With a gasp, Addie bent forward again to let her stomach empty whatever was left into the grass.
“Oh my,” an oddly familiar voice made her spin with the bile still dripping, shoulder throbbing at the sudden movement. Lady Isylte Aphapia stood in the meadow a couple of feet away and reached into her pocket to extract a handkerchief. “That’s not a good way to spend your night, dear.”
Addie froze to the spot as she beheld the woman whom she had seen countless times in Lady Linniue’s chambers. Linniue’s friend, she remembered. She glanced up at Lady Isylte, who seemed to have no idea who she was, that she had brought her tea and cookies again and again back in Eedwood. Just a lady trying to help a young woman in need, Addie told herself. Lady Isylte had grieved for Linniue when she had heard about the sudden death. Addie knew from what Armand had told her.
So Addie didn’t find it in her to do anything but grab that bundle of fabric she was holding out to her and give the lady a nod of thanks before she doubled over again.
What was wrong with her?
“Did you eat the fish for dinner, dear?” Lady Isylte asked with a smile on her lips as Addie peeked up over her shoulder, hoping she wasn’t still watching how she retched and nothing came up. “I had my dinner brought to my chambers, and when I smelled that fish…” She made a gesture that seemed to mean she tossed the whole meal out the window.
She shook her head, catching her braid with her free hand, then waited a moment to be sure she wouldn’t crumble the instant she straightened. But the horrible cramp in her stomach subsided to a dull edge of discomfort while the throbbing in her shoulder continued.
“I had the soup,” Addie said, hoping Lady Isylte would remain oblivious of whom she was aiding.
Isylte fashioned an expression of shock and placed her hand on her chest.
“Oh my, now I am worried I will spend the rest of the night the same as you are now.” She chuckled with motherly warmth, something that Addie hadn’t seen for she couldn’t remember how long.
“I don’t think it’s the food,” Addie noted and wiped her mouth again.
Lady Isylte stepped closer, holding out her arm, wisdom flickering in her eyes. “Let me help you back to your rooms,” she offered. “I know just how horrible that type of nausea can be.” She winked. “Trust me. I went through two pregnancies, and each was worse than the other.
For a moment, Addie considered telling the woman that there was no way in Hel’s realm that she was pregnant, but then, the alternative … speaking the truth of the scar burning in her shoulder, the way the pain made her nauseous so much that she wanted to just sink to the ground and curl up in a ball wasn’t a possibility. Addie managed a faint smile. “I think all I need is a bath.” She met Lady Isylte’s gaze and managed to ignore how the lady had not even ignored her when she had served Linniue. Bile rose again at the thought of the lady who had carved her up. “I should get back to the palace.”
Addie slowly made her way away from the tree that had been holding her weight, looping her arm around the lady’s arm instead.
“I don’t think I saw you at the solstice,” the lady said as they made it up to the gate so painfully slowly that Addie thought she was going to fall to her knees.
“I was; left early,” Addie truthfully said.
“I am Lady Isylte Aphapia of Ilaton,” the lady said and slowed her pace as Addie’s stomach threatened to turn again. “But you can call me Isylte. You are growing into a very important role, and we women must stick together during those times.” She let her gaze wander down to where Addie’s other hand was clutching her stomach.
“Adrienne,” Addie offered her given name, which no one had called her since her aunt Adrienne, who she was named after, had died.
The lady offered a smile.
Addie mustered another smile in return, not trusting herself to speak without embarrassing herself as her stomach clenched. For a moment, their footfalls and the canopy of night were the only sounds filling the warm summer air.
The guards inclined their heads as they walked into the shelter of the torch-lit hallway. “Where are your chambers?” Isylte finally asked when they arrived at the staircase.
“Third floor, residential part of the palace in the northwest,” Addie managed to say. She had marked the exact location the first day Gandrett had brought her there, a habit from her time as a servant—a slave—at Eedwood Castle.
Isylte nodded. “That’s my direction, too. Convenient.”
