Page 142 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

I shiver at the brush of his eyes along my skin.

“Go,” he urges softly. “I can’t afford to wait to make my claim. As long as the gardai think my father still lives, they’ll keep fighting you. I can make them stop.” Cash picks up a vial of silver flecks, the cinnabar, and turns it over between his fingers. “If anyone suspects me of…” Cash’s eyes dart to his father’s corpse. “At least now I have proof of what she was doing to him. And if this goes badly… I know the tunnels almost as well as Kav—”

Talon hisses.

Cash swallows, eyes narrowing on them. “AsWolfdoes.”

There’s wariness in Talon’s brown eyes. They reach for my arm, and Cash pushes us toward the door. “I can hide the guard’sbody under the bed for now. But I can’t seal the room off until I have the crown, so go!”

We step over the body of the slain guard, the door creaking faintly as Talon pulls it open. The last thing I see before we slip through is Cash, slipping the onyx and ruby ring of state from his father’s thumb and sliding it onto his own.

We run—fly—through the halls.

A numb weight settles into my bones, fighting to slow me down. Even if it’s just the nerve pain in my hands, or the burn of muscles from climbing down the turret, I should feelsomething—shouldn’t I? Every step we take past the carnage feels like cutting into frozen flesh.

Somewhere near the bottom of a staircase, everything blurs.

The crowds are dense with the clang of weapons and the cries of battle in the halls when I hurtle into a soft mass of purple velvet and sandy-blond hair.

The breath slams out of me, every thought fleeing my mind.

“Aoife?”

She stumbles back, eyes flying wide. There’s no crimson across her faded cloak, but the gray hue to her cheeks is pure blood shock—it’s the same haunted, distant stare she wore as we walked back from the Black Quay after Eavan’s execution. In the days since, with me in my room avoiding attacks from the noble daughters and Wolf’s request for me not to go searching for the High King’s room, I haven’t seen her. She’s kept the curtains of her room drawn tight.

“Aoife?” I ask again, reaching out a hand for her.

She flinches at my touch, but I let my hand linger just at the hem of her faded cloak.

I’ve seen enough carnage in the streets of Quayside to understand how one trigger can bring a flood of other memories crashing over you at once.

If I don’t help her now, she’ll get herself killed.

“You’re covered in blood,” she says, and there’s something off about her tone.

“Just mine,” I lie. It comes out as easy as breathing. “From the Test of Strength. Weren’t you watching?”

“I couldn’t…” Aoife’s words die, her eyes flickering over me, before dropping down to my neck. I reach a hand up—the triple knot charm hangs outside my tunic, but I tuck it back underneath and look back at her. “I couldn’t watch anyone else die.”

“Maeve.”Talon’s voice drops in warning.

Old Ones, I’ve caused so much bloodshed. So much death.

Maybe I can prevent just one.

I don’t need to trust Aoife to recognize she’s a big part of how I’ve managed to survive here. I don’t need to trust her to not want her to die alone in the bloody filth of these halls.

“Listen to me.” I lock my eyes on hers. “Go back to your room.” For the first time I think that’s fear slivering through the haze of her stare. “Don’t come out. Not until this is all over.”

There’s a flicker of lucidity in her gaze.

We hear a crash and there’s a blast of… are those green flames erupting against the wall in the distance? No, there’s no way. Just a trick of the light.

But in the bright flash… fuck. Aoife’s eyes look exactly the same shade of blue as Cash’s.

The breath slams out of me.

Aoife told me herself she’s Cash’s second cousin. And in thebaths, when she told me about the uprising five years ago, she had hinted…