Page 120 of Promise of Darkness
“You smile all the time,” I whisper.
“Precisely.” The grin on his face doesn’t shift. “Don’t ever believe a word I say, my sweet princess. I’m a born liar.”
“I suppose youdidtell me how handsome and brave and amazing you were, when we first met.”
Finn claps his hands over his heart, and staggers back as if mortally wounded.
Baylor merely sighs and rubs a hand over his eyes. “Here lie the hopes of Evernight. We’re doomed.”
A drift of shadow moves toward us in the night. Thiago dissolves out of nothing, looking as if he was born for nighttime.
“Is anyone here aware how far voices carry in the mist?” he whisper-breathes, as the guards following him melt into stillness.
Instantly, the four of us stiffen.
“Get in the fucking boat.” He includes me in his fierce look, though he does offer me an arm.
I can’t help feeling a nervous flutter in my veins as we seat ourselves.
My mother will have sent her most loyal and her best. Andraste’s standing in that turret. I know it with every fiber of my being, but the question is: Who else is with her?
One of her generals?
No, Mother won’t want the confrontation with Eris or Baylor. Never reveal your cards, she always tells me. And she won’t want any of her generals wondering about the unseelie we’re facing. Her generals are firmly under her spell, but they’re also responsible for the safety of Asturia. Any hint of a threat and all five of them would start asking questions Mother won’t want to answer.
I can’t help thinking of the conversation we had through the flames. I told her about Angharad and Mistmere, and yet she arrived at the alliance meeting acting as though the truth is something to smother, not face.
It doesn’t make sense.
Why would she not want the rest of the alliance to know about Angharad? Every day my eyes open to a new truth, including the one that’s been dwelling on my mind most.
My mother is acting as though she’s workingwiththe enemy.
But that’s impossible.
She wouldn’t. She hates the unseelie and sees them as beneath her. All my life she’s warned against their lying, deceitful ways, and their filthy courts.
But what if she hates the prince more than she hates them? What if she thinks she can use them to ruin him, and then sweep them aside afterwards?
Someone taught her to curse-twist the fae into banes.
And someone cursed me with the dark magic the unseelie possess.
It’s a troubling knot and one I’ll need time to unpick.
Fog sits like a blanket on the lake as we make our way across.
Baylor rows, the heavy flex of his shoulders rippling beneath the stark black leathers he wears. A leather thong ties half his hair back from his face, but there’s no hiding the harsh slant of those cheekbones, or the glitter of his eyes as he watches me. I jerk my gaze away, but it’s too late.
He knows I’m hiding something.
Then we’re arriving at the small island that houses the turret. Thiago helps me ashore, and I realize I’m right. We’re not standing on a stony beach, but the remnants of a castle wall. Moss and lichen coat the stones, and I can see the gleaming amber eyes of demi-fey watching us from nooks and crannies. Some of them flutter in the air with translucent wings that hum on the verge of hearing. Others hiss at us from between reeds. One gnaws on a freshly caught fish.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Thiago murmurs, squeezing my fingers.
Maybe he can sense my nerves, which means I’m not hiding them as well as I should be. “I’m ready.”
This meeting is important. If we don’t convince the other courts of the threat then we’ll be standing alone against a possible unseelie invasion.
