Page 87 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers
I sit up higher in the bed—a little farther from him, in caseI need to roll to the other side and put the mattress between us, fast. “You can’t possibly prove that.”
“You think I wouldn’t have wanted a look at the sacrificial lamb they brought in for this?” Cashel’s eyes turn stormy. “I bribed a guard. I saw that light streak in her dark hair. I know she waited in that cell for days before the others paraded up here. Imagine my surprise when it wasn’t her coming down the steps at the First Look, butyou—right after you mysteriously showed up in my mother’s garden.”
“You ripped the roses out of your own mother’s garden?”
A vicious glint chills his eyes. “The roses weren’thers. Why do you think my stepmother planted them there?” Cashel laughs, but it’s not soft. “She knows it’s my favorite place to go.”
And white is one of Cymrea’s colors.
He lowers himself to sit at the edge of the bed. “Someone swapped you for her. And that someone gave you all these daggers, too.” Excuses form on my lips, but he cuts me off. “Donotlie to me.”
Cashel plucks one of the blades from the table. “That’s Málmar steel.”
I scoff but never take my eyes off him. Wary nerves prickle under my skin at the certainty flaring in his gaze.
He taps one finger along the swirling hue to the flat of the blade. “Oh, it’s real.” My heart thrums faster, and I have to fight to keep the shock off my face. “I’d bet my life on it. You can’t get that swirl without the heat from their forges, right on top of volcanic rock. Half the nobles in this court can’t afford one, but multiple?” He shakes his head. “Someone gave these to you. Someone planted you here. Very conveniently, I might add, one monthafter my father—who’s always been a tyrant—turns into a full-fledged fucking monster and starts massacring his own people.”
He’s dangerously close to the truth now.
I need to get him off this trail. “We aren’this.”
Outside the windows, the light shifts, catching his gaze. “Distracting me isn’t going to work. But just for the record, under the Charter of Eireann, you are. Like it or not, we all are.” Cashel pauses, letting heartbeats draw out. “Unless something changes for us.”
My chest tightens.“Us?”
He moves closer, putting down the blade.
“You’re working with someone. Plotting something. And since you don’t strike me as an adulterer,” he says, dark stare hardening as he references his words from the night in the garden, “my guess is that you’re an assassin.”
My lungs constrict, but I won’t flinch from him the way he probably expects.
I won’t back down, not now that I know what’s really at stake. I won’t betray the Whisperers, or Wolf, even if they’ve been hiding the truth about there still being magic left in the Seven Wells. Raw fury rips through me, remembering.
What else don’t I know?
I need the truth. And if I betray them, I’ll never get it.
“And what would you do if I am?”
My words come out breathless and rough. Everything in me coils at his nearness—both to me and the secrets he shouldn’t be this close to.
Cashel’s lips curl into a slow, victorious curve. “I would help you.”
TWENTY-TWO
You wouldwhat?”
The poison must be playing tricks on my mind, muddling my senses. There’s no way he just said what my ears think they heard.
His navy eyes sweep over my face.
“You heard me.”
I draw in a slow, cautious breath. “Doesn’t mean I believe you.”
Cashel’s expression hardens. “Whether you believe me or not doesn’t make it any less true. I want to help you. Whatever you’re doing, whoever you’re working with, Iwillhelp you. My father’s lost control. He’s dangerous. We have to act now.”
“He’s always been dangerous.”
