Whatever the soup had done to him, it didn’t take Hywell long to recover. He righted himself and charged. Lilac grabbed the nearest chair and swung with all her might. Hywell stumbled into the corner.
“Finish him.” The command in Garin’s voice made her shudder.
As if she weren’t trying. She would have swiveled to glare at him if she weren’t so afraid of the ghoul charging at her again, but she did suppose his suggestion sounded like a better plan than pummeling him to bits with a bar chair. Lilac jousted him with the chair this time, knocking him with such force that his ankle caught onto the lip of the large hearth. He tumbled in.
The screams that came from him were inhuman at first. It might’ve been the adrenaline or the shock of it all, but some part of her deep down watched with both fascination and dread as the fire slowly consumed his body, spreading quickly over his clothes and limbs. He tried to gasp, to sit up, but Lilac had set the legs of the chair onto the thick stone surrounding him, digging in with her heels and leaning into it with her weight in case he tried to escape the cage she set around him.
There, she thought ferociously, hoping this was a clear message to Kestrel.This is what you get for sending someone to force me into another one of your bargains while ignoring the agreement we had to come together and protect Brocéliande.
There was Hywell’s voice again, pulling her from the trance of watching hisburning flesh. It washisvoice, Hywell’s boyish tone pulled into a high-pitched wail that could only come from someone burning alive. He cried for help. He cried for his mother.
Lilac moved to drop the chair, but she couldn’t. Her legs wouldn’t move, her arms frozen, heat rushing through her. It was as if an invisible force had thrust her forward, made her brace against the chair or she, too, might be thrown into the fire.
Finally, the force driving her forward dwindled and the chair dropped, but it was too late. Muscles burning, shaking, she stumbled back. The boy’s haunting sobs faded as the embers consumed him, the unbearable stench slowly filling the room with dark smoke. Somewhere in the distance, the front door burst open.
With his dying breath, Hywell’s mouth opened, and what was left of the upper half of his face let out a shuddering, wet gasp, echoing around the room and into Lilac’s skull. Inhuman, not Kestrel’s voice, neither masculine nor feminine but another sound entirely.
“This deal has been made in blood.”
Then, he was gone.
Lilac turnedand darted out the door before anyone could stop her and crashed into someone who smelled strongly of cloves and anise. There was the sound of several glass items plinking onto the cobblestone as they landed in the middle of the warmly lit driveway. Lilac gasped—the wind had been knocked out of her—and rolled off the person to plop upon the cool stone. She closed her eyes and let the dampness of the night soak some of the heat from her body. The ground felt so good against her palms, her ankles, anywhere her skin was bare against it, and she heaved, throwing up acid.
Had this horror been stored in that envelope the whole time, waiting to latch onto the nearest person to her? It could’ve been Yanna or Isabel. One of her parents.
Next to her, the other person groaned and sat up. It took Lilac a long moment to realize who sat across from her, wiping blood off her lip.
The last thing Lilac needed was Garin’s temperamental ex-lover and damn good witch complicating things.
Adelaide took one look at Lilac, her ochre eyes scanning the state of the queen. “You.” She reached for Lilac, but a figure stepped between them.
Garin bent, offering her a hand, but Lilac ignored it as she watched Lorietta approach Adelaide with a warm smile. She did accept the handkerchief Garin proffered to wipe her hands and face of Hywell’s blood. Hywell, her father’s youngest guard, whom she’d thought would need protection from Garin or Bastion, now dead at her hand. “What’sshedoing here?”
“She invited me,” Adelaide said, accepting Lorietta’s help with a nod before glaring at Lilac. She bent to retrieve the handful of small, multicolored bottles that had flown out of the tattered leather pouch attached to her belt. “I wasn’t going to come—I don’t care enough, and that Kestrel is so unnerving. It wasn’t worth the risk. But I changed my mind once I realized it was a perfect opportunity to ask Her Majesty for a favor.”
Lilac pushed herself to her feet, wiping her sleeve across her mouth. “A favor?”
“I want a horse.” Adelaide glanced behind them at the stables, where the three tawny horses and Löig were drinking from a trough, her waterfall of waist-length hair whipping behind her. “That stunning steed will do.”
“Not a chance,” Garin said. “He’s Lilac’s.”
To the side, Lilac glimpsed Blitzrik and Ra’arak leading a shaken Sable and Jeanare back into the tavern. Meriam watched from the window.
“What do you need a horse for? You couldn’t find one in town?”
Adelaide gave a longsuffering sigh. “No one in town will loan or sell me one, not after they guessed it was likely me on those WANTED signs distributed by the castle. No one’s got the balls to turn me in, but scarcely anyone has wanted to do business with me either way. Anyway, I need one fast. There’s a carriage I’m tracking, a moving market.”
Lorietta and Lilac exchanged glances. “The Midraal Market?” Lorietta said.
Adelaide shot a surprised smile at Lorietta. “Why, yes. Finally, someone with refined tastes. I’ve received word that it’s entered the kingdom.”
“Lilac and Garin were just about to track it down.”
Adelaide’s gaze disdainfully snapped to them again. Then she lookedtoward the inn, whose windows and door were still open. The stench of charred wood and burned flesh still seeped from the tavern.
“Lilac just made a blood deal with Kestrel through his revenant, which she killed. He wants a chest that the market is carrying to the coast. Don’t ask,” Garin added, when Adelaide opened her mouth to barrage them with questions.
She asked anyway. “A revenant? Here?”
