I climb the rest of the steps, then make my way to the Mirrored Hall. The room is lit by hundreds of tiny glass orbs. They hang from the ceiling, throwing their blue-white light over the length of the room. Lena is the only one inside. She’s standing beside a long wooden table with her hands clasped behind her back. She’s not facing me or the doorway, but I think she sees my tiny reflection in the mirror opposite her.
“I’ll kill you if you hurt Aren,” she says without turning.
It’s an empty threat, but I tell her, “I’m not going to hurt him.” I mean it.
A fae enters the hall from a gap that’s almost invisible due to the gilded mirrors covering just about every square inch of the walls. He’s carrying a silver tray with two bottles and an assortment of cheeses and fruits. Most of the latter is cut into cubes and covered with some kind of glaze. The fae sets it down, then asks if Lena wants anything else. She never once looks at him, just shakes her head no.
After he leaves, I say, “You should be nice to the waitstaff.”
I expect her to protest, to say something about the servants being below her station or some other typical, I’m-a-noble-and-he’s-a-peon crap, but she sinks down into a chair.
“I know,” she says. She lets out a breath, and her shoulders sag. “I miss my brother.”
She’s staring at the silver tray, so she doesn’t see my eyes go wide. She’s confiding in me? What am I supposed to do with that? Never mind that I suck at girl talk, she’s Lena. She’s supposed to tolerate me only because she needs my Sight and shadow-reading skills.
“He’d know what to do with the high nobles,” she says.
“He wouldn’t have the problem of convincing them that a woman can sit on the silver throne.”
“True.” She looks up, and I think I see relief in her eyes. I understand it. It’s like she’s onstage every second of her life now. She can’t be anything but confident when she’s in public. Her supporters have to have faith in her. The high nobles can’t see a weakness in her resolve. She shouldn’t even let me see a weakness, but I’m not judging her. She’s exhausted.
“The remnants let you go?” Lena asks, picking up an apple-shaped fruit.
I pull out the chair across from her and sit. “Paige let me go.”
“Naito told us about the serum,” she says. “He told us it’s fatal. I’m sorry.”
My gut twists. It’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that Paige is dying. She looked perfectly healthy.
“Will the remnants use the serum?” she asks.
“Paige says they won’t. They know it’s fatal now, too.”
“She trusts them?”
I nod. “And she says the remnants didn’t kill the Sighted humans in London.”
She looks up sharply. “We certainly didn’t kill them.”
“I was thinking…” I draw in a breath, hoping I’m not just trying to justify Paige sympathizing with the remnants. “Maybe someone else is involved in all of this. Maybe we’re not fighting the right people.”
She turns the fruit she’s holding in her hand, shining with the blue-white light of the magically lit orbs hanging above us. “Is it wrong to wish for that? If a false-blood was trying to take the throne, I think I could convince the high nobles to approve me.”
“Before I went to London,” I say, “you mentioned you thought you could force them to vote. Did that not work out?”
Lena gives a short, caustic laugh.
“I’m the one postponing the vote now,” she says, setting aside the fruit as if she’s lost her appetite. “I’m at least a vote short of what I need. I thought I had Lord Hison’s support after you shadow-read in Rhigh, but he’s blaming us for the riot at the gate.”
“That started well before Aren and I were there.”
“That’s what I’ve told Hison,” she says. “But his people continue to talk about the human who can call the lightning and walk unhindered through a crowd of rioting fae.”
“They say the nalkin-shom is untouchable.” That’s from Aren, who’s walking into the hall, with Naito at his side.
I am so not amused. “This is your fault.”
“Mostly,” he says with a devil-may-care grin. It’s both annoying and extremely enticing.
Naito sits beside Lena, but Aren comes to my side of the table. He picks up one of the two bottles sitting on the silver platter in the center of the table and opens it.
“Where’s Taltrayn?” Lena asks.
“He’s at the silver wall,” Aren says, retrieving one of the empty glasses. “When he returns, a swordsman will have him meet us here.”
“Does he know about Caelar?” I ask, watching Aren pour a red liquid into the glass. More cabus, I presume.
Lena rests her folded arms on the table. “Yes. I mentioned Caelar’s name when I told him you were still alive.”
Still alive. Crap. I was primarily concerned about Aren when the remnants captured me because he was the one who saw the illusion of my death, but Kyol wouldn’t have been unaffected by the news. He told me himself he cares about me. He still feels the need to protect me.
Aren sets the bottle of cabus down with a soft thunk, then slides the glass toward me without raising his gaze from the table.
“Did he have any insight on Caelar?” I ask.
Lena’s silver eyes study me a moment before she answers. “Taltrayn respects him. He says Caelar is calm, charismatic, and calculating. But we have his weakness locked in a room underground.”
“Brene,” I say, and Paige’s parting comment to me makes sense now. “We should let her go.”
Lena raises an eyebrow.
“You want to talk to Caelar, don’t you?” I ask. “It’s a good faith gesture. Tell him you’ll let Brene go when he meets with you.”
“Brene might be tor’um,” Lena says, “but she’s still dangerous. She can fight, and she has information on the remnants.”
“Information she’s not telling us,” Aren adds softly. Fae might not believe in ghosts, but his eyes are haunted. Are they haunted because he made her tor’um? Or are they haunted because he wasn’t able to save Lena’s father?
I cup the glass of cabus between my palms.
“Taltrayn has been asking her questions,” Aren tells me. “No one’s hurting her. She’s being cared for.”
He misinterpreted my worry; I didn’t think they were abusing Brene.
Lena lets out a sigh. “We’ll search the mountains again.”
“It might not be their only camp,” Naito puts in. He leans forward to grab a wedge of cheese off the tray, then pops it into his mouth. “And they probably abandoned it as soon as they discovered McKenzie escaped.”
I still think they should let Brene go, but I don’t voice that thought out loud again. Instead, I stare at the crimson surface of the glass of cabus I’m holding, and something tugs at the edge of my mind.
Aren pulls out the chair to my right and sits. “We need to persuade Hison to vote for you. When you’re named queen, Caelar will lose support. He won’t give up his war, but he won’t be a threat to you anymore.”