Yallara pressed her lips together, and Lunelle realized just howyoungshe truly was.
“What are you going to do about him?” Yallara asked, pointing to the doorway, where Lunelle knew Mirquios hovered.
Lunelle’s brows furrowed.
A crash against the back door sent them both jumping.
“It’s only Kwan,” Mirquios said around the corner. “One knock is stay, three is clear.”
“If he finds Lura, he’ll arrest her, he’ll make a show of it at court. He won’t kill her right away,” Yallara whispered beside Lunelle.
She only nodded.
When three knocks finally came,Lunelle had closed her eyes for only a moment.
She jerked awake, Yallara’s half-asleep eyes peering back at her.
“How long?—”
“An hour. Just an hour,” Mirquios said as he stood before her, offering a hand. He hauled her to her feet and helped Yallara up.
“You two should head back to the palace. We shouldn’t be caught together.”
Lunelle reached for his arm but withheld her touch at the last second.
“Where will you go?”
Mirquios glanced toward the street, now pitch black as the lanterns extinguished themselves in the dead of night. Smoke filled the city.
“They likely burnt The Underground. The Mercurians will stay and help Kwan collect anything salvageable. Go. Get Yallara back and find Lura.”
Lunelle nodded, her heart racing at the thought of leaving him. Yallara stepped out of the study, pulling at her sleeves anxiously as she slowly made her way through the hall. Lunelle was nearly at the door when her hand caught in the king’s.
She gasped as he pulled her into him.
“Take this,” he whispered, pressing a slim dagger into her empty hand. “Through the ribs, harder than you think. Panic is death, Lu.”
Lunelle looked at the delicate handle of the dagger—golden, engraved with the Mercurian crest—and back up at him.
“Mir—”
“Go,” he said, swallowing whatever else he wanted to say to her. He pressed all of it into the handle of his dagger, hoping it would be enough.
She wanted to lean forward, press her lips to his, she wanted to tell him that if he didn’t make it back in one piece, she would crawl to hell herself and strangle him.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she pressed the cold steel of the dagger into her hand and slipped quietly into the night, guiding Yallara through the shadows of the city until they were both back in their rooms.
The door clicked closed, and she leaned forward, hesitantly whispering, “Lura?”
Only the darkness whispered back.
ChapterTwenty
She waited to hear the footsteps of the Mercurians brush past as they returned. Waited until it was no longer possible that Lura had been with someone else.
Waited—what she did best.
