Page 24 of Heart of Night
“If I can promise you nothing else, I can promise you that I’ll be the one guarding you at the palace. I might have failed Myron, but I won’t fail my queen.” His words are a murmur, his hair bouncing into his face as he leans closer to share this secret. “And before you ask, I will continue to drug you. It’s the best way I can protect you for now. I can’t torture you when you’re out cold. Even Ephegos has to acknowledge that.”
Blood rushes to my head with the new understanding of what a slim line he’s walking in fulfilling his bargain with Ephegos and actually trying to do the right thing, and I am tempted to thank him. But there is more. More words he is about to say, more truths swirling in his green eyes. He’s murdered and raped and tortured. He used to believe Myron’s father’s path was the right one—until he started to see there was a different way. Myron’s way.
“Have you had any dreams?”
The question takes me by such surprise that I forget to be afraid of him. Heat flushes my cheeks as the dream about Myron on the Wild Ray comes back to me. I can almost feel the wind on my face, almost smell the ocean, feel his lips on mine and his fingers on my skin. And his voice echoes in my head like he’s standing next to me.
I will find you. And if it takes a lifetime, I will find you.
Smothering all evidence of the pain filling my chest at the mere thought of the hope flaring when I’d heard him in my dream, I let go of his arm and step back until my shoes hit the rose and creme granite tiles of the bathing room.
“About what?
Herinor’s gaze flickers to my shoulder, and for a heartbeat, I believe he’s going to tear off my sleeve again and cut my skin all the way to the crow tattoo gracing my shoulder.
All he does is shake his head. “When I was little, my father used to say some dreams are real. Not all but some. And you’ll know when they are.”
Before I can ask what he means by that, he closes the door in my face, and his footsteps disappear down the hallway.
Thirteen
Ayna
I’m not even trying to figure out what he meant. The moment silence enters the bathing room, I yank on the door, hoping to open it, but of course, Herinor locked it—with magic, I suppose, since I didn’t hear a lock. It doesn’t even rattle.
“Shit.” I curse the Guardians and Eroth and even the few Neredynian gods I’ve heard about when my legs go weak again and I need to grab for the oval sink beneath the arched mirror to my left. So I’m not getting out through the door.
The window then.
The glass is milky white, preventing me from seeing more than dark blotches, which I suspect to be bushes. Hopefully. Bushes are a good hiding place … if I ever make it through the window.
The last time I tried to escape from a bathing room, it was high up in the wall, and I broke a shelf, probably alerting half the Crow Palace with my noise. But this window is easy to reach and big enough to climb through.
Bracing myself on the sink, I reach for the handle and pull.
The window doesn’t open.
Fuck the Guardians if they won’t help me…
I pull again, harder this time. The window doesn’t move a fraction of an inch.
All right. If it won’t open, I’ll have to break the glass. I grab the largest bottle I can find on the sideboard and hurl it at the window.
The bottle is all that breaks. Big surprise.
I need something larger. Something strong enough to shatter the thin layer standing between me and freedom.
The plain stool by the bathtub seems like it’s up to the task, but my strength isn’t. Just when I start picking it up, my head spins, and I need to lean against the wall to stay upright. Damn Herinor and his poison. Damn the Flames and the Crows and everything magical. I need to get out of here.
The scent of rosewater spreads from the shards of the bottle scattered beneath the window, oil dripping from the dark wooden windowsill into the mess on the floor.
A few deep breaths later, the dizzy spell is over, and I turn to pick up the stool once more when the door opens again and Kaira walks in clad in a plain blue cotton dress that complements her eyes, and drops into a curtsey. Her gaze finds my hands on the stool then the mess beneath the window, and realization flickers across her features. “Don’t even try to break it. He put a magical barrier around the entire room. You’re not getting out. We’re not getting out unless he wants us to.”
The relief washing over me resembles an ocean wave near the Horn of Eroth. “Of course he has.” Only now that she’s standing before me, I realize how much I’d feared Ephegos killed her after all.
When I keep staring at her, she smothers the grin spreading on her face and drops into another curtsey. “At your service, Wolayna.”
“You…” A glance up and down her body tells me she’s wearing not just any dress; she’s wearing a servant uniform. “You’re my lady’s maid?”