The Kingdom's Crown (Inheritance of Hunger #3) - Kathryn Moon Page 0,90

across the room. Light filtered through from the large windows, casting strange shadows on the table and floor. Cosmo brushed at the dried clay on my chest, chuckling and straightening the bodice a little.

"I've made a mess of you. Might be time to go for a swim. Geese free," he murmured in my ear.

I hummed my agreement, although I would just as happily have fallen into a nap on Cosmo's lap in that moment. He pulled me up, tidying me as much as was necessary to move through the suite, and we headed for the bedroom. Owen entered at the same moment as us through the door leading from the main room, and my steps stalled at the frown on his face.

"We were just going for a bath. Do you want to come? Owen…what's wrong?" I asked, stopping still and holding firm until Cosmo paused too.

"Jack McCallum is here, he wants to speak with you. He says something's happened in the north. I just feel…trouble."

I swallowed hard and nodded, scanning the empty bedroom, Cosmo already ahead of me, snatching up one of Thao's sweaters from a bench and pushing it over my head.

"You have clay on your cheek too," Cosmo muttered, reaching a dusty thumb up as if that might help.

"It's fine," I said to him, already heading for the door. "It's not a state meeting."

Nora and her brother were together by the window, heads bowed and voices lowered. The viscount's shoulders were high, and his boots were splattered with mud. Wherever he'd come from, he'd done so in a rush and not bothered with the formality of redressing to present himself to me.

"What is it? Is it Griffin? Sam?" I asked. I'd heard so little from my friends in the north recently, and I was swamped by a sudden panic that the conflicts I'd left in Griffin's hands had left her in danger. I'd killed Emory in show, certainly, but what of the men who'd supported him?

Jack's head whipped up, and he looked almost surprised to see me for a moment. "No, Your Highness. It is…it is to do with the two-natured in general. There was an accident at a mine in the north this week."

"Oh!" Relief for Griffin and a new worry for these unknown shifters warred in me at the same moment, and I gripped the back of a chair as Jack moved away from his sister slowly.

"A cave collapsed with workers inside. Shifters are asked to work under dangerous conditions for a wealthy man's profit too often, Your Highness," Jack said. It was not quite a condemnation in his tone, but I could tell Jack had run out of patience. Not with me, exactly, but with the entire circumstance that had brought the two-natured into such regular danger.

"They were killed?" I whispered.

"Not all of them. Not yet. But that isn't to say there's great hope for them. There's a small opening in the mountain face. Not enough for a man to fit through, but perhaps for a bird… Your Highness, the manager of the mine was an especially brutal man. He clipped wings, broke paws and legs, of any two-natured working to prevent escape." Jack's gaze bored into me, his hands clenched at his sides.

I pulled my own stare away with great effort, searching the room around me blankly until I found Cresswell.

"I'd heard of such places," Cress said with a reluctant nod. "It was the worst kind of assignment we could be given. As a bear, I was less likely to be placed there."

"Too valuable," Jack said, eyeing Cresswell. "And too hard to subdue."

"Their means of escape is now gone," I murmured, and Jack nodded. "What can I do? I could go to the north and…my magic perhaps might be of some help?"

Jack's intense anger seemed to falter at last, and he too fell into a seat, Nora moving quickly to his side. "No, Your Highness, I didn't mean for—Efforts are being made to save the men. That's not what I came to ask you. I'm here with a warning more than anything. The two-natured are angry. This feels like…"

"It's not enough to stop further injustice. What's already done must be undone," I said softly.

"Soon, Your Highness," Jack answered with a nod. "Or I fear there will be a war within our own borders."

21

Bryony

Aric was bent over his desk, scribbling in a notebook with his arm around it as if he were a schoolboy trying to guard his answers. A thief's habit perhaps, equally wary