Her lips parted. Haven thought she might scream, but nothing came out. Her eyes dampened as her gaze glided over the creature, and Haven was reminded of the hungry way she looked over Archeron.
No doubt in that moment Cressida would have given Renk over to the magickal beast if it meant controlling it.
The thought fed Haven’s rage.
Feeling her growing fury, the gremwyr slowly twisted its head like an owl to look back at her.
Let me kill them, it pleaded. Just one. One would satisfy me.
No, Haven ordered, unsure if she thought or spoke the command. No, please, she repeated, even as part of her wanted otherwise.
Even as she imagined Cressida’s head rolling down the steps . . .
With a frustrated screech, the gremwyr flared its wings, sending the people closest to the front scurrying. But those wings were already softening, the talons along its wings ribboning into darkness.
It was changing shape again, this time into a nebulous black mist that spread through the air until the space above the table was dark as midnight. Chandeliers and rafters disappeared inside that great, billowing darkness.
Somehow that shapeless mass was more terrifying than the gremwyr or any other creature it could mimic, because she understood just how powerful the thing was inside her.
I’ll never be able to control something so massive, so dark . . .
All at once the shadowy mass arrowed toward where Renk hid.
Haven gasped along with the crowd as the mist funneled underneath the tablecloth, slipping beneath the half-inch crack where the fabric met the floor. Three seconds and it disappeared from sight.
With its absence came silence. A great and terrible silence as they all watched and listened. What was it doing down there? Why was Renk so quiet?
Surai took hold of Haven’s arm. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Haven admitted. “I’m not controlling it any longer.”
Surai looked at her strangely, her mouth parting as if to refute her.
A scream erupted from beneath the table and quickly died.
Haven’s throat tightened.
“Help him!” the king finally ordered.
As if coming back to life, the guards surrounding the king rushed to where Renk hid. One brave soldier dropped to his knees and reached out a trembling hand to lift the bottom of the tablecloth. His head averted, probably in case Renk was shredded into pieces.
Shadeling’s shadow. Please don’t let that be the case.
Slowly, so damn slowly, Renk came into view, un-shredded and seemingly intact, and all Haven’s blood seemed to flood back into her body.
He was okay. No blood or tattered clothing. Not a scratch that she could see.
Only Renk didn’t move. Not even to breathe. He lay on his side, back to the crowd, curled into himself. Water pooled around his pants and darkened the stone.
No—not water, she realized as the soldiers grabbed his arms and hauled him up, his face drained of blood and crotch dark.
Renk had pissed himself, and Haven almost felt sorry for the king’s bastard as he finally gulped down a ragged, sobbing breath.
Almost, until she remembered the time Bell’s bully half-brother had murdered the pigeons Bell fed every morning out of spite. He shot them with arrows and had the cooks serve them for lunch in a pie. Or the time Renk shoved Bell down a flight of steps and said he’d tripped, breaking his arm. Bell had been too scared of his brother to tell anyone but Haven what really happened.
The list of reasons not to feel sorry for Renk was endless. And yet, as Renk ripped another lungful of air from the room, the sound strangled and painful, like he was sucking in glass, she was glad she hadn’t murdered him.
Cressida ran to her son, pulling at his clothes as if somehow that would prove he was okay. Renk’s eyes were unfocused and glassy, fixed on something in the distance.
Drool dripped from his bottom lip.
Other than his odd breathing, he was unnervingly quiet.
Satisfied her son was still mostly intact, Cressida whipped to face Bell—Oh, Shadeling’s shadow. Bell!
Haven had almost forgot that he was the one everyone would blame, and she pushed through the crowd to him just as Cressida launched into a tirade.
“How dare you try to hurt the king’s son,” the king’s mistress sneered. The crowd parted for her as she stormed toward his stage.
“I didn’t—” Bell began, his voice paper-thin, but she interrupted him.
“Enough.” She paused five feet from the prince, making sure everyone saw how she held up her hands—to ward off any more magick. “We all saw your intentions, Prince of Penryth.”
“No.” But his gaze collapsed under her accusatory sneer, falling to his boots. “I would never hurt Renk, no matter how horrible he is, or how much he deserves it.”
“So you admit there is hatred between you?” Cressida pushed.
“That’s not what I said,” Bell snapped. “Stop twisting my words.”
Haven was almost to the stage when Surai once again took her arm. This time, the Solis let her ungodly strength show, and Haven flinched from the grip.
“You need to leave,” Surai said. “If they find out—”
“They won’t,” Haven said. “And I won’t abandon him to face this witch alone.”
Surai’s lavender eyes had darkened to the color of an overripe plum, and they slid to where her fingers bunched around Haven’s arm. Silver runes flickered over Haven’s flesh, bright and beautiful and forbidden.
If they weren’t hidden from mortal eyes, Haven would have been executed the day she returned to Penryth.
Surai’s face softened, and her grip loosened. “They will kill you, Little Mortal. And I cannot lose another.”
Haven’s eyes stung. Surai lost her partner, Rook, because of Haven, although Surai would never look at it that way.
Clearing the emotion from her throat, Haven brushed a hand over Surai’s shoulder. “I won’t leave him to pay for my mistake.”
Surai grunted something in Solissian about Haven being a fool, but she released her grip on Haven’s arm.
Haven turned back just in time to see Cressida say, “Or what? Will you try to kill me too, Prince?”
She needed to intervene before the crowd turned against Bell.
Loping up the steps to stand beside the prince, Haven said, “It was an accident.” Her voice rang out cool and sharp, in stark contrast to her heart, which thudded against her sternum like a frightened rabbit. She let her gaze fall over the room. “Magick is temperamental. Before the Curse stole every royal child with magick, the children of the Nine Houses were trained from birth to handle it.”
A murmur of consent rose from the onlookers. They adored Bell, and they wanted to believe her.
In a brave show of solidarity, Eleeza climbed the stage to stand beside him. She didn’t say anything, but her presence was enough.
Screwing her expression into a solemn mask, Haven dragged her gaze over every face, willing them to listen. “Bell can hardly be faulted for not being taught how to lightcast. He isn’t to blame.”
I am, she thought bitterly. Not him. Me.
But admitting as much would be a death sentence for a common mortal such as herself. Only royals were allowed to lightcast. And she had done so much more than that.
If the people learned the thing that nearly killed Renk was borne of dark magick . . .