I pat my thigh. “Never leave home without it.”
“Right.” Kellan’s voice is soft. His gaze drifts up to the North Hold mansion, and I know he’s thinking of Aidia, locked away in there like some sort of rare bird. He’s thinking of losing another sister to a brutal man.
“Be careful,” he whispers.
“I’ll be back in a few weeks, Kel. Hug Libby and the kids for me.”
He sighs and shakes his head. “Kate is beside herself that she won’t get to be in Aunt Harlow’s wedding. But I told her that you would tell her about it in detail when you return. Considering their customs, I’ll ask you not to.”
I bite back a laugh, so relieved he has the wherewithal to joke when I feel like crying.
Kellan pulls me into a tight hug. “Low, listen,” he whispers. “Our father didn’t want to tell you this because he thought you would back out, but I can’t let you go out there without all of the information.”
“What information?” I whisper, trying to keep my expression neutral.
Henry is watching from about twenty yards away. He fumbles with a saddlebag, but he doesn’t bother to hide that he’s paying close attention.
Kellan leans closer. “There is a chance that they think our father was responsible.”
“For what?”
“For the Drained attack that nearly annihilated them ten years ago.”
I jerk away from Kellan. “What do you mean? We don’t command the Drained.”
Kellan shakes his head, his eyes darting to Henry and back to me. “Focus, Harlow. I just needed you to know that this is dangerous. I don’t know why they’ve shown up after all this time, after all our searching. But I can’t rule out the possibility that they have a score to settle and that they want to use you to do it.”
“Why didn’t you say so before? Why wait until now?” I turn my back to Henry and run a hand over my face to try to master my frustration. I’m so tired of secrets and compartmentalized family knowledge. I am about to walk into a den of vipers and my parents couldn’t bother to tell me.
“It wasn’t something you needed to know until now,” Kellan says. This is how he operates, in secrets—in only sharing what someoneneeds to know in the moment and hoarding the rest to himself. It’s how he’s kept the city in line all these years.
“How could they blame us for what the Drained do?” I ask after a long pause.
Kellan rubs the back of his neck. “Because our father had a choice to make and a responsibility to our people.”
I frown. “Are you saying that there’s merit to their suspicion?”
Kellan looks to where Henry is fastening the saddlebag to his gelding.
“Mountain Haven was full of our people, too,” I say.
“I know that!” he whispers. “But if that horde came to our gates, they could have torn through the city, getting stronger and stronger as they went. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the few to save the many.”
I am trying so hard to stay calm, but I can barely keep my voice to a whisper. “There were thousands of people at Mountain Haven.”
“There are tens of thousands more here,” he says.
I stare at him. “Surely you’re not okay with that. You knew many of those people.”
He nods to Henry. “Not him, though.”
He’s right, but the way he talks about it like it’s a math equation and not human lives lost irks me.
“So, just to be clear. Ten years ago, our father somehow directed a horde of Drained away from our gates and toward Mountain Haven. For ten years, we believed that horde annihilated them, only to be surprised when they suddenly reemerged seeking a wife for their heir. And now you’re sending me, your sister, who has already married once to protect this family, with a stranger who thinks I killedhissister, in the hopes I can find out what exactly they want?” My tone is calm, my face placid, but inside my heart is frenzied, slamming against my ribs.
Kellan frowns, his lilac eyes cast down. “Yes. That about sums it up.”
“What if they kill me the moment I arrive? What if they drop me in the forest and let the Drained have me as revenge?” It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him what exactly I’m heading into—a marriage to an unkillable husband—but something stops me. Some nagging voice in the back of my mind urges me to hold on to my secrets, not out of some misplaced loyalty to Henry so much as a desire to keep hold of valuable information as a form of currency. Kellan has proven once again howoften my family does this to me. I should learn the lesson they keep teaching me.
