Page 16 of A Court So Dark
Silver blinked several times. “Now, that is an interesting phrase worth remembering.”
“Shut up, Silver. Don’t make me regret interceding for you.”
He put both hands up, rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and gave a lazy step out of the way, whistling casually. “I did save your life, you know?”
“You turned me into a popsicle is what you did.”
“A what?”
“Oh, never mind.” I batted a hand at him, but I definitely owed him my gratitude. “But thanks, for… helping me.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“No. We won’t be doing any of that,” Jeondar said, wrinkling his nose as if he were actually picturing us doing exactly what the crude phrase suggested.
Seriously, did they have to take everything so literally?
“A visit to the Envoy isn’t like walking into a tavern, Dani,” he continued. “You need to prepare for it. We have to think carefully about what to ask.”
Right. The Envoy would give us tricky answers, and if we weren’t careful, we could end up wasting an entire day just to end up with vague, useless information.
I still didn’t like the idea of sitting here chatting. I needed action, needed to feel like I was doing something to actively find Kalyll, but this was the best we had, so we had to nail it.
“So how does it work?” I sighed. “I assume you guys have visited that fucking demon and have some experience with it?”
“Demon?” Arabis asked.
“Yeah, that’s what it is. At least that’s what I think, but it doesn’t matter. What exactly do we need to ask?Where is Kalyll?”
Kryn shook his head. “That won’t work. You need to askyesornoquestions.”
“Oh, yeah.” Kalyll had explained how it worked.
It was so dumb. You had to askyesornoquestions, yet the creature only answered straight up when the answer wasno. If the answer wasyes, it would instead offer additional information that was vaguely related to the question.
Like when Kalyll asked “will the one I love be my queen?”and the trickster answered “you will mourn her. Deeply.”
At the thought, my heart constricted. While I’d lain on that bed for an entire week, Kalyll had ached, the pain driving him to do who knew what. The others hadn’t explained yet, but I had a feeling Wölfe had made an appearance, which surely only added to Kalyll’s torment. Worse yet, as I stood here, he didn’t know I had awakened, and so his torture and mourning continued.
Witchlights!We had to find him.
I put on my thinking cap. “So how many questions can I ask?”
That was something Kalyll hadn’t mentioned.
“Two,” all six of them replied in unison, even Larina up on the mantel.
“Two?! That’s it?”
“Yes, that’s all we have to work with.” Jeondar shrugged.
“Okay.” I thought for a moment. “Assuming that Cardian took him to the Unseelie King, we could askis Kalyll in Nerethien?” That was the name of the city where the Unseelie Court was located.
Cylea nodded. “Yes, that’s on the right track, but maybe we should be more specific. We could ask something like…is Kalyll in Highmire?”
“Highmire?” I echoed.
Cylea nodded, her blue hair swinging back and forth. “Mythorne’s castle.”
