I straightened, smiling. “She’s here?”
Drakon lifted a dark brow. “You know Nephelle?”
“Know of her,” I said, and glanced toward the tent flaps as if she’d come striding right in. “I—it’s a long story.”
“We have time to hear it,” Miryam said, then added, “Or … a bit of time, I suppose.”
For there were indeed many, many things to sort out. Including—
I shook my head. “Later,” I said to Miryam, to her mate. The proof that a world could exist without a wall, without a Treaty. “There’s something …” I relayed my thought down the bond to Rhys, earning a nod of approval before I said, “Is your island still secret?”
Miryam and Drakon exchanged a guilty look. “We do apologize for that,” Miryam offered. “It seems that the glamour worked too well, if it kept well-meaning messengers away.” She shook her head, those beautiful curls moving with her. “We would have come sooner—we left the moment we realized what trouble you all were in.”
“No,” I said, shaking my own head, scrambling for the words. “No—I don’t blame you. Mother above, we owe you …” I blew out a breath. “We are in your debt.” Drakon and Miryam objected to that, but I went on, “What I mean is … If there was an object of terrible power that now needed to be hidden … Would Cretea remain a good place to conceal it?”
Again that look between them, a look between mates. “Yes,” Drakon said.
Miryam breathed, “You mean the Cauldron.”
I nodded. It had been hauled into our camp, guarded by whatever Illyrians could still stand. None of the other High Lords had asked—for now. But I could see the debate that would rage, the war we might start internally over who, exactly, got to keep the Cauldron. “It needs to disappear,” I said softly. “Permanently.” I added, “Before anyone remembers to lay claim to it.”
Drakon and Miryam considered, some unspoken conversation passing between them, perhaps down their own mating bond. “When we leave,” Drakon said at last, “one of our ships might find itself a little heavier in the water.”
I smiled. “Thank you.”
“When are you, exactly, planning to leave?” Rhys asked, lifting a brow.
“Kicking us out already?” Drakon said with a half smile.
“A few days,” Miryam cut in wryly. “As soon as the injured are ready.”
“Good,” I said.
They all looked to me. I swallowed. “I mean … Not that I’m glad for you to go …” The amusement in Miryam’s eyes spread, twinkling. I smiled myself. “I want you here. Because I’d like to call a meeting.”
A day later … I didn’t know how it’d come together so quickly. I’d merely explained what I wanted, what we needed to do, and … Rhys and Drakon made it happen.
There was no proper space to do it—not with the camps in disarray. But there was one place—a few miles off.
And as the sun set and my family’s half-ruined estate became filled with High Lords and princes, generals and commanders, humans and Fae … I still didn’t have the words to really express it. How we could all gather in the giant sitting room, the only usable space in my family’s old estate, and actually have … this meeting.
I’d slept through the night, deep and undisturbed, Rhys in bed beside me. I hadn’t let go of him until dawn had leaked into our tent. And then … the war-camps were too full of blood and injured and the dead. And there was this meeting to arrange between various armies and camps and peoples.
It took all day, but by the end of it, I found myself in the wrecked foyer, Rhys and the others beside me, the chandelier a broken mass behind us on the cracked marble floor.
The High Lords arrived first. Starting with Beron.
Beron, who did not so much as glance at his son-who-was-not-his-son. Lucien, standing on my other side, didn’t acknowledge Beron’s existence, either. Or Eris’s, as he strode a step behind his father.
Eris was bruised and cut up enough to indicate he must have been in terrible shape after the fighting ceased yesterday, sporting a brutal slice down his cheek and neck—barely healed. Mor let out a satisfied grunt at the sight of it—or perhaps a sound of disappointment that the wound had not been fatal.
Eris continued by as if he hadn’t heard it, but didn’t sneer at least. Rather—he just nodded at Rhys.
It was silent promise enough: soon. Soon, perhaps, Eris would finally take what he desired—and call in our debt.
We did not bother to nod back. None of us.
Especially not Lucien, who continued dutifully ignoring his eldest brother.
But as Eris strode by … I could have sworn there was something like sadness—like regret, as he glanced to Lucien.
Tamlin crossed the threshold moments later.
He had a bandage over his neck, and one over his arm. He came, as he had to that first meeting, with no one in tow.
I wondered if he knew that this wrecked house had been purchased with the money he’d given my father. With the kindness he’d shown them.
But Tamlin’s attention didn’t go to me.
It went to the person just to my left. To Lucien.
Lucien stepped forward, head high, even as that metal eye whirred. My sisters were already within the sitting room, ready to guide our guests to their predetermined spots. We’d planned those carefully, too.
Tamlin paused a few feet away. None of us said a word. Not as Lucien opened his mouth.
“Tamlin—”
But Tamlin’s attention had gone to the clothes Lucien now wore. The Illyrian leathers.
He might as well have been wearing Night Court black.
It was an effort to keep my mouth shut, to not explain that Lucien didn’t have any other clothes with him, and that they weren’t a sign of his allegiance—
Tamlin just shook his head, loathing simmering in his green eyes, and walked past. Not a word.
I looked at Lucien in time to see the guilt, the devastation, flicker in that russet eye. Rhys had indeed told Lucien everything about Tamlin’s covert assistance. His help in dragging Beron here. Saving me at the camp. But Lucien remained standing with us as Tamlin found his place in the sitting room to our right. Did not glance at his friend even once.
Lucien wasn’t foolish enough to beg for forgiveness.
That conversation, that confrontation—it would take place at another time. Another day, or week, or month.
I lost track of who filed in afterward. Drakon and Miryam, along with a host of their people. Including—
I started at the slight, dark-haired female who entered on Miryam’s right, her wings much smaller than the other Seraphim.
I glanced to where Azriel stood on Rhys’s other side, bandaged all over and wings in splints after he’d worked them too hard yesterday. The shadowsinger nodded in confirmation. Nephelle.
I smiled at the legendary warrior-scribe when she noticed my stare as she passed by. She grinned right back at me.
Kallias and Viviane flowed in, along with that female who was indeed her sister. Then Tarquin and Varian. Thesan and his battered Peregryn captain—whose hand he tightly held.
Helion was the last of the High Lords to arrive. I didn’t dare look through the ruined doorway to where Lucien now stood in the sitting room, close to Elain’s side as she and my sister silently kept against the wall by the intact bay of windows.
Beron, wisely, didn’t approach—and Eris only looked over every now and then. To watch.
Helion was limping, flanked by a few of his captains and generals, but still managed a grim smile. “Better enjoy this while it lasts,” he said to me and Rhys. “I doubt we’ll be so unified when we walk out of here.”
“Thank you for the words of encouragement,” I said tightly, and Helion chuckled as he eased inside.
More and more people filled that room, the tense conversation broken up by bursts of laughter or greeting. Rhys at last told our family to head into the room—while he and I waited.