Quill of Thieves

Chapter 34

This blasted fortress must have been a den for insomniacs.

Abel stuffed her head beneath a pillow and groaned in frustration. It was difficult to force herself into sleep when, each time she closed her eyes, she saw the glowing veins of the two fae warriors, felt the rumbling of the tunnels as the ceiling had caved in, could hear Melvin's shallow breaths as she had half-dragged him from the rubble and back into the fresh air. There had to still be dust and dirt caked into her nostrils and ears.

What had happened in those tunnels?

She stared down at her hands.

It hadn't been Sebastian who had brought down that tunnel. She knew that much, at least.

Her fingers shook, so she stuffed them under her thighs.

Queen Davina and her Iced Guards had only announced the all-clear hours earlier after Astrid, Sebastian, and Captain Stick-Arse had burst into Halorian Square covered in all matters of grime and blood. Her relief at finding Sebastian unharmed had been short-lived, however. His overblown pupils had jumped, harried, from her face, to his dirty hands, to Astrid's barking lips, and Abel had known instantly he had witnessed something horrific.

Apparently, the intruders had escaped the collapse of the tunnels, and Sebastian had just begun rambling about portals, palm trees, and Soleita when Astrid had grabbed him by the wrist and had ordered to be escorted to her mother. She hadn't seen Sebastian since, and he hadn't come to find her.

Abel frowned at the ceiling, her ears ringing.

Noise surrounded her, whispers of it, clangs of it, and her ears buzzed painfully against it all. The walls closed in on her. She clutched the pillow tighter. How could anyone possibly sleep in such a thin-walled mountain as this one? Mount Halum had always seemed so impenetrable from the village she had grown up in, always looking up at it from where she lived at its base, insignificant. If she had known the mountain rock was truly thinner than leaves in winter, she would have tried sneezing at it to see if it would collapse years earlier.

Part of Abel wondered if Her Royal-Bloody-Highness had somehow magicked the room to amplify sounds as punishment for Abel manipulating her way into Astrid's Icicles. Truly, it was a ridiculous name for soldiers, by all accounts, and yet here she was, traipsing around the fortress and being pulled into all manners of wondrous, magical events all under the princess's sharp, rather pointed nose.

But Sebastian wasn't here. He was with her.

She frowned at her own pettiness and threw the pillow at the opposite wall with a muffled growl. It had cracks that whistled shrilly with each pass of the chilled, mountainous wind, and the sound cut through her like skinning knives.

Truly, this room had not been so loud until now.

Astrid Salvera must really despise her.

Abel grinned at the thought, for she didn't very much like Astrid either. Especially in the way the impetuous girl watched Bash, as if he were someone she would love to dissect and study and then put back together again in a vision of her own making. Abel supposed she should take comfort in the fact that Sebastian had magic now and, if she had learned anything from watching him in the first task of the tournament and down below in the tunnels with ancient foes, it was that Sebastian could hold his own against Astrid. But the realization had come with a sense of shock as if her Bash, the one she had protected and loved since childhood, had grown into an entirely different version of himself without Abel having been there to witness its origin.

Unfortunately, Abel lacked a magical skillset to offer the assistance Bash now needed, and Astrid seemed only too eager to chomp on the bit to provide it in her stead.