The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1)(48)
As Trugg shifted and Gabril cleaned his sword on a clump of dying underbrush, Kol took another cautious step toward Lorelai. When she didn’t snap at him to back up, he came close enough to say quietly, “Thank you.”
“I’m not doing this for you.” The wind tossed her curly black hair over her shoulders and the sun painted her pale skin gold as she looked at him. “I’m doing this because if you fail, Irina will just keep trying to find me. And because if Irina uses Ravenspire land to send her magic into Eldr, it might weaken her, and I can use that to my advantage.”
“That’s more than fair, but—”
She laughed sharply, and beneath it he heard the kind of fathomless loss that had opened up within him the day his family died. “None of this is fair. My father should be ruling the kingdom. Leo shouldn’t be gone . . .” Her voice wavered and broke.
“I’m sorry. I know more than most how useless those words are when you’ve lost so much.”
She closed her eyes as if his words hurt, and when she opened them again, there was a hint of compassion on her face. “It isn’t fair that your people are dying because of choices someone made in another kingdom. And it isn’t fair that you felt you had no option but to tie yourself to Irina because that was better than losing absolutely everything.”
“I have no right to ask this, and I will have no way to repay you the debt I owe, but if this fails, and I die—”
“I’ll send my magic into Eldr and put a barrier between the ogres and your people. Once I’m through fighting Irina, I’ll be able to afford expending the kind of energy it will take to seal them back into Vallé de Lumé.” She said the words simply as if she hadn’t just lifted a weight that was crushing Kol from the inside out. “Now listen, here’s what we’re going to do. Irina will test the heart with her palm. It’s been nine years since she’s laid her hands on me, so my blood on the deer heart should fool her. But she also has a scrying mirror.”
Kol nodded. He’d seen the destruction of his kingdom in that mirror.
“She can’t find me with it unless I’ve recently touched something tainted with her magic with my bare hands. I’ll put my gloves on in a moment and leave this place far behind, and I won’t take them off for five days. That gives you enough time to get to the capital and then meet up with me if you’re still alive.”
He swallowed hard at the matter-of-factness in her voice, and said, “And if I don’t show up?”
“Then I’ll know we failed, and I’ll send my magic into Eldr to form the barrier while I deal with Irina.”
“If that would weaken Irina, won’t it weaken you?” he asked.
“Look around you.” She gestured toward the rotting trees and the dry, crumbling soil. “When a mardushka uses a willing heart to do magic, there’s very little cost to either the heart or the mardushka. But when you have to overpower the heart and force your will, you drain the heart of its strength and vitality, and you drain yourself. Irina’s been forcing Ravenspire’s land to do her will for nine years, and the land is dying because of it. Irina has to be suffering the cost of that. I, on the other hand, am young and strong, and I will use the one thing in Ravenspire that isn’t dying because of the queen—the rivers.”
“Irina will know where to find you once you use your magic, won’t she?” he asked because it was clear that once again, Lorelai was willing to do the right thing even though it was going to cost her.
Her smile reminded him of the way it had felt to watch the ogres while his dragon’s heart thundered for their blood on his talons.
“Irina is going to know where to find me at the end of those five days no matter what happens with you and Eldr.”
“Where should I meet you?” He didn’t add “if I’m not dead” but the words hung in the air between them.
“It’s better if you don’t know where I’m going. I don’t need Irina to get the information out of you before I’m ready to reveal myself. Just come back here and start tracking me. You’re much faster than me in your dragon form. You’ll catch up soon enough.”
Trugg returned with the deer, and soon Kol had the animal’s heart covered in Lorelai’s blood and secured in a pouch. Before he left for the castle again, he met Lorelai’s eyes.
“Thank you.”
“Try not to die,” she said, and then she pulled her gloves on and watched him shift into his dragon and head for the capital.
NINETEEN
IT TOOK KOL and his friends a little more than a day to fly back to Irina’s castle. They’d pushed themselves, stopping only twice to drink before rising into the sky again.
He had a heart covered in Lorelai’s blood. The princess had her magic-cloaking gloves on.
Irina would be fooled. Eldr would be saved.
He would still be alive.
Skies help him, he wanted to be alive.
When they arrived at the castle, they were quickly ushered into the same room where days ago he’d pledged himself into the queen’s service with an oath that would kill him if this trick didn’t work.
“Come to me, huntsman. Your friends may stay in the hall,” Irina said.
Irina stood at the far end of the table, waiting, her eyes gleaming, her mouth curved into a tiny smile.