“I know I can’t forbid you from helping us, but promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Promise me you won’t be reckless,” I counter.
“I’m never reckless.” He grins, but only to hide his worry. We both know how easily we could lose each other.
He opens the door. Trev stands at the threshold, his fist raised to knock again.
“You couldn’t have delayed her?” Aren asks.
“I did delay her,” Trev says, sounding almost offended.
I think Aren was just harassing him because he gives Trev a brotherly pat on the shoulder as he passes. “Dealing with Lorn makes her short-tempered, I know.”
“She’s in the Mirrored Hall,” Trev calls after us.
Aren waves his hand in acknowledgment, then places it on the small of my back. “Why don’t you go ahead. Taltrayn will want to hear what you have to say, and I want Naito there, too. I’ll bring them both to the hall.”
I nod, but before he leaves, I ask, “Did Shane ever show up?”
Aren’s expression tells me the answer. My heart sinks. Lena sent rebels to search for him, but London is a huge city. If he isn’t at the gate or near the club, they’re not going to just stumble across him.
“I’ll need to look for him,” I say. “He might have left a message at the hotel or he might be in a London hospital.” Or a London morgue, but I don’t let my thoughts linger on that.
He takes my hand, plants a kiss on my palm. “I’ll take you back to Vegas after we talk to Lena.”
He leaves me then, and I make my way to the Mirrored Hall on my own. I’ve never been in it before, but I’ve walked past it a time or two when the doors were open. Atroth only allowed entry to members of his Inner Court, which consisted of a few high nobles, his lord general and sword-master, and a few other select, privileged fae. It definitely wasn’t open to humans.
It’s on the same floor as my room, but the residential wing of the palace is sealed off from the northern wing, which contains the throne room, the administrative offices, and Lena’s apartments. I have to go down a flight of stairs and through a corridor that parallels the statue garden. After I cross the antechamber outside the throne room, I reach another staircase. This one is elaborate, with silver banisters and polished white marble steps. I’m halfway up it when I see Lorn start to descend.
“Ah, so you do live,” he says, his face lighting up with pleasure. At least, I think it’s pleasure. It’s always difficult to tell when Lorn is being sarcastic. “I always thought humans were breakable things, but you’re proving to be quite resilient.”
“Hello, Lorn,” I say, veering to the right, so I can move around him.
“You might want to delay your meeting with Lena,” he says. “She’s in a foul mood.”
“I’m sure you tried your best to cheer her up,” I mutter.
He puts a hand to his chest as if I’ve wounded him. “Of course I did. It’s not my fault she expects so much of me.”
I pause on the same step he’s standing on. “Do you know who’s leading the remnants?”
He gives me his most charming smile. “I know everything, my dear.”
Or he pretends to, at least. In this case, though, I think he does know. If he didn’t, I suspect he’d try to pry the information out of me. No wonder Lena’s mad at him. He’s not giving us the information we need to end this war. Who knows what else he isn’t telling us.
“Bye, Lorn.”
“Have a wonderful day, nalkin-shom,” he calls after me.
I roll my eyes. I want to like Lorn, but sometimes he makes it difficult to believe there’s a caring person beneath the apathetic façade he puts up.
I climb the rest of the steps, then make my way to the Mirrored Hall. The room is lit by hundreds of tiny glass orbs. They hang from the ceiling, throwing their blue-white light over the length of the room. Lena is the only one inside. She’s standing beside a long wooden table with her hands clasped behind her back. She’s not facing me or the doorway, but I think she sees my tiny reflection in the mirror opposite her.
“I’ll kill you if you hurt Aren,” she says without turning.
It’s an empty threat, but I tell her, “I’m not going to hurt him.” I mean it.
A fae enters the hall from a gap that’s almost invisible due to the gilded mirrors covering just about every square inch of the walls. He’s carrying a silver tray with two bottles and an assortment of cheeses and fruits. Most of the latter is cut into cubes and covered with some kind of glaze. The fae sets it down, then asks if Lena wants anything else. She never once looks at him, just shakes her head no.
After he leaves, I say, “You should be nice to the waitstaff.”
I expect her to protest, to say something about the servants being below her station or some other typical, I’m-a-noble-and-he’s-a-peon crap, but she sinks down into a chair.
“I know,” she says. She lets out a breath, and her shoulders sag. “I miss my brother.”
She’s staring at the silver tray, so she doesn’t see my eyes go wide. She’s confiding in me? What am I supposed to do with that? Never mind that I suck at girl talk, she’s Lena. She’s supposed to tolerate me only because she needs my Sight and shadow-reading skills.
“He’d know what to do with the high nobles,” she says.
“He wouldn’t have the problem of convincing them that a woman can sit on the silver throne.”
“True.” She looks up, and I think I see relief in her eyes. I understand it. It’s like she’s onstage every second of her life now. She can’t be anything but confident when she’s in public. Her supporters have to have faith in her. The high nobles can’t see a weakness in her resolve. She shouldn’t even let me see a weakness, but I’m not judging her. She’s exhausted.
“The remnants let you go?” Lena asks, picking up an apple-shaped fruit.
I pull out the chair across from her and sit. “Paige let me go.”
“Naito told us about the serum,” she says. “He told us it’s fatal. I’m sorry.”
My gut twists. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that Paige is dying. She looked perfectly healthy.
“Will the remnants use the serum?” she asks.
“Paige says they won’t. They know it’s fatal now, too.”
“She trusts them?”
I nod. “And she says the remnants didn’t kill the Sighted humans in London.”
She looks up sharply. “We certainly didn’t kill them.”
“I was thinking…” I draw in a breath, hoping I’m not just trying to justify Paige sympathizing with the remnants. “Maybe someone else is involved in all of this. Maybe we’re not fighting the right people.”
She turns the fruit she’s holding in her hand, shining with the blue-white light of the magically lit orbs hanging above us. “Is it wrong to wish for that? If a false-blood was trying to take the throne, I think I could convince the high nobles to approve me.”
“Before I went to London,” I say, “you mentioned you thought you could force them to vote. Did that not work out?”
Lena gives a short, caustic laugh.
“I’m the one postponing the vote now,” she says, setting aside the fruit as if she’s lost her appetite. “I’m at least a vote short of what I need. I thought I had Lord Hison’s support after you shadow-read in Rhigh, but he’s blaming us for the riot at the gate.”
“That started well before Aren and I were there.”
“That’s what I’ve told Hison,” she says. “But his people continue to talk about the human who can call the lightning and walk unhindered through a crowd of rioting fae.”
“They say the nalkin-shom is untouchable.” That’s from Aren, who’s walking into the hall, with Naito at his side.
I am so not amused. “This is your fault.”