had a feeling they’d already fled. If I were them, I’d have gotten out as soon as I’d botched the assassination attempt. The whole place was too hot for a second try. They’d have to wait for it all to cool down again.
“Darklings. Seriously?” I grumbled, frowning at Tristan.
“Yeah, it’s not something they’re particularly proud of.”
“Anthropologically speaking, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise,” I said. “With a nation this big and powerful, there was bound to be dissent among its people. It’s just that I would’ve expected to see rebels fighting for the liberation of Rimia and Nalore… not assassins looking to wreak havoc and to drink people dry, like mindless animals.”
Tristan nodded once. “We need to find out why they were after Valaine. Maybe she isn’t telling us something.”
“Kalon is definitely holding back.” I scoffed.
“Where were you all day?” he asked.
I blanked out for a moment. Why did I feel guilty for spending the whole day with the very Aeternae I’d just criticized for being secretive? Yeah, the irony did not escape me. “Training. With Kalon.”
“All day?”
“Where were you all day?” I shot back.
It was Tristan’s turn to be awkward. That was the downside of our sibling relationship. We knew each other too well, and it was difficult to actually win an argument of any kind. “In the library.”
“Dork.”
“Seriously, Esme?”
“So you were here with Valaine when she was attacked?”
He sighed deeply. “She… She showed me something tonight. Something no one outside the royal circle knows.” I waited for him to tell me what it was that she’d showed him. When he didn’t continue, I poked him. “Ouch!”
“Talk,” I said firmly.
“I promised I wouldn’t tell,” Tristan replied, practically offended.
I smacked him over the shoulder. “Talk!”
“Dammit, Esme!” he hissed, and pulled me into his room, locking the door behind us. “The Black Fever is coming back,” he whispered, worried that someone might hear us.
The news hit me like a battering ram to the chest, knocking the air and the sense out of me. “Wha… What?” I managed, my knees surrendering as I dropped into one of the lounge armchairs. My pulse was racing, as a million worst-case scenarios began to form in the back of my head.
“Three infected Aeternae, so far,” Tristan said. “They’re keeping the situation secret, to avoid mass panic. The victims are quarantined in a basement infirmary, below. I saw them.”
“Isn’t it a little… early for the Black Fever?” I croaked.
He nodded again. “It is. Five thousand years too soon, and it’s strange, to say the least. Valaine will speak to the lord and lady about this, about us possibly helping them. I mean, they’ve already said we could try finding a cure—they just didn’t mention they already had three Aeternae affected.”
“This is all too weird,” I said. “The Darklings, the Black Fever… It’s… I don’t know, there’s something missing from this picture. Something big and important enough to matter. We need to find out what that is.”
“Should we go stealth?”
I shook my head. “Not tonight. Even with the invisibility pellets, we risk bumping into golden guards. There’s a lot of them out there right now. No, tomorrow is better, once the atmosphere relaxes in the palace.”
I would’ve given anything to go stealth tonight, but the risk of being discovered was too great. We couldn’t take that chance, not after what had just happened. The Darklings made the Aeternae flinch—at least the ones we’d seen, anyway. The Black Fever was no longer a distant issue, but an immediate threat. We’d certainly found one hell of a moment to show up.
“Turns out Visio isn’t as pretty as we’d thought,” I murmured.
But I was determined to get to the bottom of this, before the mystery swallowed us all. That was the trouble with lies and secrets. They festered, they ate away at everything around them, and eventually they came to light and destroyed lives. I just didn’t want ours to be among the casualties. A thought occurred to me, quite contrary to what I’d said less than a minute ago. I let a deep breath out, and Tristan was quick to notice the shift in my expression.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m thinking we could pop an invisibility pellet and at least attend that emergency council meeting,” I said in an undertone. “It might be worth listening to what they have to say about all this, in our absence.”
A devilish grin bloomed on his face. “Sometimes, I think you’re actually able to read my mind, sister.”
“Ha, ha, funny. Dork,”