Page 76 of Realm of Wind and Vines
“For what?”
“For a hostage exchange.” His violet eyes are serious as he sweeps them over all of us. “She wants to trade Draven for Bane.”
My heart skips a beat. “Good. Let’s do it.”
By the table, Alistair draws his eyebrows down in a skeptical frown. “Can we trust her to actually do it, though?”
“We’re not doing it,” Isera growls from the wall on the other side. “We’re not giving Bane back.”
Anger spears through me as I turn to glare at her. “We need to get Draven back.”
“So we rescue him instead. That way, we get both Draven and Bane.”
“That might be difficult,” Galen interjects, glancing between the two of us. “As reckless as Selena’s rescue attempt last night was,” he gives me a pointed look before softening slightly and continuing with, “it was actually a great way of testing their defenses. Now, we know that Draven is guarded by not only their elite soldiers, but also by Lavendera. Which means that dragon steel is no doubt in play. Since she cut off Gremar’s hand to remove the dragon steel we put on him, she now controls that piece. And she has no doubt put it on Draven’s wrist instead.”
“Which means that if we try to rescue him,” Orion picks up, his gaze sliding to me and Isera, “the same thing that happened when we tried to talk to Rin Tanaka will happen again. Except that this time, it will be Draven who is trying to kill us.”
“Not to mention that we would need to pull all of this off before the hostage exchange deadline she gave us, which is in three hours,” Galen finishes.
By the wall, Isera’s expression has darkened into a murderous thunderstorm. Cold fury laces her voice as she once again grinds out, “We arenotletting Bane go.”
“We don’t have any other choice,” Galen replies while shaking his head at her. “If we want Draven back, we need to agree to trade.”
“Which brings us back tomyquestion,” Alistair interrupts before Isera can retort. He shifts his gaze between all of us while raising his eyebrows pointedly. “Can we actually trust Jessina to go through with the trade? What if it’s a trap?”
“Oh, it’s most definitely a trap,” Lyra says.
We all turn to stare at her.
Outside the windows, two birds make playful loops over the manicured garden. Their cheerful chirping drift in with the warm breeze through the small gap in the window.
Lyra lifts her shoulders in a shrug in response to our questioning stares. “It’s Jessina Iceheart. All she ever does is to scheme and plot traps and try to outsmart people. Of course she is going to have something else planned for us at that hostage exchange.”
“See?” Isera stabs a hand in her direction. “Yet another reason for why we shouldn’t go through with it.”
“Oh, I didn’t say that. We’re definitely going through with it. She won’t spring her trap until after she has Bane, so we need to have a plan for how to get Draven, and ourselves, out of there as soon as the exchange is done.”
Orion flicks his wrist. “Not an issue. Grey will open a portal, and as long as we have that open right behind our backs, it won’t matter what kind of trap she is planning to spring.”
“Just make sure that Grey is staying on this side of the portal,” I begin. “So that she can’t target him.”
“Of course I will order him to remain here.” He shoots me a pointed look. “As opposed to you, I actually think things through before I go around blackmailing someone else’s subjects into opening portals so that I can rush into danger without a proper plan.”
I just roll my eyes at him. For someone who is supposed to be all kingly and refined, he can be surprisingly petty.
“We’re agreed, then?” Galen picks up, pushing the conversation back on track. He looks from face to face. “We don’t risk another rescue attempt. Instead, we trade Bane for Draven.”
All of us nod. Well, everyone except Isera. Rage burns like blue flames in her eyes as she leans against the wall, glaring at us all in silence.
“Alright, good.” Galen gives us all a nod. “Then we need to start making plans for different scenarios. Depending on how she?—”
Isera shoves off from the wall and stalks across the room. We all watch in stunned silence as she storms out the door and throws it shut behind her. I understand why she’s angry. She hates Bane more than anyone else. But we need to get Draven back, and she probably understands that as well, which is why she didn’t argue when we made the decision. I still wish she would’ve stayed and helped us plan out the different scenarios, though. She’s usually levelheaded in a way that most of the rest of us aren’t always.
I keep glancing towards the door while we sit down and start planning how to handle different traps that Jessina might try to spring on us, but Isera doesn’t return.
Once we’re halfway through the first plan, pain suddenly spikes through my mate bond.
I gasp out loud.