Addie pressed a hand to her angry stomach, ignoring the throbbing in her shoulder that had become more a steady pulse of pain. She needed to get to Gandrett’s rooms, and fast.
Half-down the hallway, Isylte studied her from the side and stopped. “Let’s take a shortcut,” she suggested. You don’t look like you’ll make it up the long path without any … accidents.”
Addie turned to face her, reading nothing but concern on the lady’s face—and nodded again. “I need to get within range of a bathing room.” As if to confirm, her stomach made a sound that was a clear threat that it was about to empty itself if she didn’t hurry. “Lead the way,” she ground out, and as Lady Isylte turned into a narrow hallway, Addie didn’t hesitate to follow.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Nehelon wondered what he was doing as he found himself at Gandrett’s door late at night.
To inquire about the training-progress with Addie, he told himself. To find out if the girl had had more sequences of those pains and summons. He had been doing some research on his own while he tasked Gandrett with equipping Addie with the basics of self-defense. Not that it would help her much if what he suspected was what they were going up against, what he had figured out with Lord Tyrem and the Prince of Sives.
The double-doors came closer, no matter how much he slowed his pace, as if he himself was drawn by an invisible thread. Just for a moment, he decided, and then he’d leave her be. At least if he handed her the note, which he had been playing with inside his pocket, which he had been debating giving her for a while, she wouldn’t question why he had really come—for the sole selfish reason of wanting to see her face. No matter how cold those moss-green eyes turned whenever they looked his way these days.
“Come in,” her voice sounded from behind the carved wood as he knocked, paper rustling, fabric sighing.
He opened the door slowly, even by human measures, as if buying himself more time would make it any easier. To his surprise, he found Gandrett sitting cross-legged on her bed, a book in one hand, a silver butter knife in the other, her features alert, body—even when in such a casual position, coiled to leap and incapacitate him. And for any human, the knife in her hand would pose a threat, but for a Fae—
He allowed a grin onto his lips, keeping the rest of his face a bit bored as he prowled across the room and sat on the sofa. He crossed an ankle over a knee as he leaned back, noting Gandrett’s gaze following him with the ferocity of the fighter she was. “Good to see you, too.”
“What do you want?” she asked by way of greeting, her tone making the room ice over. Nehelon wondered if her magic was playing a part in it.
He gestured at the knife still in her hand. “What’s that?” It reminded him oddly of what he had spotted on the table at the solstice celebrations.
Gandrett shrugged and slid the knife under her pillow. “Anything can be a weapon if you know how to use it.” She held up the heavy-looking book in her other hand as if to prove a point, and Nehelon knew very well that she wouldn’t hesitate to fling it at him if he as much as said a wrong word. He had chosen all the wrong words at the solstice, had said it had been nothing, that dance, the way he had spoken, the way he had tried to lure her in to look at him—just once—the way he needed her to look at him. And it had been a truth—a half-truth. That it had been nothing. Nothing compared to what could have happened. What he had wanted to happen. And worse, he had let her believe that he regretted kissing her in the forest that day. That it had been a mistake, was the truth, and t
he gods damn him, he wished he could lie. But he had left out the reason why it had been a mistake, and that had been enough for her to jump to conclusions, forgetting the fire that had burned in his own eyes, that he had let surface as he had breathed in her scent, had let himself near her—to nearly allow himself to hide any physical reaction. And now, he was paying the price for it.
“I am fully confident you can decapitate a lesser man with that,” he jerked his chin at the book, ignoring her answering frown, and scanned the room for signs of Addie.
Beside where he was sitting on the sofa, a folded up blanket and a fluffed pillow were stacked; two empty cups sat on the small table before him. Addie’s scent mercifully filled the room, diluting Gandrett’s exquisite fragrance and sparing Nehelon from the full impact of its draw. “Where is Addie?” He listened for sounds in the bathing room, but there was nothing but the hum of voices on the levels above and below.
