Page 241 of A Warrior's Fate

This piece was all too specific to spell and give at a marketplace. Too in line with everything else. It was chosen with purpose.

She reeled through what had happened with Daisy again, recalling specifically what had happened to her eyes. Isla had recognized those eyes somehow, and now she knew why. It was the artwork of the woman holding the dagger.

She’d called Isla a thief.

Forcing herself to remain calm, Isla faced forward again. The sereneness of her features did nothing to portray the frenzy her mind had become as she wondered if she’d truly just spoken to the violet-eyed woman from the picture.

“Isla…Isla, you’re going to leave a hole in the floor.”

Isla ceased her pacing through the sitting room to look at Adrien, who was playing cards with Davina and Sebastian. She let out a breath. “Shouldn’t they be back by now?”

Daisy didn’t live too far from where they’d been, and they weren’t planning to look around for long. She figured she’d wait at the House for Kai to return before joining Jonah back in the library.

“It’s been a few hours,” Davina said, calmer than Isla had expected. Though Isla could see her fingers trembling around her cards. “Sometimes the ferry gets delayed. It’s why they used to have their own boat before they capsized it.”

Isla vaguely remembered hearing that tale of the drunken idiots who’d nearly drowned.

Adrien and Sebastian looked at Davina for an explanation, but she didn’t give it.

“You need to relax,” Adrien said, earning a glower from his friend. He weathered it easily. “We brought you that chocolate you like from home.” At the last word, he grimaced and didn’t seem sure how to correct himself.

It didn’t matter because Isla was already at the bags that they’d brought her with some of her things. Another secret arrangement Kai had made with them. Though it had meant that Sebastian had broken into her apartment…again.

She unzipped the smallest of the three bags first, figuring it would be a good place to store food, but when she shifted the flap to reveal its contents, her chest tightened.

It was all her pictures. The ones she kept on mantles and tables and in albums.

“Goddess,” she said beneath her breath, picking up one of the frames.

“What?” Davina asked.

Isla looked up, feeling a slight sting at the corners of her eyes. “All of my photos. My family and stuff.”

Davina placed her cards face down on the table and shot up to her feet. “Oh, I want to see!”

She was at Isla’s side in an instant and, deeming their game at a standstill, Adrien and Sebastian rose too. Pointless, though, because Isla brought the bag to them, anyway. Taking a seat on the floor before the end of the coffee table that was spared from their playing, Isla removed each picture, frame by frame, and laid them out on the glass. While Davina wondered, she offered small explanations for each. But on one, she paused, not wanting to let go of the frame right away. She bit down hard on her lip before silently placing the picture down.

Davina lifted it with the same gentleness as if she already knew the care it required. “Is this your mother?”

Isla tried to force a smile as she nodded and gazed upon the image of her wrapped in her mother’s arms while Sebastian hung over her back. All three of them caught in a fit of laughter. Immortalized in the long-forgotten happiness.

“We were nine and twelve here,” Isla offered, hoping no one noticed the way her voice cracked. She looked up at Sebastian for confirmation, but there was a darkness to his face that made her hesitate. His armor was still cracked from earlier, and this—what she was certain was responsible for that iron forging long ago—didn’t help.

Her eyes flickered to Adrien, whose features had also become crestfallen.

Isla turned back and found Davina studying the photo. “What happened to her?”

The way Davina’s eyes widened made Isla think she hadn’t meant to ask aloud. She handed the photo back and wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze as if she wanted the query to fade into nothing.

“It was a couple of weeks before my birthday,” Sebastian said, making Isla go stiff. “It was just a quick trip down to the southern territories with a task force to check in on them for the Imperial Alpha. She promised me she’d be back in time.”

Isla’s stomach turned as she added in his pause, “They usually checked in at every pack they passed through, and they made it to Mimas like they were supposed to…but then they were never heard from again.”

“And no one really bothered looking either.”

“They sent people,” Isla countered Sebastian quietly.

“Barely. It was just Dad and whoever he could muster to track them down. She shouldn’t have had to go in the first place, no matter how important Dad says it was. She retired from all that work for the pack, and Alpha Cassius knew that. He shouldn’t have—” Sebastian cut himself off with a grunt. “I can’t do this again.”

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