And then there was a muffled squeak from someone at the table. Seth glanced over to see the two archivists conducting a furious silent conversation composed mostly of eyebrow movements… but when they realized the table’s attention had fallen on them, they sat bolt upright, Arric going bright red and Hartwell as pale as a sheet of paper.
“What is it?” Seth prompted. Hartwell’s ashen complexion took on a tinge of green. But Arric, true to form, couldn’t stop himself.
“Something I recall reading on one of the lower levels, in a tome I had been charged to extract for—not important,” he said quickly, at a sharp elbow in the ribs from Hartwell. “A strange passage in a poem. Concerning the Fog. I was reminded of it, by your description. The poet…” Seth could almost see the man’s pulse jackhammering in his temples. “In a passage regarding the Fog—the phrase, I believe, was ‘the Fog devoured him there.’”
“Great,” Acantha said, her voice hard and flat as steel. “Thank you for that unnecessary—”
“It’s thegrammar,” Hartwell broke out impatiently. “The case is… archaic, no longer in use, but grammatically there was a sense of… travel. A sense of—this is clumsy, forgive me, literature is not my field—the Fog devoured the subjecttosomewhere. The same archaic noun case is used for—oh, for example, Ihandthis book over.” He pressed a volume into Arric’s unprotesting hands. “Ihandit. You see? It’s—you have to understand the prevalence of riddles and cryptic inferences in the literature of that century, I can provide an annotated bibliography if you’d like further—”
“That won’t be necessary.” Lana was staring at the archivist intently, a look of dawning revelation on her face. Seth, for one, was utterly lost… and grateful to see, based on the mystified expressions on the faces opposite him, that he wasn’t alone. “This poet was saying the Fog transported someone.”
“It devoured him there, yes.”
“Alive?” Lana demanded. “Does this character come back alive, later in the poem?”
Arric looked anguished. “It’s a fragment,” he murmured, eyes downcast. “The whole final saga was lost due to poor storage techniques, I’m afraid.”
Lana exhaled. “But you’re saying there’s a chance. There’s a chance he’s not dead.”
Arric seemed suddenly to notice the intensity of the attention that was focused on him. Elza in particular looked like she might be about to crawl across the table and shake an answer from him with her bare hands. Seth hadn’t seen that kind of savage hope on her face in months, and it scared him to death. What if this was a dead end? “I only know the poem,” Arric said in a whisper.
Seth stood up. “It’s enough,” he said firmly, looking up and down the table. The dragons looked shocked … but not nearly as shocked as his wolves, who were looking at him like he’d grown a second head. He could almost hear their thoughts, no mind-sharing required… had he lost his mind? Was he really going to put his trust in a scrap of paper, some old poem that the dragons hadn’t even been skillful enough to preserve in its entirety? Him, Alpha of a wolf pack that boasted a flawless ancestral memory that spanned centuries?
But none of them spoke those thoughts aloud. Not here—not in front of the enemy. Seth knew in his bones that every wolf at that table would defend his decision to the death… even if they’d have made a different one. That was what it meant to be Alpha. That was the frightening burden of leadership.
Lana was on her feet too, swaying a little with exhaustion, but her eyes were sharp. “I need you to find that poem,” she told the archivists. “All of it, if you can. Don’t tell me the only copy was destroyed, I know exactly what dragons are like when it comes to making backups. My father wouldn’t even claim he owned a book until he had at least five copies. I want everyone working on this. Understood? I’m putting everyone in the kingdom at your command, Archivists. Don’t let us down.”
The two men exchanged glances, and Seth could see them discreetly leaning against each other for mutual support as they nodded in unison. “Those of you who need rest, get some,” Seth said, turning to his packmates. “Those who don’t…” He nodded towards the dragons. “Give whatever assistance you can.
Captain Acantha was the last of the dragons to rise to her feet, and her green eyes were cryptic as she studied Lana for a long moment. Seth could almost see her weighing the decision in her mind… and then she nodded, just once. “Get some rest, Your Majesty,” was all she said before turning to follow the group to the palace library. But Seth could tell from Lana’s exhausted little smile that she’d heard it—Acantha hadn’t hesitated, this time, before calling her by her title.
They were alone. Moving on the advice of some instinct, Seth moved to Lana’s side—just in time to catch her as she lost her balance and stumbled into his arms. The shock of the contact ran through him like a lightning bolt… and before he could think better of it, he gathered her close to him and buried his face in her hair, breathing in the sweet scent of her that he’d tried and failed to forget. It was as though no time at all had passed since he’d held her like this… he could feel her body trembling, with exhaustion or tears or something else entirely, he didn’t know. All he knew was that she was alive, and safe, and in his arms again. How could he care about anything else?
Chapter 21 - Lana
Lana led Seth through the silent palace, feeling like she was walking through a dream. She was utterly exhausted, but despite that, it wasn’t rest her body was crying out for the loudest. Seth was behind her, glowing on her internal radar like a hot ember. She could feel the intensity of his gaze burning into the back of her neck, and she didn’t dare turn around, knowing that the moment she met those silver eyes she’d have no choice but to tear his clothes off right then and there, in some cold hallway in the depths of the Palace’s living quarters.
And as inviting as that prospect was, Lana wanted a proper reunion. One that involved an enormous, soft bed… and quarters that she knew for a fact were far enough away from everyone else in the palace that they could be exactly as loud as they liked.
Still, she felt a flicker of hesitation when they finally reached her room. Seth’s silver eyes took in the space quickly before returning to her, and she found herself admiring his stillness, his composure, that instinct he had for when it was best to listen and when it was best to speak. She’d been well aware of his leadership in the war room back there—the way he’d guided the group with such a light touch she had a feeling none of them were aware they’d been guided at all.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “For what you did back there.”
That surprised him, clearly. “What do you mean?”
“That conversation could have ended with me locked in the palace dungeons on suspicion of murdering the Prince, and you know it.”
Seth smiled, but she could see his expression was still troubled. “I may have earned you a reprieve, but it won’t last long. They’re on your side for now, but people will talk, and suspicion will grow. We need to get to the bottom of this fast.”
Lana sighed, sitting down heavily on the bed. “Sorry. I told myself I wasn’t going to keep talking about all this, that I just wanted…” She trailed off, not quite able to meet his eyes or finish that sentence.
“It’s hard, to just switch it off.” She felt him move across the room towards her, a shiver running down her spine as he sat next to her on the bed. “A good leader cares about her people. It’s only natural that you can’t just switch that off.”
“I’ve done it a thousand times,” she whispered, her eyes on the floor. “Back home. Every few weeks—even more often, sometimes, if I was feeling particularly restless—I’d just pack up and move on. I talk about my ‘friends’ all the time, but I was never a real friend to any of them. Real friends stay.”
“You’ve been here for months,” Seth pointed out. She scoffed.
“Only because I can’t leave. I’m not a good Queen, Seth. I don’t think I’m even a good person. And now—” She could feel her eyes stinging with the tears she’d fought so hard to hold back in the meeting. “Now Conrad’s gone, probably dead, and so are all the others, and everyone’s counting on me to save them because the prophecy says I can, but I don’t—”