Page 290 of Commanding Blood And Bonds
“He seemed desperate.”
“Can you show us?”
“Draw him?” I asked, irritated. “What, with the stick-figures they taught us in espionage electives?”
Alvara smiled. Sweet. Vicious. “That’s the slow way.”
Right. The reading.
“Yeah, no. I’m not submitting to that.”
“Hiding something, Stuart?” Reyna asked, her jaw grinding.
“A great many things. But that one’s none of your business.”
Freya ignored the back-and-forth. She bent and rummaged through her satchel, surfacing with a napkin and a piece of charcoal. Images of teenage Freya covered in paint splatters, or with fingers stained black struck me in the chest.
“You’re an artist,” I said dumbly.
“Gold star,” she said. “Now talk, and let the rest of them work their own magic.”
The walls around us were covered in a web of images, maps, articles. Reyna loomed near them, scanning for patterns. I got maybe five features into describing Lonan when Alvara’s eyes went molten.
She marched across the room, tore a paper from the chart, and smacked it onto the table.
“This him?” she hissed.
I picked it up. Scowled. My stomach sank. The name scribbled below the sketch turned my blood cold.
Lonan wasn’t the enemy’s pawn.
He was Adrastos. He was the Commander half the country was hunting.
And he’d stood in my throne room just hours ago.
I didn’t have to say it aloud. Ally read it on my face and turned, livid, toward Freya.
“What do you owe him?”
FIFTY-FOUR
FICKLE POLITICS
FREYA
The implications of Cyrus’ confession, coupled with the reality that past-life me may or may not have weaseled out of a bargain with the bastard we were all hunting, sent the gathering into chaos. The underlying fear that Reyna wouldn’t play well with others was confirmed as she dug in her heels—and her nephew went…startlingly quiet.
His hardened eyes flicked between them, jaw set, elbows braced on wide-set knees.
When August had demanded how Cyrus hadn’t pieced together who Lonan was, he bit out, “I was a little busy being blackmailed to recall your perp’s description, and then he implicated Freya was in trouble. I will not apologize for prioritizing getting to her over your war.”
My chest gave an irritating squeeze, something obnoxiously similar to a heart palpitation. He’d come for me. He’d risked the treaty for me. And gave zero shits that it pissed off his aunt to do it.
“In a matter of days, it will be your war too, whether or not you want it,” August warned, dissolving my temporary lapse in sanity. Focus, Freya.
Voice flat, Cyrus said, “I cannot speak for my hierarchy so long as our queen stands. Aside from a vague-ass description, I didn’t know what Adrastos looked like.”
“That bounty went out weeks ago,” Alvara snapped.
