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“I believe so.” Njall nodded. “We have only a few days before Oorlon notices it missing.” He paused. “Yet if we disappear too quickly… The timing must be exact.”
Elara pressed two fingers to her lips, eyes narrowing.
Njall recognized the expression. “What are you thinking?”
“We prepare now so we are ready when the moment is right,” she said. “Food for the road. I’ll slip into the kitchens tonight.” Fingers tapped her lips. “Warm clothes for the mountains. Njall, that’s yours.” She turned to Kalaetzu. “Healing and nourishment draughts for Gavriel.”
Kalaetzu perked up and immediately began gathering vials.
Elara paced once across the room, then turned back. “Is there a time of day when your absence would go unnoticed longest?”
Kalaetzu hesitated. “It is more difficult now. The king’s advisor overseeing the operation visits several times a day. He is under pressure to produce a full regiment of oraivane soldiers by winter.” His voice thinned. “And the High King wants us testing more fae now that I am here.”
“He told me fae would not be tested until the human potion stabilized.” Njall felt cold.
“We stopped for a time,” Kalaetzu replied. “But when progress slowed, he ordered fae testing to resume. About a year ago. King Oorlon selected the subject himself.”
Damlor’s scar flashed in Njall’s mind. “Has the efficacy improved?”
The Tsuchitsan shook his head slowly. “If I had not been giving the poor male a healing draught after every treatment, he would already be dead.” He paused, as if gathering strength to continue. “Though he is growing resistant to the draught. I doubt he will survive much longer.”
Njall swallowed, the movement difficult. “What are the side effects?”
“Rapid aging.” Kalaetzu closed his eyes. “Burst veins around the eyes.” A single tear rolled down his cheek. “Wounds of the mind that do not easily heal.”
Njall shot upright so quickly the table shuddered. “Who is it, Kalaetzu?”
Kalaetzu hesitated.
Elara looked between them, concern coloring her features.
“A male named Loken,” Kalaetzu said at last. “The overseer of the oraivane operation.”
The room seemed suddenly too bright. Njall lifted a hand over his eyes.
“Loken,” Elara repeated softly. “Do you know him?”
Njall forced the words through a throat that no longer seemed to be his. “My father.”
Elara and Kalaetzu both gasped.
“I am sorry,” Kalaetzu said quickly. “I did not know.”
Behind the darkness of his hand, Njall’s thoughts slowed to a halt. He saw only Ilen’s golden eyes guttering. His father’s amethyst gaze, dulled the last time they had spoken. And deep brown eyes looking at him without flinching, set on rescuing a friend no matter the cost. The images collided and overlapped, sliding out of alignment, then crashing together again in jagged pieces that refused to form the reality he wanted to believe.
Elara’s small hand closed gently over his. “You should go find him.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“When he is not on Celestine Isle,” Kalaetzu offered, striving for atonement, “I am told he stays in his former chambers here at the castle.”
A pipe clicked in the walls.
The sound might as well have been thunder riding the storm of the night’s revelations, each rumble landing harder than the last. It cracked something in him.
Njall lowered his hand.
The light blinded him.
