AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ogden grunted his impatience. “If we were to wait for Zayan, we’d never get anything done.”
“I know that, it’s just… has anyone seen him at all today?”
Nobody met my gaze, most uninterested. Draven tapped his fingers on the table in a restless rhythm. “He’s probably in the training yard,” he said. “I saw him there earlier. He said something about throwing knives, and I left him to it.”
“Did he know about this meeting?”
Draven met my gaze. “I assume so.”
“Are we done talking about the fool?” Ogden demanded.
The fool.I tilted my head and laid my gaze on Ogden. “He’s a Prince of Pain, my king, and has as much right to sit at this table as any of us.”
Ogden’s smile was far from friendly. “Be grateful nobody has bundled him back to Pain where he belongs. I hear his brother has written enough letters to bribe half my court.”
My heart thumped. I leaned forward. “There are more letters?”
“Wherever he is, I think it best your companion prince stays out of sight, don’t you?” Ogden said.
I clamped my mouth shut and squeezed my hand into a fist instead of blurting a hundred reasons why Lark was the bravest man here. They knew, and they didn’t like that Razak’s own brother had saved the Court of War. I caught Draven’s glance, expecting to see his fury too, but he faded away, cheek twitching.
“If you don’t mind, and as we’re nearly finished here, I have training to attend to,” he said.
“By all means, go,” Ogden dismissed him. “Have the warriors ready. We march in two days.”
Draven nodded, stood. “My lords.” And then he left, without so much as a glance or a good evening in my direction.
He’d met with that stranger in the training yard, he’d admitted to seeing Lark earlier, and now Lark wasn’t here. Nobody had seen Lark all day.
If Draven had received a letter like mine, asking for Lark in exchange for his son, he’d do it—he loved his son. Love made us all liabilities.
I motioned to stand.
“Arin,” Ogden barked. “I need you here. We have a matter to discuss regarding the Court of Love—your court—and its future. Sit. You and I are not done.”
I hovered, teetering on the edge of chasing after Draven, but my court and its people—many of whom were refugees in War—were important too. “Can it wait?”
Ogden’s eyebrows lifted. “Sit,Kingof Love.”
Reluctantly, I sat. “Go on.”
CHAPTER47
Lark
Rain poundedthe ground in earnest, welcoming me home. Draven’s people did as they’d been tasked and delivered me to Pain’s borders. From there, I’d walked the back roads, keeping my head down and hood up. I’d waded through the river that coiled itself around Pain’s cities to avoid the checkpoints preventing Pain’s citizens from leaving.
Nobody guarded for peopleenteringPain, exactly as Draven had said.
Soaked through, chilled to the bone, I walked along somber streets and passed by increasingly grander towers, until entering the city proper. My feet ached, wet and sore in tight, soaked boots, but the cold no longer burned my skin—I’d grown numb. If I stopped walking, I wouldn’t start again, and might even turn around.
I had to keep moving forward.
Black umbrellas bobbed over the heads of people streaming back and forth. Nobody paid me any mind.
And then I came to the first of Razak’s warnings.
I stopped mid-flow among a stream of silent people and looked up at the string of severed heads slung across the street.
