33

Three Days

I stand up so fast, my chair tips over, hitting the packed-earth floor with a loud clatter. I’m too busy floundering to really notice.

A long time ago, Pella pushed me into a well. She’d treated me nice—like a friend—for two whole days. She probably spent that long only because it took me the first day to stop viewing every kind gesture and word with abject suspicion. But the second day, when I finally relaxed and accepted she was sincere, she shoved me over the edge of the well.

I hadn’t learned to swim yet, not at that age. Not exactly a skill Omma prioritized. Princesses in Aryd don’t have reason to swim pretty much ever. I taught myself to swim afterward, but in that moment, I faced death head-on.

I remember screaming and thrashing, clawing at the stone walls until my nails shredded and my fingertips were bleeding. And then I was sinking. Watching through the murky, stirred-up water as the circle of light that was the top of the well grew smaller and smaller, my lungs burning, and knowing I was going to die in that bottomless pit.

This is what that feels like. Like drowning.

Three days.

Omma and Grandmother’s voices telling me all the evil things Eidolon has done.

Three days.

Reven telling me that Eidolon is after my power, and the fates of more than my sister and Aryd are at stake.

Only three.

Every self-accusatory thought I’ve had about leaving Tabra in the hands of the worst monster in all the lands and seas, all the Devourers included.

Three damn days.

Reven jumps up at the same time, stepping closer like he’s going to do that hands-in-the-hair thing again. And goddess, I want him to, but his touch might undo my control.

“I’m fine,” I snap. Not really. Everything I’d hoped for just got turned on its head. But the need that rises to the top of all the screaming emotions is to try to fix this.

“Good,” Reven snaps back. “Because, as much as I want to, kissing you again is a bad idea.”

My eyes flare wide at the admission in front of the others, and immediately his do, too, before his face resumes that harsh mask. But even that image isn’t going to distract me from the urgency driving me now. I look him dead in the eyes. “I have to go home. Now. Tonight.”

At my words, his gaze flares with an emotion that roils in harsh denial. Then his face goes blank.

Off to my left, Vos swears softly. The others don’t say a word.

I don’t look away from Reven. I’m not going to change my mind, either. Sending a messenger isn’t going to be enough now. Not to stop a wedding.

Tabra has been trained to be what she is by our grandmother. For eighteen years. For so long, she doesn’t know how to be anything else or even to question it. Which means not leaving her post as the queen.

The only person she might listen to is me.

Reven is searching my expression with a narrow-eyed gaze. Looking for answers to questions like I’m a vault and he could force me open by his will and plumb all the secrets inside me for his own.

“I have to go back to Aryd.” I repeat my demand, my secrets like rocks sinking deeper into a river inside me.

Telling him now is complicated. Dangerous. It needs to be a last resort. I was foolish to be so hopeful before, to even consider whispering the secrets of Aryd into his ear. Too many dominoes need to line up without being tipped over before I can find sanctuary in the Shadowood.

“That is not a good—” Horus cuts himself off at my sharp look.

“I am…” Hells. Time to pull rank. “I am the Queen of Aryd, coronation or no. I will not leave my throne to a girl who can only be a temporary placeholder. I definitely will not allow my dominion to be handed over to that murderer because I’m hiding here. Who’s to say he won’t kill her as soon as the ceremony ends and take the throne for himself?”

Reven remains unspeaking.

“We could wag the fool,” Vos offers as he inspects his nail beds like millions of lives aren’t balancing precariously on the line here. “Wait and see.”

“Three days isn’t enough time to wait and see.” I turn my head, looking again at Reven, but I get the cold, brittle sense that he’s abruptly distanced himself from me. “I have to go,” I whisper, the plea harsh in my throat. Desperate.

“I know,” he says. The two heavy words drop into the room, and silence ripples outward.

The shadows in the room, cast by the flickering light of the flames in the large stone fireplace, twitch like a knee-jerk reaction, though he doesn’t move.

Horus shifts on his feet. “You can’t—”

Reven’s hand flashes up, stopping him, and Horus snaps his mouth shut.

The Shadowraith—because that’s what he is in this moment; I can feel the shadows moving around us—is all leashed power and absolute surety when he turns to the others. “She goes, and we’re going to help her get there.”

“But we need her here.” Horus isn’t letting this go. “You told us. She can—”

“First I have to get my”—I almost said sister—“body double out of Aryd. After that, we could come back here. I’ll need to figure out what to do anyway, but she can’t marry him. That much I know.”

I feel more than see Reven’s head turn my direction. “You would do that? You would return here?”

I look at him and have to bite my lip because despite that blanked expression of his, I can somehow see a sort of desperate hope underneath. This man has been alone for far too long, even among these people. Has no one ever sacrificed for him?

“Yes.”

I promise myself, as soon as Tabra is safely out of Eidolon’s hands, that’s when I’ll tell Reven. Everything.

Harboring two women the ageless king needs, he’s going to have to know. Because coming here will only be a stopgap. It’s not going to fix anything. Aryd still needs a ruler. Eidolon will still be after one or both of us. And Tyndra will still be sinking.

But I can’t tell him the truth until I know Tabra’s safe. If this doesn’t work, it’s best if no one else is the wiser.

It’s all a risk.

Stealing Tabra away will bring more than one dominion down on Reven’s head—because Aryd will raise armies to save their new queen. But I only have three days to stop this wedding, and this is the only way I see that happening.

Like Reven said to me in the Wildernyss forest not that long ago…sometimes there are no choices.

Reven cuts his gaze to Vos. “Can you get the double out by yourself?”

“No.” I shake my head. “It has to be me.”

His throat works, and an emotion harsher than I’ve ever seen from anyone floods his face. The room seems to collectively hold their breath. “Why you?” The words punch from him.

