Page 63 of A Legacy of Poison and Lies

General. Zylah had been right to suspect her position.

Nye merely dipped her chin in acknowledgement. “I’ve been trying to convince him since you first sent word from Virian. I’m not confident he’s going to help you once he has the key.”

“Neither am I,” Holt admitted. “But we need to try. We have to.”

Because it was their only option, Zylah gathered from what he didn’t say. There was no one else to turn to. No one else willing to stand up against Marcus and his plans for Astaria.

Perhaps this was her tithe.

The last thing she could do for her friends before the vanquicite took her.

“If the shield works and this court is protected, at least it might soften the blow when Rin and Kej inevitably sneak off in the middle of the night without uttering a goodbye,” Holt added.

“It’s why you haven’t pressed him,” Nye said, an eyebrow raised at Holt.

He nodded. “I came here out of respect to Malok, to Jora, not to cause a rift amongst this family.”

Nye seemed satisfied with that. “I’ll be researching the book whilst you’re gone,” she explained, and Holt’s attention flicked to Zylah.

She’d been avoiding him because of the pain, and now, in such form-fitting clothing, she felt he could see every spot where the pain licked beneath her skin. “I recognised some symbols in one of the books Nye showed me yesterday.”

“Symbols like the ones in the book Okwata gave you?” he asked, sliding the neatly folded cotton into his pocket.

Zylah nodded.

He squared his jaw. “The one that was in Raif’s room must be warded, wherever it is. I’ve tried several times to retrieve it. I can’t feel it anywhere.”

“Warded, spelled, protected. A book like that is not meant to be found so easily,” Nye said, one hand rubbing at her chin in thought.

For a heartbeat, Zylah wondered if Raif had known the book was warded, poisonous thoughts whispering to her that it was another lie, another thing he’d kept from her.

“Do you have anything in your library about nullifying vanquicite?” Holt asked Nye, pulling Zylah from her thoughts.

She stilled at his words. He wouldn’t tell Nye about the piece in her back, not without asking for her consent, Zylah was certain of it. But she wasn’t ready to tell Nye and the others, not yet.

“I can look,” Nye said confidently. She clicked her tongue as two soldiers barrelled past them, grappling each other into a roll. Another soldier caught her attention, and she excused herself from the conversation, leaving Holt and Zylah alone to watch the soldiers.

“Not what you expected?” Holt asked.

“The court? Or this?” Zylah waved a hand at the sparring.

He studied her face for a moment. “All of it.”

Zylah hadn’t known what to expect after Mae’s court. She didn’t trust Malok. Or Cirelle, if she was being entirely honest with herself, but she’d shared her circumstance about the vanquicite out of desperation. “Nye seems duty bound, but she’s been kind to me. Rin and Kej have too. They think a lot of you, even when you’re giving one of them a beating.”

A quiet puff of air escaped Holt in amusement. “He likes to provoke me.”

“And you gave in so easily?”

He cocked his head, lips pressing together before asking, “What makes you think I gave in?”

“Hmm, I think Kej’s black eye gave it away,” she said, fighting the smile threatening to burst from her. Truthfully, she knew he’d done it as much for himself as for Kej. That it helped lessen some of the burden he seemed to carry. For the first time since he’d shown up outside her cabin in Varda, a little bit of the tension seemed to have eased from his shoulders.

“Kej is persistent,” Holt said, one eyebrow raised. Zylah couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Kej makingthatkind of move on Holt. The smile tugging at his mouth told her she’d guessed right.My brother will fuck anyone with a pulse, Rin had warned her.

Holt added, “If he thinks I gave him what he wanted, then he’ll back off and give me space.”

Zylah elbowed him playfully. “You’re an expert at coercion now, are you?”

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