Feverborn (Fever #8) - Karen Marie Moning Page 0,38

agenda. What was his game?

“It was our tartan,” Christian allowed after a pause. “Yet not our kin. Where the bloody hell is his corpse?”

“I have no other knowledge of his corpse. I suggest your clan search the chasm thoroughly. Perhaps I missed something.”

Jada studied Ryodan intently. “ ‘Perhaps I missed something’?” If he had, which she found quite frankly impossible, he would never admit it.

“Did that already. Sifted straight there. None of the bodies belonged to my uncle.”

“Perhaps there’s a fragment of Faery splintering the chasm. There were many caves and a fast-running river. Perhaps you didn’t search well enough.”

Nor was he a man who liberally employed the word “perhaps.” He was being questioned—questioned, mind you, which was only one of several oddities here—by one of the Keltar who, on a good day, got under his skin and on a bad one he wanted to kill, yet hadn’t used so much as a single “fuck” or made one aggressive comment. Even his body language was bland, relaxed.

“Did you do something with my uncle’s remains?” Christian demanded.

“I did nothing with Dageus’s remains.”

Jada mentally pinned the elements of their conversation—and absence of elements such as hostility Ryodan should have been exuding—on a structure of sorts in her mind: words here, body language there, subtext sprinkled throughout. Remains, he’d said. Corpse, he’d said. And all his answers were ringing true to the lie detector.

There was a subtle yet significant difference between truth and validity. Ryodan’s responses were tallying up on her structure as valid.

But not true.

There was something here…she just didn’t know what.

She moved to join them, folding her arms, legs wide like them. “Do you know where Dageus is right now?”

Ryodan turned and locked eyes with her. “No.”

“Did you do something with Dageus the night we killed the Crimson Hag?” she pressed.

“Of course. I fought beside him.”

“Did you do something with Dageus after we left?” she rephrased.

“I tried to bring him back.”

She glanced at Christian, who nodded.

Jada understood the art of lying, she’d perfected it herself. Wrap your lie in precisely enough truth that your body presents full evidence of conviction and sincerity, employing sentences vague enough that they can’t be picked apart. The key: the more one simplified the question, the greater the odds of isolating the answer.

“Is Dageus alive?” she said to Ryodan.

“Not as far as I know,” he replied.

“Is he dead?”

“I would assume so.” He folded his arms, mirroring her. “Are you done yet.”

“Not nearly.”

“Do you believe he did something with my uncle, lass?” Christian asked. “Something he’s not telling us?”

Lass. The others despised who she’d become. The Unseelie prince still called her lass.

“I’ve been crystal clear,” Ryodan said. “I did my best to bring Dageus back. The body I returned to your clan was not his. Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Not you,” she said. “Never you.”

He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. Then again, it never had. She’d modeled her own infrequent smiles in similar fashion. “Even me.”

“Truth,” Christian said.

“I believe,” she said to Christian without taking her eyes from Ryodan, “that a full-frontal assault never works with this man. You’ve had all the answers you’ll get from him.”

“Truth,” Ryodan mocked.

At the end of the corridor there was a sudden commotion, sharp cries and a scuffle. “She’s here, Jada! The one with Sinsar Dubh inside her!” Mia cried.

“Let her pass,” Jada commanded. “She’s no threat to us at present and there are greater ones that need addressing.”

Although her women grumbled and parted only reluctantly, they obeyed the order.

Without another word she slid up into the slipstream and returned to her study, knowing they would follow.

Where one staged one’s battles was often nearly as important as how.

11

“Never meant to start a war

I just wanted you to let me in…”

I stepped into what had once been Rowena’s study and inhaled lightly but deeply, girding myself to interact with Jada.

Differently this time.

I’d been pondering Dancer’s words as I hurried through the abbey, trying to refine my emotions and stop seeing Jada as the enemy. Open myself to getting to know the icy stranger. Kicking myself for needing someone else to point out that it was my guilt insisting Dani be exactly the same, because if she was, I wouldn’t feel so terrible about chasing her that night.

Dancer was right. My rejection of “Jada” was proportionate to how much I blamed myself, and as he’d so bluntly stated, that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with me.

The problem was, we’d had no warning, no time to adjust. One day Dani