Page 84 of Sharpest Court

Ironic, considering that Goren now walked at my side, looking every bit as intimidating as he had that evening.

Though I’d wanted to make this journey alone, he’d insisted on joining me.

You could be walking into a trap, he’d said.

She doesn’t know I’m coming, I’d replied.

No. He’d smirked, then donned his own mask. She doesn’t know I’m coming.

So we’d waited for that liminal space in which the jolly was winding down but the courtiers hadn’t yet returned to their rooms. Then Goren and I had sneaked from our accommodations, weaved a back-entry path into the Crater, and slipped into the courtiers’ quarters.

“No guards?” I whispered as we strode through the corridors, moonlight illuminating the way in silver shafts.

While Dashiel was currently monitoring the guard rotation outside Holden’s office building, hoping to find an opening, those extra security precautions hadn’t manifested here.

“Holden’s office is an exception,” Goren said. “Banarrati culture is built on an honor system. There are no guards inside private quarters; doors are made without locks; eateries are left unattended and patrons leave enough gold to cover their meals.”

“People really abide by those rules?”

“On this island, Holden’s word is law.” Goren rounded a corner and I followed, my hair blowing back from the speed. “You break that law,” he said darkly, “and you die.”

My skin crawled as we stopped outside a door in the uppermost hallway.

“This suite is reserved for the court’s newest member,” he said. “As the first tribute in a generation, she should be in here.”

With a deep breath, I twisted the doorknob. But the door halted, a clack sounding from inside the room.

I frowned. “You said they didn’t put locks on the doors.”

“They don’t. She must have barred it.”

My gut twisted. “You still think she wants to be here?” I asked sharply.

Goren just angled himself before the door, his eyes betraying nothing of his expression behind the mask. As a scraping sound filled the silence, I realized he was feeding his specter through the tight seam where the door met the wall, moving the obstruction aside.

After a soft thud, Goren wrapped his gloved hand around the doorknob. My heart raced as I followed him into the chamber and shut the door behind us.

Shadows soaked every corner, the dwindling lights of the Crater pinpricking through the gauzy curtains and illuminating the golden poles of a canopy bed. Perla occupied a quarter of the mattress, the thin bedsheets clinging to the little hills of her body. Her chest rose and fell with slow breaths, one hand buried under her pillow.

“She’s sleeping soundly for a prisoner,” Goren murmured drily.

I didn’t waste a glare on him. My attention had snagged on the gold-lacquered vanity, strewn with beauty items. I drifted forward, shuddering. Because every item, from the rose-carved hairbrush to the rose-shaped perfume bottle, possessed an air of Daradon. Of Erik.

“Look at this,” Goren whispered. I turned to find him standing dangerously close to Perla’s head, his attention fixed on the hand she’d draped across her side.

From this angle, I couldn’t see what he was looking at. But I did see the flutter of her dark lashes the moment before she gasped awake.

And the flash of her horror as she saw Goren above her and opened her mouth to scream.

23

It happened within the space of a breath: Goren’s gloved hand clamping over Perla’s mouth, smothering her panic—and then her own hand whipping from under her pillow and setting a knife against his jugular.

Goren stiffened, his eyes narrowing above the mask.

“Let her go,” I hissed, my heart lurching. With his powerful body looming over her, and his free hand clenched around the pillow beside her head, Goren presented a menacing figure.

And while Perla’s grip remained steady around the knife—while she applied enough pressure that the blade pinched against his dullroot scar—the whites of her eyes shone wide in the dark, and the bedsheets moved rapidly with her shallow breathing.