“She went for a walk with Armand,” Gandrett said, fanning the book before her face as if to remind him that she was armed. He stifled the urge to laugh. There was humor in her anger—endearing almost. Her hair thick and half-dried, the chestnut strands sun-bleached in places, hung freely over her shoulders down to her waist, tangling a bit as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it out after washing it. He swallowed, the words already forming on his tongue … words he could not speak.
Instead, he schooled his features into a neutral expression and slid a hand into his pocket to fish out the note. “I brought you something.” He held it up.
Gandrett made no sign of intending to get to her feet. “What is it?”
“A note.” He waved it before his chest.
Gandrett rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”
For a moment, she just stared at him in silence, nothing like the way she had looked at him with glazed eyes in that tent at the solstice. He shoved the memory into the darkest pit of his mind he could find and asked, “Don’t you want to know what it says?”
He himself had had trouble not running to her the moment he’d gotten the note. If she knew how long he’d kept it from her, she wouldn’t hesitate to fling that book at him—not that she stood a chance at landing a blow. Not with the book. But with her magic—
“Read it to me,” she ordered in a voice that sounded equally bored as her face since it mirrored his own expression.
Nehelon debated making her come get the note and read it herself, but after everything he had done to that girl, he could read one note, couldn’t he? So he swallowed the impulse to roar at her and made his voice as uninterested as possible as he read, “My friend, Andrew Brayton, arrived at my priory in good health and with many questions regarding a group of people burning down the villages in the north. After what you reported in your messages…” He paused, debating whether or not to read the rest. But had he handed the note over, she would have seen the full contents, and he had been aware of it. Had even wanted it just to give her something—even if he was forbidden to speak about it. So Nehelon straightened a bit and continued, “After what you reported in your messages, I want to inform you that you are not the only one. I have received word from my Children of Vala that something is on the rise in the west as well. And it will soon be time for you to return.”
Gandrett’s eyes shone. “He’s safe. He’s truly safe,” she whispered. And from the way her words trembled even then, Nehelon knew that not knowing for sure if Andrew had arrived at the priory had been a weight on Gandrett’s thoughts.
“He is.” He studied her, waiting for her to digest the rest of the note—the part that wasn’t as important to her as her brother but that would impact all of Neredyn.
And slowly, so slowly, her face fell as she understood.
“The west,” she said. A question, Nehelon understood a moment later, as her eyes held his gaze in silent request.
Nehelon nodded. “It seems that Sives is not the only region in Neredyn to be haunted by forces of evil.”
“What do you mean?” Gandrett’s face was guarded as if she was trying to read between his words.
“As the message says, apparently there have been reports of other forces than the Shygon cult which are active in the west.”
“In the west of Sives?” Gandrett dropped her book on the pillow and unfolded her long legs to sit at the edge of the bed and looked at him as if that wasn’t really what she was asking.
“In the west,” he repeated, unable to say more.
But Gandrett read it in his eyes. “Of Neredyn. The west of Neredyn,” she concluded. “Ulfray.” She slowly got to her feet as if she wasn’t really aware of it. “Something is stirring in Ulfray.”
He didn’t need to nod to confirm she had guessed right.
“Return where?” she asked, sudden alarm in her voice.
Nehelon eyed her with as much care on his features as he could as he let her figure it out.
“You are returning to Ulfray.”
The throbbing in Addie’s shoulder got worse with every step they took up the stairs. She had long stopped trying to mark the path they were taking, clinging onto Isylte’s arm, heavy like a sack of flour.
“Not far,” the lady whispered, the sound bouncing off the stone walls in hissing reflections. “Almost there, dear.”
Addie tried to nod. It had gotten so much worse, making her vision swim as she set foot after foot. And there was the silent chant in her head that dragged her forward even when her mind told her to run the other direction. It had started as they climbed the stairs. A circular staircase that seemed to take them up and above any level of the palace that was inhabitable. If Addie could tell anything through the haze that was forming in her mind, it was that Isylte wasn’t taking her to Gandrett’s room.