“Because she won’t leave the throne unless it’s at my…um…direct order.” I’ll figure out how to convince Tabra on the way there.

After only a small beat of hesitation, he finally nods. “We need to leave tonight if we have any chance of getting there before the wedding,” Reven says. “We can’t have Eido—” He winces, then alters what he was going to say. “We can’t have the king standing in as ruler in Aryd, with a right to the throne by marriage.”

I loose a silent, sharp breath of relief. Reven is on my side.

“I’ll take her there,” Vos says. “It will be easier to get the two of us in and out—”

“I’m going with her.”

Reven may as well have lopped off his own head, the way the room shudders to a halt. So much for all that getting-to-know-you stuff that this meal was supposed to be about.

Vos surges to his feet, leaning fisted hands against the table as he glares daggers across it at the man beside me. “The hells you say. We need you here.” He bangs a fist on the table.

Reven doesn’t so much as blink. His expression gives away nothing, except the burn of his eyes hints at a relentless decision already made. “I can get her there and both of them back faster and safer.”

“And have nothing left over to protect us when the armies of both Aryd and Tyndra figure out where we’re hidden and follow,” Vos points out, flinging out an arm.

Reven doesn’t move. “Can you get there before the wedding?”

“Yes.” At Reven’s level look, Vos’s lips pinch white. “Maybe,” he allows. “But it’s better we take that risk than lose you.”

“Even if I was willing to take the risk—which I’m not, because it gives the king too much power—can you stop Eidolon if he becomes a problem?”

Frost spreads from Vos’s fisted hands across the wooden table and up the nearest goblet until the liquid inside it cracks the thing open like a walnut. “I can handle myself.”

Tziah reaches over, curling her hand into the sleeve of his shirt and sort of tugging. But he doesn’t look away.

Reven shakes his head.

“I can keep the queen safe,” Vos insists.

Reven’s gaze narrows, aiming potent rage at his leader. Vos stiffens but doesn’t back down. Reven glances at me, and something in his eyes glitters. Possession, maybe. That’s not quite right. Protectiveness is closer. Of me? Or the queen I’m supposed to be? Or himself?

“I’m not letting her out of my sight,” he finally says.

I have to build a wall around my heart. Otherwise I’ll wish that means he actually cares about me. Not just as the pawn in this game that is out of my control and out of my depth. Just…me.

“It’s worth losing me to keep both the princesses—the real one and the fake—out of the king’s hands.”

And now I’m shaking my head no.

But I’m sure Reven doesn’t notice because of the way Vos rears back, visibly floored. “You’d sacrifice yourself?”

Reven doesn’t answer.

“Well, isn’t that grand? Our savior, a lump of coal instead of a diamond. I knew I should have gathered all of the leaders for this.” Vos flings up his arms, and frost flies, glistening in the air as it drops to the ground. “You’re going to follow your dick to hell. We can all see how you haven’t been able to take your eyes off her.”

I curl into myself a little at that, uncomfortable with the speculative glances that turn my way.

“You’d leave the rest of us out to hang when they come for us,” Vos accuses. “And they will come for us. For her. Do all the people you helped mean nothing to you?” This time the frost comes from his feet across the packed dirt floor, crawling toward me.

Reven snarls. “Watch it.”

I put my hand on his arm, and he flinches under my touch, then slowly drops his gaze to me.

“He’s right.” I utter the words softly, gently. Because mostly I want to hug him for the way he’s trying to protect me. But the people here are worth keeping safe, too. “I have people I trust in the palace who can help. With Vos to protect me as well, we can do this. Do both. Get her out and keep the Shadowood safe.”

He stares at me long and hard, denial battling the truth. Finally, Reven gives a single, sharp nod.

Even though I asked, part of me—an even larger part than I’m willing to admit to—stumbles at the fact that Reven isn’t going to be the one taking me. Thankfully, he doesn’t catch my moment of weakness. When did the man I desperately wanted to escape from become the only one I feel safe with?

But he’s already looking away to Vos. “The fastest way is the portal in Tyndra.”

Uh…what? We could have come that way to get here? No days trekking in the woods. No cold. No death worm. No soldiers. No pathetic excuse for a bridge and no Devourer.

Vos straightens. “We don’t use that portal for a reason.”

My righteous anger fizzles. “For the newly initiated, what reasons?”

Vos is the one to answer. “Several. Eidolon. People finding where we are. Anyone tracking you here first.” He aims a hard stare at Reven. “All reasons that still stand.”

“We’re running out of time,” Reven points out.

I can see that Vos wants to argue, but he’s already won a big one, thanks to me, and Reven is also right. “Fine. We’ll need your shadows to get us inside. That’s the safest way to not get caught.”

The two men are locked in some kind of silent, testosterone-filled battle of wills.

Then Reven nods again. Once. Sharp. “Keep her safe.” His words are an order. One I suspect comes with a death sentence if Vos fails.

Tempting to point out that I am also available to keep myself safe. But they’re having a moment.

Vos’s answer is dead serious. “I will. When do we leave?”

“An hour before dawn. Make your plans. Inform the others,” Reven says. Snarls, almost.

That late? But then it hits me… Does Reven need more shadow to do whatever he has to in order to get us to the temple? I glance around the others, who don’t seem to be questioning his plan. But they could just be in shock. This all happened fast. What do or don’t they know?

Right now, it doesn’t matter.

I bury my questions and start to work through what happens after we’re through the portal. Vos may be skilled at hiding, but I’ve been sneaking in and out of that blasted palace my entire life, and a plan starts to form in my head.

I’m coming, Tabra. I’m coming.

This is going to work. It has to.