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That wouldn’t work. I needed him to go with Liam and Zane. I needed to be alone because I was in no shape to hunt down my prey. If Adam stayed…that would leave too many things beyond my control. I thought that I might have this one chance only.
“Go,” I told Adam, brushing my hand over the carry gun he had in the small of his back. It didn’t feel like his usual HK. “You’ll be useful. None of them can scent a trail.”
I wasn’t wrong. But I didn’t know that for sure until after I’d said it and the thoughts of the others confirmed it. I needed them all out of the room.
I didn’t have much time, I thought with black humor.
Adam stiffened—he knew I was planning something. He hesitated.
“Go,” I told him. “Please.” Oh, dear God, I prayed, let this work. One chance.
“I can stay,” Adam said, and I knew he’d caught my fear and misread it. I wasn’t worried about me; I was worried about him. About what would happen to him if I failed.
“Go,” I said, willing him to continue to believe that what I was afraid of was being left alone. “You need to go.”
He heard the utter truth in my words, because he left, shutting the door and locking it behind him. As soon as they were all gone, I sat up. Then I pulled a pillow over my lap and curled over it, resting my forehead on the cool linen. I waited for the coolness to make my head stop hurting so much, but that didn’t happen.
The door opened again. Soft, hesitant footsteps approached the bed. A gentle hand touched my head. I didn’t open my eyes, but I knew who it was. I hadn’t met him—but Liam knew him, a gentle man who was good with flowers.
“Hello, Hugo,” I said, and speaking out loud helped. Not with the pain, but with the confusion that tried to take over my thoughts. Maybe talking it through would help everything make sense. “Can I tell you a story?”
He hesitated. I wasn’t doing what he thought I would do. But he hadn’t had his magic torn open and his soul exposed to the world, so he couldn’t understand me.
“I would like to tell you a story,” I said, almost sick with fear of failure—and sadness. “Please, have a seat and listen.” I tried to infuse that last sentence with a bit of force—Adam to his pack, giving a polite order.
I didn’t need to open my eyes to know that my visitor had moved to sit on the chair in front of the window where someone else had just been sitting. I couldn’t remember if it had been Liam or Zane. Then I remembered the reason I hadn’t known which one of them had been sitting there was because I hadn’t opened my eyes once since I’d woken up. The idea of adding light to my headache still had no appeal at all.
I couldn’t read Hugo like I had Liam and Zane. Those two were old, even Zane. Maybe especially Zane.
My visitor was, in all the ways that counted just now, not old at all. I felt him as I expected a child would have felt—a rich present, here and now, but not deep or complex.
“Simple,” Liam had called Hugo once—I couldn’t remember when. The green man hadn’t been wrong about the heart of this man, who, obedient for now, walked around the bed and sat down on the chair in front of the window. Though my eyes were shut still, the dimming light told me it was already getting dark. Tomorrow would be the shortest day of the year. Solstice.
Liam was worried because the marriage should take place as dawn replaced the darkness. Not much time at all now. And I was tired, so tired of fighting to find a path through all the information bombarding my head from connections that I hadn’t quite gotten rid of when they left the room.
“I am telling the story for me, too,” I told him. “So I don’t get any of it wrong, or miss something important.”
I hoped I got some of it wrong.
My visitor made a soft noise.
“Victoria and Able are thieves,” I said. “Were thieves. Very good thieves. They were hired to steal the lyre from Hrímnir.” I paused. “Hired by Ymir, I think—but it could have been—”
“Ymir.” Hugo’s voice was toneless—something had happened to it, Liam had told us. Cancer. Something like that.
Magic, I thought tiredly.
“I was almost sure it was Ymir,” I told him. “But when the goblins went to steal the artifact, it was already gone. The storm was building and they…”
I paused. “No. I need to start with the marriage—I keep forgetting about the marriage.”
“I remember,” said my visitor darkly. “Hrímnir could, too, but he chooses to forget.”
The sudden burning rage that seared in my head wasn’t mine. I couldn’t help making a sound.
“Are you all right?” Hugo somehow managed to convey concern in his toneless voice. I had no doubt it was real concern.
Ironic, that, considering everything.
