Page 40 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers
Aoife runs a hand along the hem of her cloak. Her little finger quivers, her eyes refusing to meet mine, but I see the way the pulse in her neck quickens. “No,” she murmurs faintly, the crease in her brow deepening. “I won’t be competing.”
Then she stands, turns away from me, and slips into the shadows beyond her door, drawing the curtains tighter across the window.
The entire encounter leaves me uneasy. Everything about Aoife feels like a snare just waiting to string me up. But was thatfearin her eyes at my mention of the Assay?
I pick up the book from my side and thumb to the yellowing pages of chapter eleven… chapter twelve.
I need to know far more than the Whisperers are telling me about the Assay. And with the first test surely about to start any day now, I’m running out of time.
ELEVEN
The rough outlines of a way to kill the High King take shape in the dark of night.
Before I hear the rustle of whispering servants in the hall, before the dawn slices in hazy slivers through the door to the garden, I piece the fragments of a plan together over the scrolls of old maps laid out across my table in the dim light of flames in the hearth.
Tension turns every muscle taut.
The High King’s rooms are marked on the oldest section of the map, stained with age and the dark lines of fold marks.
How I’ll get in is still a question without an answer. There will be gardai, and not just a couple. And thehowof killing him once I do get in? I let out a breath, thinking.
Knowing Keeva has to come with some perks, right?
If I somehow can get into his rooms, maybe I could slip a lethal dose of poison into the water or wine that’ll surely be beside his bed.
Nightshade, to stop his heart.
White snakeroot, so he chokes to death on his own swollen tongue.
I bundle up the maps hours later, before the servants come with breakfast, to hide the evidence of my plotting. Even if a fewof them are working with the Whisperers, others would report treason to save themselves from accusations of complicity.
All the while, I can’t get the fear out of the back of my throat—
Is my sister still alive after the High King sent the gardai through Quayside again?
The first rumors about the latest massacre—of blood running like tears down alley walls, the taste of iron on the mist—come from the servants. And even though I thought I knew the sour bite of fear before, it’s nothing like this.
There’s been no sign of Talon for two days, nothing to ease the churning dread that Finn or Keeva could be lying dead in the streets of Quayside. Wolf stays away too, which only makes the fear sharper. If everything was fine, wouldn’t he be around here somewhere, taunting me?
Especially with the first ceremony of the Assay just hours away.
The scrawled invitation for something called a First Look arrived last night on neat paper with dark ink, the date and time in swirling cursive, from the High Queen’s secretary.
Crushing pressure builds in my chest each time I look at the invitation I’d left lying on the table where I’d pored over the maps before hiding them. The history book Wolf gave me lies open still—there’s no way a history book could possibly be dangerous. That pressure is what draws me out of my room, determined to start getting a sense of my way around these halls, every muscle tight and bracing for an attack from the shadows.
The maps Wolf brought me are wisps at the edges of my mind, and I try to track each step thinking of them. The etched drawings seemed to have… layers. Like they’d been drawn andredrawn over time. But quickly I discover that what’s outside my door doesn’t match the drawings.
Damn.
The section I was sure showed this part of the castle indicated a hallway branching off from the far end of this corridor—but there’s nothing here but straight walls… and old hanging portraits. The other end of the hall is the same, but full of servants.
They whisper in a small huddle, knuckles tight where they grip heavy woven baskets.
One of them I recognize.
“Any word on the dead?” I murmur to the one who’s brought most of my meals so far.
She glances behind me, then meets my gaze. Her eyes are the color of grass. “Two hundred,” she answers softly, nodding. “Maybe more.”
