Page 40 of The Myths of Ophelia
“So,” I said. “Bounties?”
“It’s nonsense.” She waved me off, staring back over the ocean.
“Sure.” I shrugged and dropped the conversation. She clearly did not want to be pushed on it, but she had said it herself. Perhaps tonight—perhaps everything Ritalia had revealed—had been a viperous fate with its fangs bared, and the queen finally set it free from its cage, commanding it to strike.
And we were left to wait and see who it poisoned.
Tolek,Malakai, and Mila were back in the sitting room when we returned, interrupting their conversation.
“Cypherion?” I asked.
“Sleeping,” Tol said with a straight-lipped nod from where he stood beside the fire.
“I’ll go check on him.” Rina gathered her skirts and disappeared up the stairs. The ruffling of all that unnecessary material sliding against the wood agitated me.
The pressure of the day clung to the room, threatening to overwhelm me. I shook it off, looking to Malakai to address the next in a long line of questions. “Do you have any idea what Ritalia meant?”
Get your cousin out of here.
“That’s what I was saying before you walked in.” He leaned forward on the couch, keeping one hand on Mila’s knee and grabbing a piece of parchment off the table. A letter, I realized. “I’m writing to my mother now.”
Akalain. If anyone knew something about what Ritalia claimed, it would be Malakai’s mom. Or Cypherion’s, but we didn’t have a way to contact her.
“Okay,” I said, nodding at the letter. “We wait.”
Again.
But Mila said, “There’s something else.”
Malakai grabbed two books off the table and tossed one to Tolek, handing the other to me.
“Godsblood Heir?” Tolek read the title of his aloud.
I flipped through the pages of mine,Gate’s Guardians. It was all folklore about Artale and sphinxes.
“You took this from the fae library?”
Malakai shrugged. “I doubt they’ll notice. We had permission…sort of.” His gaze flicked to Mila, a secret exchanged in that split second.
“Thank you. Both of you,” I said. Perhaps I should have been worried aboutborrowingfrom the queen, but a part of me was wholly satisfied. “These will be helpful since we didn’t get to ask questions about the gods today.”
And that reminder was the last I needed. Everything that had gone wrong today crashed over me, a roaring in my ears as my final semblance of control slipped through my fingers, my grip on the book tightening until I dented the leather.
We’d gone to the isle to meet the fae and left with little more than unexplained riddles and another bargain on my head.
Tolek saw it, setting his book down on the table and taking the other from my hands. “We’ll deal with it all tomorrow,” he said calmly, bidding goodnight to Malakai and Mila.
Then, he was leading me up the stairs and to our room, his spicy citrus scent filling all the voids dug out within me.
“Talk to me, Alabath,”Tolek said as he closed the door.
I strode across the small room, the walls tight and cramped, but in here it didn’t bother me. In here, with only Tolek—the rest of the world shut out—it was safe instead of stifling.
Or it had been, the entire time we’d been on the outposts. This had been the one place I’d been able to stop worrying.
Tonight, not even that helped. My fingers scratched at my Curse mark.
“Did something else happen?” he guessed.
