“Loath as I am to interrupt this touching display,” a familiar voice, smooth like water tumbling over a bed of river rock, says from somewhere that seems at once very near and very far. “The three of us need to talk.”
Penn and Ijerk apart like a bucket of ice water has been dumped on our heads. Which, in a way, it has. For standing not five paces away is the Remnant of Water himself.
King Soren of Llyr, in the flesh.
He towers like a daemon, a harbinger of doom in a warrior’s body. His bright blue eyes are luminous in the dark. They move back and forth between me and Penn with catlike cunning, taking stock of every infinitesimal detail. Me, rearranging my skirts as I hop down from the parapet; Penn, adjusting his trousers slightly with shaking hands. Both of us breathing unsteadily, cheeks flushed and mouths kiss swollen.
“Soren.” Penn’s tone is pure ice. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Now, now.” Soren crosses his arms over his broad chest. “Is that any way to greet someone who’s just come to save your hide?”
“Send a raven next time,” Penn growls.
“This is urgent.”
“I don’t care how urgent the news. You cannot come marching through my portals whenever you please.”
“So possessive of your toys.” Soren’s eyes slide to me. His perfectly chiseled features are as difficult to read as I remember from our first meeting. “Speaking of toys, you’re looking well, little wind weaver. Quite well. I must say, I might not have been so quick to let you go had I known a few months of regular meals would turn you from the waterlogged runt I found on that mountainside into—”
“I thought you had urgent news,” I interject pointedly.
“I do.” Sobering, he glances back at Penn, who looks fit to be tied. “You need to ready your forces.”
Penn stills. “Why?”
“Not long ago, I received word from one of my generals. During a routine patrol of the range, some of her scouts went missing. She sent a unit after them to find out what happened.” Two thick black brows furrow inward. “They followed the trail all the way to your southern border. Straight into Reaver territory.”
“I’m sorry you lost your scouts,” Penn says curtly. “But given the tribes’ recent aggression toward my own people, I can’t say I’m shocked—”
“Justlisten, would you?” Soren sucks in a breath, steadying himself. His tall frame is ramrod straight with tension, lacking any trace of his typical airy nonchalance. “The report I received after the recovery mission was…bizarre. The bodies weren’t mutilated or mangled, like most Reaver attacks. These were killed very precisely—arrows through eyes, throats garroted, heads bludgeoned. Very little blood, very few marks anywhere below the neckline. And they were stripped bare. Their attackers stole their uniforms after they killed them.”
Penn digests this, clearly troubled. “Usually the clans take pleasure in ripping apart all traces of us—clothes and all.”
“I thought the same. As did my generals. So we looked into it further. Sent a few additional scouts out onto the ice shelf two days ago.” Soren’s expression is intense. “They found more stripped bodies. Not Llyrians this time. They were Dyvedi men, Pendefyre. Your men. A whole legion of them, at least.”
“I would have been informed if an entire legion went missing, Soren.”
“Not missing.Replaced.” Soren steps closer, gaze unwavering. “Think about it. The stripped uniforms. The strange deaths. The increased organization of their attacks. This is bigger than a decades-long dispute over some borderland.”
“Let me get this straight—you think the Reavers are killing Dyvedi soldiers in secret and stealing their uniforms?”
Soren nods.
“For what possible purpose? To play dress-up as the fae they aim to eliminate?”
“To infiltrate your territory undetected,” Soren snaps, his frustration breaking loose from its fetters. “You may not want to believe it, but it is happening all the same. The Reavers are moving against you. And they do not act alone. They have found a new ally. A powerful one.”
“The clans can barely keep from slaughtering one another en masse every few years. They are not capable of conspiring with outsiders.”
“So you thought. So we all did. It seems we were wrong. Unthinkable as it may be, the Reavers have allied themselves…” Soren’s eyes glitter, dark sapphires, “with Efnysien.”
My stomach lurches.
Penn shakes his head. “That’s not possible.”
“It is,” Soren counters, gritting his teeth. “I would not lie about something like this.”
“The Reavers hate the fae above all. They would never accept the help of someone who wields maegic—even the dark, distorted maegic Efnysien commands.”