Dividing Eden (Dividing Eden #1)(72)

“I doubt I will be able to concentrate on the stars, my lady,” he said, running a finger down her face. “Not with your beauty distracting me.”

She laughed, but took his hand and wove her fingers through his. “Is it any wonder that I fear your sister’s jealousy will try to take this from us?”

“Carys cannot hurt us,” he assured her. “Trust me.”





17


They were gone.

Carys stared at the wardrobe as if she could will the bottles to reappear. Her head spun. The bottles had been here earlier. They should be here now. But they weren’t, and Carys could only think of one reason why they would be gone.

Andreus.

He must have realized she had lied about the Tears of Midnight. Part of her wanted to believe he wasn’t the one behind this—that it was the Council that had figured out her secret. Because Andreus knew what happened when her body craved the drink. He’d sat with her when she shook and sweated and screamed at him that she was dying. He held the bottle to her lips when he could no longer bear to see her suffer.

But that was the brother who needed her to act as his shield. The brother she saw in the Hall of Virtues tonight no longer wanted her aid, and this was his way of telling her that they were done.

Gods.

Carys rubbed her temples and tried to think. The welts on her back were already beginning to throb. Not terribly, but the wounds whimpered when she moved. By the start of the next trial tomorrow evening, it would be worse. Which is what her brother was counting on and something she couldn’t let happen. Andreus needed her even if he didn’t realize it anymore. She had to warn him about Imogen before Imogen had the chance to destroy Andreus the way she did Father and Micah, or before she could find and hurt Larkin.

Larkin. Fear gripped Carys anew as she wondered whether Errik had gotten her friend to safety. If not, the guards would be talking about her capture, as would Andreus.

She could feel the guard following her with his eyes as she walked down the hallway to her brother’s door. No one answered when she knocked, and the door was locked. She shook the handle several times and banged on the door again, calling her brother’s name, wanting to warn him with one breath and desperate to find the bottles with the other.

When the door remained bolted, Carys pushed away and headed downstairs, asking guards she passed if the traitor had been captured. They all said no, which made Carys sag with relief as she slipped into her mother’s sitting room and found it blazing with light from every corner. Not a shadow remained. Maybe Oben thought the light would chase away the darkness the Queen was fighting the way it kept the Xhelozi from the walls.

“Your Highness, is there something I can do for you?” Oben asked as he hurried to greet her.

“I came to see my mother,” she lied.

“The potion Madame Jillian gave her has pushed her into a deep sleep.”

“I will only be a moment,” she assured him as she opened her mother’s bedroom door and quickly closed it behind her. Here there was darkness. Her mother lay on the bed with her eyes closed. Candles flickered on the far end of the room as Carys quietly knelt, opened her mother’s small cabinet, and reached inside.

“You won’t find them.”

Her mother hadn’t moved, but her eyes were now open. White orbs among the shadows, looking at her as she said in a singsong voice, “He was already here.” Her mother pointed her finger to the desk beneath the window and Carys bit back a scream as she saw the red glass bottles all lined up perfectly in a row as if waiting for her.

Taunting her.

Carys reached for calm as she walked to the bottles and knew what she would find even as she picked each one of them up and held it to the light.

Empty. Not a drop left.

She wiped her hand under her nose and hurried toward her mother’s cabinet even though she knew what she would see.

“I thought I could fix it.”

The cabinet was completely empty.

“He took them. Perhaps I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. I have stopped it for as long as I could. It is time and soon everyone will know. The winds will come from the mountains. The orb will break. The Xhelozi are calling. Can’t you hear them?”

“Mother. Please,” Carys said as disappointment sliced through her soul. Her mother was no better. Still, she begged, “I need your help. Imogen was part of the plot to kill Father and Micah. She has to be stopped. You have to help me stop her.”

“Nothing can be stopped. He thinks taking the bottles has stopped something, but he’s wrong. And now he’ll know. They’ll all know.”

“Know what, Mother?”

Her mother’s hair was wild, but her eyes were clear. Her face was dead calm as she looked into the shadows. “I wanted to protect your brother so I hid what I knew. But I was wrong.”

“This is about the Council and Imogen, Mother,” Carys snapped. “This isn’t about the curse.”

“Of course it is,” her mother whispered. “Only I got it wrong. I thought your brother’s sickness was the sign of the curse.”

“I told you . . .”

“But it is not.” Her mother stared her dead in the eyes. “The Tears of Midnight weren’t to control your pain. I couldn’t care less about your pain. I made you drink it to control the curse in you.”