“Where are we going?” she demanded through clenched teeth, biting back the pain as the narrow staircase began to sway before her.
“Let me worry about that, dear,” Isylte chirped, her breathing labored from pulling Addie up the stairs, and her grip on Addie’s arm tightened.
“I want to go back,” Addie retorted, attempting to brace her feet against the steps, but Isylte dragged her on, making her stumble and her shins slither over the sharp stone.
“There is no going back from this, dear,” the lady said, her voice a hiss as she bore all of Addie’s weight, dragging her on and on.
Fear was now blazing alongside the searing pain as Addie sucked in a deep breath and screamed … screamed for help, for Gandrett, for Armand, for anyone to come to her aid.
But Isylte just laughed a melodious laugh as she kept towing Addie up and up. “We crossed the wards a long time ago, dear. You can scream as much as you want. Your heroes won’t hear you.”
Heroes? Yes, that’s what they were, indeed. Gandrett would wonder, at some point, where she was and start looking for her. Gandrett was smart. The smartest woman she knew, the bravest, the most cunning. So she would not shy away from whatever dark corner Isylte was bringing her to.
“The god of dragons doesn’t forget,” Isylte said and laughed.
Addie tried to find control over her limbs enough to tear out of the woman’s grasp, to land a hook as Gandrett had taught her. Her left arm was free … if she could just mobilize herself enough to think through that insidious chant …
There. Her hand flipped up and balled into a fist in time to strike Isylte in the face. It connected … barely. Just enough to make the lady curse with pain and grip her harder. Shit.
“No stunts, girl,” Isylte hissed and hauled her around a corner where she let her drop to the floor like a useless bundle of wood.
Addie’s knees barked in protest as they hit the rough stone, and her breath caught as she noticed lines of white chalk right where she was bracing her hands.
“Now, that’s what I call timing,” a familiar voice said from somewhere in the shadows by the window that showed a view of nothing but the clear night sky.
Addie dragged her gaze away from the wound patterns on the floor that promised a slow an
d painful death and could only mean that the god of dragons indeed didn’t forget, her eyes straining to see through pain and darkness, and even though she could make out nothing, that summons was clearly coming from the corner where the chalk marks disappeared into shadows.
“I found her by herself in the gardens, my Lord.” Isylte was on her knees beside Addie, her head bowed.
“And the Child of Vala?” the voice asked, so velvet-smooth that Addie almost shuddered—almost, but the pain in her shoulder made her gasp instead.
Isylte didn’t seem to notice or care. She had brought her up here to wherever they were to end what Linniue had started. Addie swallowed the pain and tried to speak, but her voice failed, nothing more than a rasp coming out.
A low chuckle in the shadows told Addie enough to know that this time, even if someone came looking for her, it would be too late.
“The Child of Vala was not with her for once,” Isylte said, that motherly tone from earlier a thing of the past, her mask of smiles removed, revealing the proud face of a pet who had brought her master a toy.
Another chuckle. “See, you didn’t follow my summons, so I had to send one of my little helpers to get you for me.”
This time, Addie shuddered. The voice was and wasn’t the same as—
With all the strength she could muster, she pushed herself upright, knees throbbing as she stumbled forward a step. She needed to get to the shadows, needed to see—
“The Twin Rune,” the voice spoke, a command rather than a question.
Her body froze as Isylte’s hand landed on her shoulder, right there on her scar, and she felt a sensation like glass-shards ripping her open wherever the woman’s palm touched through the thin fabric of her gown.
“Right here, my Lord,” Isylte said and smirked at Addie over the bruise on her cheek where Addie’s knuckles had struck—too lightly. Had she only been able to focus better, balance herself better…
“Come to me,” the voice—his voice—chanted in her mind, and when Isylte released her, Addie couldn’t keep her shaky legs from moving.
Wicked Crown (Shattered Kingdom Book 2) Page 27