The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(43)
Kellan leaned forward, tapping his quill against the parchment in front of him. “You tell me. At least half of you occupied your family’s council seat during the time of the blood wraith. How did we catch it?”
Several of the members exchanged glances, and then Georgiana spoke. “We had help. Her sister and the alchemist—”
“Valeraine de la Cour,” the queen said quietly.
“Valeraine de la Cour?” Dinah sounded startled. When all eyes landed on her, she straightened her spine. “I’ve taken guardianship over her daughter, Blue, after the death of her poor father. I wasn’t on the council at the time of the wraith, of course, so I didn’t realize Valeraine’s involvement.”
The queen frowned. “But you were close enough to Valeraine to have her sign guardianship over to you.”
Dinah shrugged, though her jaw was clenched. “Valeraine was always very discreet. I’m sure she felt protecting her role in things was best for her family.”
“Could an alchemist help us now?” Kellan asked, bringing the discussion back to its purpose.
“Perhaps with a potion to find lost things, but I believe that only works if you put something from the thing or person you want to find into the potion,” Senet said, her crimson lips a slash of color against her light brown skin.
“I didn’t realize you were a budding alchemist,” Martin said.
Senet’s nails tapped the table impatiently. “Read a book sometime, Martin. It’s amazing the kind of things you can learn if you show the least bit of intellectual curiosity.”
“So without knowing who we’re looking for, we can’t use a finding potion, and we’re back to having nothing to go on.” Warrane rubbed a hand over his face, scratching at the gray beard that covered his jaw.
“Not necessarily.” Kellan pulled one of his parchment sheets free and glanced at the list he’d made. “We might not be able to track the person, but we can track the ingredients used in the spell.”
The council leaned toward him as he read the short list of ingredients Blue had identified. When he’d finished, he looked up. “I’ve already done a bit of research. Charing root is fairly common, though we might have some luck if a merchant sold it to someone they hadn’t seen before. But threffalk is rare. Rare enough that anyone placing a recent order for it should be memorable. Especially when there are maybe four suppliers in all of Balavata.”
“Someone could’ve just brought it in with them at port,” Preston Gaillard said from beside Kellan, his wide hands pressed flat against the table, his body leaning forward as if to emphasize his point. “The port traffic comes through my quarter, and I assure you that try as we might to stop illegal imports, we can’t find everything.”
“I know, but this is our best chance of finding a true lead.” Kellan met his mother’s gaze once more before moving rapidly through a list of tasks he needed each head family to do for both their public and private response to the threat. The meeting took another three hours as he worked through the other issues that faced the council.
Three hours he could’ve spent sending protection to Blue. Making sure Nessa didn’t leave the castle early to see her friend until he was sure the shop wouldn’t be attacked. Figuring out why there was so little difference between the fear of losing his sister and the fear of losing Blue.
By the time the meeting ended, the restlessness within him was at a breaking point. When Georgiana Faure demanded an audience to discuss the strength of her family’s potential alliance with the throne, couched in terms that left little doubt that she was prepared to find another path to the throne should he prove unreceptive, Kellan turned on the charm, settled her in a side parlor with refreshments on the way, gave orders to send royal guards to watch over Blue, and then rushed to the royal suite for just five minutes of privacy so he could pace and think and breathe.
He needed to breathe.
How had his father done this? Managed every crisis with the steady calm needed to keep others tethered to their best selves, put the interests of the kingdom as a whole first, and played the political game without a single sign of weakness? Had he ever sat through a meeting because it was what the kingdom needed while inside panic bit deep over the few people in the kingdom he truly cared about?
Kellan pulled up short, his hand still reaching for the door that led to his bedchambers.
He cared about his mother. Nessa. Many of the castle staff and his friends.
But Blue?
They were becoming friends, yes. And it was true that she was the one person besides Nessa who made it easy to be himself. No bracing for lies, threats, or flattery. No worry that she would tell him what she thought he wanted to hear.
He laughed at the thought of Blue trying to flatter him, and then swallowed hard as the bright torch that had blazed to life within him while he’d danced with her came roaring back.
He couldn’t afford to be anything but a prince dedicated to choosing a bride from the head families while proving he had what it took to step into his mother’s shoes. Blue was becoming his friend, and he was grateful for it. And of course, he wanted to protect her. He’d do the same for anyone.
Except he hadn’t. He’d assigned the job of sending protection to the various alchemy shops throughout the city to the representatives from each quarter, but he’d personally sent guards to watch over Blue. He could tell himself it was because her family had been a longtime friend of his, but the truth was that from the moment he’d heard Senet’s report about her alchemist, the one person in all of Balavata he’d worried about was Blue de la Cour.