Page 103 of A Curse of Breath and Blood

“We’ll go in through the sewers.” I pointed to the entrance points around the city. “Best to do it at night when no one is watching. Then, we’ll work our way to this passage under the castle. It’s used by servants to transport goods without being seen by royalty. The royals hate seeing servants, so they keep them hidden as much as possible. We can take one of these doors into the main castle. Erissa’s room is here.” I pointed to Erissa’s chambers on the map.

Tharan nodded. “Easy enough.”

“We’ll also need servants’ clothes to blend in while we’re in the tunnels.”

Tharan bit his lip, lost in thought. “Can you draw something up for the palace tailor?”

“That won’t be a problem. The servants also use hand signals to speak. I know the language, so let me do the talking.”

Tharan signed. “Like this?”

I smiled, blinking rapidly. “Of course, you know sign language.”

“I’m seven hundred years old. You don’t think I’ve been bored enough to learn sign language?”

“I’m thirty, and I will never live to be the age you are now. I don’t know what immortality is like.”

Tharan shrugged. “Well, I know sign language.”

“Great, then we should be fine. Just some humans scouring the sewers, looking for an amulet with a soul inside. What could go wrong?” A flicker of my old self sprung to life.

“You’ll be with the Alder King. I’ll keep you safe.” The heat from his arm around my shoulder lit a fire underneath my skin. I breathed in deeply, trying to keep my arousal concealed. “The stable master will bring up a cart for Arion to pull. We’ll look like farmers selling our goods.

“Are you excited about this?” I asked, my hands on my hips, the same way my mother would stand after I did something stupid. Tharan had never been a normal citizen before. He had always been a prince and now a king. Being normal might be fun for him.

“Kind of.” He shrugged, giving me a mischievous smirk. “I have spent little time in the mortal lands. When you’re as old as I am, things like this excite you.”

“Don’t set your expectations too high.” I patted Winter before heading out.

38CAIDEN

“What wasa Council Court doing at one of the Alder King’s revelries?” Daynaris, lord of the Court of Light and head of the High Sylph Council slammed his palm on the podium. The council sat around an elevated dais. The ten representatives whispered to each other as Caiden stood before them, feeling foolish, squinting as blinding sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“We were invited. After the attack on the Court of Sorrows, I saved the Alder King’s heir, Tharan, from a cave kraken. He invited the Court of Storms as a sign of gratitude.”

Lord Daynaris stroked his dark beard with his thick, ringed fingers, contemplating Caiden’s words. “Did you sanction this trip, Tonin?” He turned to Caiden’s father.

“Caiden does not need to seek my approval. I trust his judgment.” He nodded to his son.

Lord Daynaris let out a hearty laugh. “You always loved your children too much to see their foolish actions, Tonin.”

Caiden interrupted. “Now is not the time for parenting advice. The Highlands allied with the mountain goblins and attacked the Woodlands during a holy festival. That cannot go unpunished. Ihave brought an emissary from the Court of the Alder King with me to attest to what I am saying.”

A slim purple-haired sylph female stepped forward, wearing the crest of the Alder King. “It is true, my lord. The Highlands attacked without cause. We only survived because all the courts banded together.”

Members of the council grumbled to one another. Caiden had been in this situation before. When Baylis’s father, King Philip, died, he pleaded with the council to send aid to the Midlands. They refused, and the Midlands fell to Gideon. He shuddered, thinking about what the good people of the Midlands’ lives were like now.

“We need to band together with the Wild Courts and present a united front.” His words echoed throughout the gilded chamber. “Gideon will not stop until he has conquered the sylph lands.”

Laughter erupted from the dais. Lord Cindron of the Court of Ashes hung his wiry arm over the edge of the podium. “A human army has never beaten a sylph army, let alone conquered a kingdom in the history of Moriana. Many have tried and failed. This king will be no different. The Wild Courts wanted to be separate from us. I say, let them fight their own battles. This is nothing we need to be concerned with.”

“Maybe if they weren’t so concerned with their parties, they would have seen this coming,” a representative from the Court of Honey adorned in gold with honeycombs embroidered on her dress chimed in. Bees buzzed around her flower crown.

The council murmured in agreement.

Caiden swallowed his anger. He wanted to scream at all of them, but such an outburst would not do him any good. “Do you think the Highlands won’t come for the Council Courts next? You hide here, deep inside council territory, but what of the courts bordering the Highlands? The Court of Scales could be next.”

Lord Daynaris held up a gilded hand. “And should that timecome, we will be ready. But for now, I propose we send troops to the bordering courts. That should be enough to ward off any unwanted advances.”

---