Page 30 of A Court So Dark
As she fell inside, she wiggled. A fresh rush of panic hit me. Her precious wings would be crumpled. What was she doing?
I waited for something to happen. Maybe she could help me get free with her magic. But a few beats later—the guard carrying me down a set of steps and jarring my teeth—I realized I didn’t really know the extent of Larina’s magic. I’d seen her appear and disappear things like food and Shadow’s spear, use her pixie dust to fluff my hair and speed up her pace, but maybe she couldn’t do much more, especially not against someone so big.
Part of me was glad for her company. Wherever Cardian was taking me, I wouldn’t be alone, but I was also afraid for her. She could get badly hurt, crushed. I shook my head. No, nothing bad would happen to her. I would make sure of that.
After traversing several long corridors, we entered a waiting room outfitted with armchairs and tea tables. A large painting in a style I recognized hung on the wall across the door. Cardian came to a stop in front of it and regarded it, hands clasped behind his back.
The guard tossed me into a chair as if I were a misbehaving child. I rolled to one side, making sure to land on my back so as not to hurt Larina.
He took several steps toward the door, waiting for Cardian’s orders.
“Don’t leave and remain vigilant.”
“Afraid of me?” I asked as I stood and straightened my tunic.
“You do have powerful magic, but Cedric is a neutralizer. So don’t try anything stupid.”
I frowned. What was he talking about? Glancing back at the guard, I figured he must be Cedric. A neutralizer? Within this context, it wasn’t hard to figure out what the brute was capable of doing. He dampened magic. So even if I had been able to touch him skin to skin, he would’ve been all right. Even if I had been able to grab Cardian by the neck when I lunged for him, I would’ve accomplished nothing. Maybe that was why Larina hadn’t been able to do anything either. I could only guess.
“Where’s the king?” I demanded.
Cardian turned from the painting—a scene depicting a castle built on top of fluffy white clouds. “You are looking at him.”
“It can’t be,” I said under my breath.
Jeondar had said that he’d left everything in order with the council members and generals. How could Cardian be back?
The answer came to me in an instant… because he had more allies in Elyndell and inside the Vine Tower than we ever imagined.
We had underestimated the weasel. I imagined I could feel Larina’s tiny heart thumping against mine.
“Itcanbe, and it is,” he said. “Kalyll is a fool. He assumes there’s loyalty where there’s only greed. More than half of the council members are mine. That means that their men—the guards that you see around the palace and elsewhere and who belong to those council members’ houses—also answer to me.”
Kalyll was surrounded by traitors.
“You see,” he went on, “while Kalyll went on battles and charity missions around the realm, I garnered the favor of the people who truly matter. I didn’t ignore them as he did. I promised them they would get their due when the time came. Loyalty is a mirage. Everyone has apricein the end. Wouldn’t you agree?” His question was suggestive, and the way he emphasized the wordpricemade me pause to ponder his exact meaning.
I bit down on my tongue to contain the urge to curse him and tell him exactly what I thought of his philosophy and where he could shove it. Instead, I held his gaze, wondering how much he knew about me.
Unless his spies had provided him with better information, he thought I was the daughter of a Jovinian dignitary and a scheming opportunist who had ingratiated herself with the new king. Likely, he also thought I was Kalyll’s lover—not that he was wrong. In all, it wasn’t a far-fetched theory, especially since, as far as he knew, Kalyll and I had just met.
He had no idea who I really was.
Cardian didn’t know that Kalyll and I had been through hell and back and that something deep had developed between us during the hardships we’d endured together. Adversities have a way of bringing people together—not that we wouldn’t have fallen in love if we’d met in line at the DMV. We were mates, after all.
Still holding Cardian’s gaze, I pressed my lips together. Did I have a price? That was what he wanted to know. I let my silence be its own answer, an answer left to his sole interpretation.
He narrowed his eyes and hummed, taking a few steps to one side and regarding me from head to toe. “You have a very interesting skill, Lady Fenmenor. You went against Varamede Elis, the most powerful thunderlord in the realm, and you nearly beat him. He was hard-pressed to admit it, but I was there. I saw what happened. Try as he might, he couldn’t lie to me. For a moment there, he thought you would win.”
If I had killed and sucked dry someone else, I would have won. The thought came from Dark Dani, and though I hated the ease with which it pushed through my mind, I couldn’t deny its veracity.
“I don’t know if you realize this,” he went on, “but there are few people in this realm or any other who have that kind of power.”
A frown cut across my forehead involuntarily.
“Ah, I see you had no idea.”
There were plenty of powerful people in Elf-hame and my realm, so Cardian’s assertion sounded ridiculous to my ears. There was no way I was more powerful than the many midnight mages and witches that roamed the human world. Or the mighty sorcerers and sorceresses of Elf-hame.
