جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 480

EMBER’S POVRayana blinks. “I’m sorry?”“You heard me. You’ve been a menace to society since you could walk; you’ve told me so yourself, with pride, more than once.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “So tell me. If you were her, and you had done something in this house that you could never, ever let anybody find, and the King’s own men were coming up the stairs, what would you do?”“I’d let them in.”I blink.Rayana settles back into the chair, thinking now.“Actually, if I were very good, I’d make sure they came.”Queenie looks over at her. “Why?”“Because a search can be more useful to the guilty person than it is to the people doing the searching.” Rayana shifts the blanket off one arm. “Years ago, I was blackmailing a man in Milan. Horrible man, before either of you starts looking at me like that. Married, corrupt, sleeping with half the models working for him, and he had nude photographs of one of them that he was using to keep her quiet. I got hold of the photographs and enoug

EMBER’S POVQueenie stares at me.“What?” Her voice shoots up. “Have you gone insane? Did you miss the entire part where Rayana just explained that Hale might basically be a psychopathic supervillain? What if she wants you doing exactly that?”“Queenie—”“No. Absolutely not.” She is already off the bed. “Six trained men have been through Hale’s room, and now you want to go creeping around in there yourself while she is still in this house? Then, apparently, you want to walk into the room that nearly made your wolf lose her fucking mind and deliberately put yourself back into a trance? While the Council is already on the road?” She throws up her hands. “Do you have any idea what Hale could do with that? Do you know how it looks if she catches the King’s wife going through her drawers?”“I know exactly how it looks—”“Do you? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like every single thing she has been whispering about you since the day you arrived, handed to her on a fucking plate by

EMBER’S POV“I understand that, and I’m telling you I’m not—”“You said you had nothing to do with it.”Hale goes still.A few of the women behind her do too, and I feel every eye in the corridor turn toward us. I tighten my grip on her hand and look up at her through the tears.“Yesterday,” I say. “You stood in your room with your things all over the floor and told my boyfriend you’d never harmed anyone in this house. You said you stayed up with those girls because that’s just who you are. You know your herbs, Hale. You keep telling everyone you’re this good person who helps people.” I’m gripping her hand with both of mine now. “So help me. Please. Help her right now. I can’t lose one more woman in this house. I can’t, I’ll go mad, I’ll actually go mad-”“That’s not fair, Ember,” Hale breathes, and for once she actually sounds caught off guard.“I know it’s not fair!”“You are asking me in a corridor full of-”“I’m asking you because there’s nobody else!” I tighten my grip on her han

EMBER’S POVMove the things that mattered.I look around the room again, this time paying attention to what Hale might have touched after Knox’s men left.The shelves are dusty, but the search has disturbed most of that dust. Books and ornaments have been lifted, shifted and put back badly enough that I can tell where hands have been.Then I see the second shelf.There is a clean rectangle in the dust about the size of a shoebox. The ornaments on either side are packed closely together, with years of grey dust around their bases, but the space between them is almost clean.Something had been sitting there until very recently.I glance at the boxes stacked against the wall. All eleven are already taped shut, and the stack is packed tightly enough.My eyes move to the mantel.There is another clean mark there, this one circular.Two things.Knox’s men searched this room thoroughly, and sometime after they left, Hale removed two things.A chill moves over my skin.Whatever those things w

EMBER’S POVHer voice makes the sight of her even more disturbing. It is still Hale’s usual calm, level voice, except now it is coming from a face that looks decades older than the one I saw downstairs.“Hale—”“What are you doing in my room!” Her eyes drop to my hands, and her whole expression changes. “Put that down!”“What the fuck happened to you?”“Put it down!”She crosses the room so quickly that I barely have time to pull the book back.She tears it out of my hands hard enough to scrape the skin from my thumb, then clutches it against her chest with both arms. By the time she steps away from me, she is breathing hard.“Get out of my room!” she shouts. “Get out! Get out!”“Hale, look at yourself-”“Don’t you dare!”“Look at your hands!”“Get out!”She screams it, and the sound tears straight out of her chest.In weeks, I have never heard Hale raise her voice above that soft, controlled murmur of hers, and now she is standing in front of me shrieking, both arms locked around the