Page 15 of Sharpest Court

My gaze traveled to the unattended stable.

I’d decided on the ship that I wouldn’t go searching for Keil; I would be risking exposure by doing so. With Erik fabricating reports of my kidnapping, the risk was now higher than ever.

But the idea of Keil suffering at the hands of his empress—suffering because he refused to give her any information that could be used to harm me—left me in a violent, skin-crawling rebellion.

As determination steadied my heartbeat, I knew I’d already made my decision. Keil had sacrificed himself for me at court. I could not repay him now by turning away. So I changed direction, my boots shifting in the dirt.

And I strode toward the stable instead.

The warm breeze whipped past me, the fever-sweat gathering under my collar. I had no plan beyond trailing Arun’s carriage. No idea how I would free Keil. I only knew that this was my one chance to find out where he was being kept.

So I had to take it.

I clumsily mounted a horse, briefly losing sight of Arun as I adjusted my saddlebag against my hip. Then his carriage clacked into movement, and I snapped the reins, my hair blowing back as I fought to match their speed. Pain jolted down my arm, but I gritted my teeth against it, bloodied images of Keil urging me ahead.

I was breathing fast, rounding a little brick water station, when something struck me from the side, as forceful as an arrow. I cried out, plunged sideways—

Then felt the ear-ringing thud of slamming to the ground.

There was an alarming sense of familiarity as I imagined Briar dragging me back into the king’s palace before I even reached the gates.

But an arrow hadn’t hit me. A blast of power had.

I tried to scrape myself upright, but the shivers were overwhelming now, my body racked with new pain. Through darkening vision, I forced myself to reach into my saddlebag and withdraw the compass.

Only by luck had I concealed its value. That luck would not hold a second time.

So, against every instinct, I hid the compass among the glossy pebbles at the base of the water station.

Then Arun’s figure blurred above me. He was not in his carriage as I’d expected, but smiling down from a steed of his own. “If I didn’t know better,” he said, his voice tinny in my ears, “I would think you were following me—”

My vision closed in at the edges. But not before I saw Arun’s mouth form the last of his sentence, the words sending me into darkness under a rush of terror.

I would think you were following me, Lady Alissa.

I was in Erik’s cell again. He was dosing me with dullroot.

I gasped as his cold fingers brushed the back of my neck. My eyes flew open, but the world was too bright.

My specter teemed out great heaves, pulsating with my panic. The power connected with warm bodies and hard objects. A smash. Then another.

I heard myself whimper. Felt my dry lips form the words please, please, please—

“She’s delirious,” someone said, his voice deep and clinical. “And frightened. You should not have accosted her as you did.”

“We couldn’t let her run off into the city.” At the sound of a second, lilting voice, my pulse skipped in warning. Arun. “She took down the medical tent in a spectral outburst. Imagine what she might have done to innocent bystanders.”

The first man sighed. A cool, snaking power banded over my shoulders, keeping me from twisting away. There was a prick at the back of my neck, and my eyes drooped.

The smashing ceased. My specter thickened, growing sluggish as it trailed back toward my body.

That strap of power released me, and my breathing slowed, an alcoholic tang filling the air.

The cold fingers continued searching the back of my neck as my specter thrummed faintly under my skin, forced into lethargy. Because this man hadn’t dosed me with dullroot. He’d dosed me with nightmilk, a sedative.

Those fingers stilled. “Hmm.”

“What?” Arun asked.