Chapter 193 The Visit
ADRIANA
I was awake before the nights were back from rotation.
I had slept for approximately three hours, which was enough to make the edges of things less sharp without being enough to make me feel rested, and I had eaten before sleeping which meant I was at least operating on something. I lay in the dark for a while and thought carefully about what I was going to do, because thinking carefully before acting was something I had learned the value of, before doing the opposite first and observing the results.
Then I got up and got dressed in the dark.
I stopped at the twins’ room first. They were both asleep, sprawled in the particular boneless way of eight-year-olds who had committed fully to unconsciousness, and I stood in the doorway and looked at them for a moment. Then to Lorain’s room, where she was curled around her stuffed bear with the serene certainty of a five-year-old who trusted completely that the world would be the same when she woke up as it had been when she closed her eyes.
I kissed her forehead without waking her.
In the corridor, I found Martine already awake, which did not surprise me. Martine had a quality of being present when she was needed that I had stopped questioning and simply relied on.
“Watch Lorain,” I said quietly. “She’ll look for me when she wakes up. Keep her with you until I’m back.”
Martine nodded once.
I found Hazel in the strategy room on my way out, which also did not surprise me. She had her maps spread across the table, she was so focused which meant she had been working through the night and had arrived somewhere.
“You’re going,” she said. It was not a question.
“He wrote in the letter that he wanted me to come. I’m going to give him what he thinks he wants.” I sat across from her. “What else have you found?”
She showed me the possible locations for Landon’s new facility, narrowed down from six to two by cross-referencing the tunnel exits with Golden Blade’s territorial layout and Leo’s description of the route they had taken when first moved. One of them was a disused structure on the eastern boundary, close to a geographical feature the original documents called Bouncy Jackson — which was an absurd name for what was apparently a significant natural feature that made the location strategically relevant.
“Leo would know if they were near water,” I said. “He’d hear it, smell it. If he’s in a position to communicate anything—”
“He’s not,” Hazel said. “Not yet. He hasn’t reached mating age. The mind link isn’t available to him.”
“I know.” I looked at the map. “But when this is done, I’m going to tell him that was the single most useful limitation he’s ever worked around.”
She almost smiled.
I went over everything with her. What I planned to say to Landon, what I needed to observe while I was inside, what signals I would use to communicate with the soldiers once I had confirmed the location. Hazel had arranged the communication protocol already, which was exactly what I expected from her. She had also arranged for a small team to follow at a distance that was close enough to be useful but far enough not to be detected.
“Elijah is going to be furious,” she said.
“Elijah is going to be where I leave him,” I said. “Which is the palace, managing the kingdom, because if he comes with me, Landon will change the dynamic immediately. He needs to believe this is me making a choice independently.”
“Is it?”
I looked at her.
“I’m choosing to walk in there and use his assumptions against him and bring my son home,” I said. “Yes. That’s a choice.”
She held my gaze for a moment, in the way she held gazes when she was assessing whether someone was telling the truth about being alright, and apparently decided I was.
“Don’t eat anything he offers you,” she said. “Don’t drink anything.”
“I know.”
“And if Leo is there—”
“I won’t react. I’ll hold it in.” I stood. “Trust me, Hazel.”
“Always,” she said. “Infuriatingly.”
I left before the sun was fully up and I walked to Golden Blade with more directness than the previous night because this time I was not sneaking. This time I was announcing myself. This time I walked up to the gate with the particular bearing of a woman who had decided something and let the guards see me coming.
“Stop!” The spears came up. “Identify yourself.”
“Queen Adriana,” I said. “Luna of the Lycan King’s pack. Tell your king I’m here.”
Something moved across the lead guard’s face — recognition, confirmation that my arrival had been anticipated.
“Follow me.”
They led me through the pack, two in front and one behind, which was their version of an honor guard and also their version of making sure I didn’t go anywhere unexpected. I noted everything. The layout, the distances, the positions. The information I had not been able to gather on my first visit because I had been moving through shadow I was now gathering in daylight.
They brought me to the palace and left me in a room outside the throne room and told me to wait.
I stood in the room and breathed steadily and thought about nothing in particular, which was a skill I had developed during the sisters’ training — the capacity to empty out before a moment that required everything.
Then the door opened.
Landon stood in the entrance to the throne room with a smile that had been rehearsed into what he believed was charm, and he looked at me the way he had looked at me twenty years ago when I was eighteen and had nothing and he had thought that meant I was his.
I looked back at him and felt absolutely nothing that he was expecting.
“Adriana,” he said, reverting without apparent awareness to the name he had known me by. “You came.”
I walked past him into the throne room without speaking and took the chair that was not his throne and sat down with the composure of a woman who has spent years being a Luna and has therefore stopped being impressed by rooms.
He followed.
He sat opposite me at the long table and I watched him assess me the same way I was assessing him, each of us taking the measure of who the other had become in the years since the last time we’d been in the same room.
He had aged, the way men did when they had money and resources but also something unresolved eating at them slowly. There was a quality to him of a man who had spent a long time wanting something and had organized his entire existence around the wanting of it.
“You look exactly the same,” he said.
“You don’t,” I replied.
He didn’t flinch. He smiled, like he’d already decided not to be wounded by something.
“You’re not going to eat?” He gestured at the food that had been laid out.
“No.”
“You must be hungry.”
“Tell me where my son is,” I said.
He leaned back in his chair with the ease of someone who had been waiting for this moment and had decided to take his time with it.
“Walk with me first,” he said. “There’s a lot to talk about.”
I looked at him.
“Then talk,” I said. “Right here.”