Page 34 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
They’re hunting the most powerful.
But we weren’t.
Not right now.
Someone had voided our Protectorate powers.
I struggled to wrestle with the idea that all these people were dead because someone wanted to killus.
I wasn’t ready to face that grim reality yet.
Then an even more horrifying thought slashed through my mind.
“Where’s Dara?” My stomach dropped. “You were supposed to help her set up the protective runes around the garden’s perimeter.”
Dara was the best of us when it came to crafting runes, but she got stunned in battle. I’d specifically instructed Clara to protect her. We’d trained with the same instructors–it was as if I’d been there myself.
“She told me to leave,” Clara said. “She saw my father and Alaric stumbling toward the maze and screamed at me to follow and help them and–”
“I told them to go straight to the castle!”
The decades had not been kind to their bones. They couldn’t outrun the arrows in the maze.
“It doesn’t matter what you told them, Dara said they came through here, but nobody’s seen them since then.” Clara’s voice cracked.
Cold dread pooled low in my stomach.
I hadn’t seen them either.
“I told everyone I met to head to the castle,” Clara went on.
“Good.” I expected nothing less of her. “My father and Silas are both old foxes. They must have reached the castle by now.”
They had to.
Please.
Silas for Clara’s sake and my father for the entire Protectorate’s–and mine.
Neither of us deserved to live in a world without their fathers.
Not yet.
The poison drops slowed down, but didn’t vanish.
Clara resettled her back and flinched as the shard dug in deeper.
“Why do you have that?” I asked.
“One of Fabrian’s guards tried to decapitate me,” she whispered. “He’s somewhere up ahead. Kick his worthless body for me when you see him.”
“Why?” I barked.
“Because he tried tokillme–”
“Whydid he try to kill you? We’re all being attacked.”
“Fabrian was attacked onourisland, Allie,” she rasped. “The Clan Code demands vengeance and the Serpents will take it, even if some of them would have gladly gotten rid of him themselves.”
