“You got no good reason to worry about that,” he assured me, voice low so the others couldn’t hear us. “They aren’t going to care about that.”
But how could he be sure? Other people cared. Sometimes I made them nervous, because I couldn’t stop myself from saying something that I saw in my mind— an event yet to happen or a decision that hadn’t been made yet. Grady was used to it. The Mister? Others? Not so much. They looked at me like there was something wrong with me, and the Mister often stared like he thought I might be a conjurer and like he . . . he might be a little scared of me. Not scared enough to stop pinching me but scared enough to keep doing so.
“Maybe the Hyhborn will sense something off about me,” I rasped. “And maybe they won’t like it or think I’m— ”
“They won’t sense anything. I swear.” He pulled the blanket over us as if that could somehow protect us.
But a blanket wouldn’t shield us from the Hyhborn. They could do whatever they wanted to whoever, and if they were angered? They could bring entire cities to ruin.
“Shh,” Grady urged. “Don’t cry. Just close your eyes. It’ll be okay.”
Chamber doors creaked open. Between us, Grady squeezed my arm until I could feel the bones in his fingers. The air suddenly became thin and strained, and the walls groaned as if the stone couldn’t contain what had slipped inside. A tremor rocked me. I felt as sick as I had the last time the Prioress had taken my hand, like she’d often done without any concern for what I might see or know, but that day had been different. I’d seen death coming for her.
I didn’t take big breaths, but a scent still snaked under the blanket and in between us, crowding out the smell of stale ale and too many bodies crammed into a too-small place. A minty scent that reminded me of the . . . the candies the Prioress used to carry in the pockets of her habit. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound, I chanted over and over. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.
“How many are here?” a male asked in a low voice.
“The number ch-changes every night, Lord Samriel.” The Mister’s voice trembled, and I’d never heard him sound scared before. Usually, it was his voice scaring us, but there was a Hyhborn lord among us, one of the most powerful of Hyhborn. It would terrify even the meanest of bullies. “Usually th-there’s about thirty, but I don’t know any that have what you’re looking for.”
“We’ll see for ourselves,” Lord Samriel replied. “Check them all.”
The footfalls of the Hyhborn riders— the Rae— echoed in tandem with my heart. What felt like a thin layer of ice settled over us as the temperature of the chamber dropped.
The Rae were once great lowborn warriors who had fallen in battle to Hyhborn princes and princesses. Now they were little more than flesh and bone, their souls captured and held by the princes, the princesses, and King Euros. Did that mean one of them was here? I shuddered.
“Open your eyes,” Lord Samriel demanded from somewhere in the chamber.
Why were they making us open our eyes?
“Who are they?” Another spoke. A man. He did so quietly, but his voice bled shivery power into each word.
“Orphans. Castoffs, my lord,” the Mister croaked. “Some came from the Priory of Mercy,” he rambled on. “O-Others just show up. Don’t know where they come from or where they end up disappearing to. None of them is a seraph, I swear.”
They . . . they thought a seraph was here? That’s why they were checking the eyes, searching for the mark— a light in the eyes, or so I’d heard, but there was nothing like that here.
I trembled at the sound of startled gasps and quiet whimpers that continued for several moments, my eyes squeezed tight as I wished with everything in me that they would leave us alone. Just disappear—
The air stirred directly above us, carrying that minty scent. Grady went rigid against me.
“Eyes open,” Lord Samriel ordered from above us.
I was frozen solid as Grady rose halfway, shielding me with his body and the blanket. The hand around my arm shook, and that made me shake even harder because Grady . . . he stared down the older kids without fear and laughed as the lawmen chased him through the streets. He was never afraid.
But he was now.
“Nothing,” Lord Samriel announced with a heavy sigh. “And this is all of them?”
The Mister cleared his throat. “Yes, I’m as s-sure as I can be— Wait.” His steps were heavy and uneven against the floor. “He always got this smaller one with him. A girl, and an odd one to boot,” he said, nudging my covered legs, and I swallowed a squeak. “There.”