed.

“I think it could be his. But his scent is everywhere here, and we went on a twenty-mile hike today. He could’ve hurt himself.”

“He would heal.” Kai sifted through the papers on the bed.

He was right. If it was small enough, if he’d returned to the hotel rather than be looked at by a medic, he would be virtually unscathed.

Isla held back her sigh, hating that worry rose in her chest for her boorish ex-lover.

“Look at the bureau,” Isla told Kai. She cradled the crown, nearly hiding it in her clasped hands as if she felt the subconscious urge to protect it. Like it was calling her to.

Kai glanced up at her and then did as she said.

“It’s a map,” she added, trailing his movement. “Of here. Do you know what those lines mean? Are they roads or paths? Or anything about why those spots are circled?”

Before he picked up the map, Kai lifted the identification card for “Edriel” and cursed under his breath. The parchment crinkled as he took it in his hands and turned to her, leaning against the furniture as he read it over. “Nothing strange comes to mind. Just land, roads, shops, houses, temples.”

“And they all lead to the Wall.”

A muscle feathered Kai’s jaw, and he shook his head. “It looks that way.”

Isla spun to face him fully. “What are you thinking?”

“That I trust a bak more than I trust Alpha Cassius.”

Isla gulped.

Alpha Cassius—no longer her alpha, as he’d used to say. Now she was only a few rungs below their high ruler in the hierarchy and even held superior to her own father.

Or at least, she would be after her coronation.

She felt her fingers tremble. She’d need to talk to him, to Sebastian, to Adrien, tell them she—

“What is that?”

Isla lifted her gaze to Kai. He focused on the piece in her hand, glinting with a singular stream of light.

“It’s a diadem—or half of one,” she answered.

Kai pushed off the bureau to come closer. “You found this in here?” Isla nodded. “And seeing this scared you so much that I could feel it?”

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