Page 147 of Revealing Fate

“I don’t know what manner of illness this is, Penn,” she’d said. “I’ll not have you risk catching it.”

Beulah set the heated cloth over Saul’s creased forehead. His breath rattled in his lungs with each laborious inhale. He was pale as bleached linen. His lips pinched as she held a mug to them, coaxing him to drink.

“Here, let me,” Santhe offered, taking the mug. She sniffed it, nose wrinkling. “What is this?”

Beulah indicated the larger carafe sitting on the table. “Tea, I think. He’s been insistent on drinking it, but I don’t think it’s helping.”

Santhe hefted the window open and tossed the contents of the cup. “Well, whatever it is, it smells foul. Do we have any honey?”

Santhe fixed a new mug of ginger tea and managed to persuade Saul to consume a few sips. He was so weak, he could barely lift his head, and when his bruised lids fluttered open, there was no recognition in his gaze for the company he kept. “We need that mender,” Santhe said softly.

Beulah eased onto her considerable backside and nodded. “I’ve sent a note.”

They were silent for a time, the only sound in the small room being the rattling wheeze of Saul’s breathing.

“What do you think Lucien intends with Kal?”

Beulah didn’t answer immediately. “Lucien saw himself as Saul’s right hand before Kalevar found Meress. His involvement in things made him feel important. When Kal arrived and Saul so readily welcomed him, Lucien felt slighted. He’ll never admit that, but he’s wanted Kal gone for a long time.”

Santhe rubbed her hands together, wishing she’d thought to bring a jacket. “But Kal’s too important to Meress, to the Cozened,” she mused. “He’s too calculated, too connected, and too skilled to lose as an ally.”

Beulah pursed her lips. “Not just that, but he’s too good. He cares about what we’re doing here. He helped turn a ragtag group of rebels into an organized resistance. He lost his family to that evil kingdom and will stop at nothing to secure our independence. We’d be fools to alienate him. Lucien knows that.”

Santhe hummed. “But he hates him. So he’s devised a way to back Kal into a corner. Try to bend him to his will with the laws that bind them both.”

“It will backfire,” Beulah said, face creasing with lines of fatigue. “Kal is not one to be manipulated.”

“No,” Santhe replied. “He is not.”

Beulah might claim to know Kalevar Kaine, but Santhe knew him better. She’d found the fourteen-year-old boy bereft and bleeding from wounds that none could see. She and Cinah had been there for the worst of it. They’d watched as Kal had shut himself away, buttoned up his emotion, and weaponized his rage. They’d witnessed the boy buried and the man born.

“If you will not help me, I will go and get him out myself,” Santhe said. She couldn’t leave him chained in a dank hole while Lucien Cross gloated over his assumed victory.

Beulah’s blue eyes sharpened. “I won’t stop you, Santhe, but I urge you to wait. If I know Lucien, he’ll want to make a spectacle of enacting punishment. He’ll wait until morning, drag his prisoners into the square, and attempt to humiliate them publicly.”

“How exactly does waiting help this situation?”

“Lucien will be drunk on power long denied him,” Beulah explained. “He will overstep. The other members have been occupied trying to pacify the public since Saul took ill. They don’t know this most recent turn of events. Let me talk to Vorak and Stef. Let me see Saul through the night.” She flicked a worried gaze at the cot where Saul lay unconscious. “There is a process to the way we do things, a reason we are five members. We have a better chance at catching Lucien off guard and stripping his position if he believes he doesn’t need the rest of the Conclave to pass judgment.”

Santhe considered her, dubious. “And if Lucien already went to the other members?”

Beulah sneered. The expression looked out of place on her matronly face. “He hasn’t. Vorak and Stef are fair men. They would have sought me immediately.” She reached out and squeezed Santhe’s hand. “Give me tonight, Santhe. Let me help them the right way. There’s little you can do if you’re caught aiding an escape. Even if you succeeded, it would only incriminate them further.”

Santhe chewed at the stub of her nail. She hated the feeling of sitting on her hands, of feeling aimless. As much as she craved a quiet existence, the stagnation of her current situation was unwelcome. “Fine,” she said, eventually. “We’ll wait until tomorrow. But, Beulah, you had better be right about Cross,” she warned. “If anything happens to Kal, I will hold you personally responsible.”

Chapter 52

SPECTACLE

FELÍNE’S ACHING EYELIDS FLUTTERED OPEN at the sound of a man’s gentle humming. Adder, Felíne thought. Kal didn’t hum.

Everything hurt. She’d been sitting for what must have been hours in a sort of semi-conscious daze, unable to fully rest her head with the ring of metal barbs circling her neck. Each time she’d nodded off, the sharp sting of the skullcage’s prongs jerked her awake.

Felíne cleared her parched throat, the scraping noise like a rusted nail scratching through Adder’s pleasant tune.

“Kitty?” Kal’s deep voice rumbled somewhere nearby, the pitch reaching through earth and stone to comfort her.

“How long⁠—”