I leap forward. “Wait! What are you—”
Rares whirls back. “You wanted help,” he states as if he’s telling me winter is cold.
I shake my head. Mather’s eyes flick to the staircase, waiting for the door to open, waiting for us to be caught and Theron’s sacrifice will mean nothing.
“I—whyyou?” I gasp.
Rares reaches into his robes and pulls out a key.Thekey. The last one.
Hewas what the tapestry wanted us to find?
He steps forward and places a palm on my cheek.
Mather lurches and Rares would be dead if I had blinked instead of waving him off.
I can’t breathe as I look into Rares’s eyes, his skin warming my face. An image flies at me, a mountain, brilliantly gray and purple, bathed in a beam of yellow light.
The symbol of the Order of the Lustrate.
Rares pulls his hand back. “I had to make sure you could be trusted.”
“How—” I croak through my shock.
He grins. “I’ll explain all, dear heart, I promise. You will come with me now?”
My brows pinch as I feebly try to connect everything. This only happens with conduit-bearers, seeing images when I touch them skin to skin. No one else in Primoria has magic, and not even the Decay inhabiting someone could cause the same reaction, or I would have known something was wrong with Theron much sooner. But Rares has a key—so maybe the key’s magic showed me an image again? But no, that only works whenI’mtouching the key.
Whoever this man is, he has magic. He’s a member of the Order. And he’sPaislian.
The Order is Paislian?
My mind flashes to that mysterious kingdom, the Paisel Mountains surrounding it.
Ventralli, Yakim, Summer.
Our Klaryn Mountains.
The kingdoms where the keys were hidden were the ones leading from Paisly to the Klaryns. The Order to the magic chasm. Was that why the keys were there? But why were they so easily found? So many whys—
But I know how to get answers.
And I know where the keys were leading me, all this time.
“Meira,” Mather says, a warning.
My arms tremble. I’ve known all along the right things to do. If I had made better choices, if I had listened to my heart instead of my head and done what Iknewmy kingdom needed from the start, I could have stopped all of this.
So I nod to Rares. If he has magic, if he’s part of the Order of the Lustrate, if there’s even achancethat he knows things that can help me stop this horrible, deadly mess around me, I have to go with him. Whatever threat he might harbor, whatever danger the Order might possess—I need answers.
Staying would ensure the world’s enslavement at Angra’s hands. Leaving at least ensures a possibility of hope.
Mather balks, Cordell’s dagger going limp in his hand. “What?”
I spin to him. “You have to free them and get as far away from here as possible. And Ceridwen—the Summerianprincess, you have to free her from Raelyn and—”
“Are you insane? I’m not letting—”
“I’m not asking you, Mather.” I’m absolutely out of my mind to be doing this. “I’morderingyou. As your queen.”
