I raised my eyebrows and pulled the blanket closer around me. “How so?”

“You’re able to communicate with him. Perhaps, if you learned to control it, you could even spy on him.”

I shook my head. “I tried my hand at spying once. It didn’t go well.”

“Roan was right about you,” she said with a twist of her lips. “You are an enigma.”

I laughed dryly in response.

“You disagree? You’re a girl from a tiny village in the sea who should never have set foot on land, and here you are communicating through visions with the king of Ilara and telling me you’ve already tried your hand at spying. I’d say that makes you something of a riddle.”

Maybe she understood me better than I wanted to admit. Riddles were in want of answers, and Thalos knew I was in short supply of those these days. Ever since I’d returned to Varenia, all I’d felt was doubt and uncertainty.

She handed me a dry shift. “Here. This belonged to Ana. She left it behind, and it doesn’t fit me.”

“Thank you.” I pulled it quickly over my head. It was a bit long on me, but it would do. “I’ll return it to you as soon as mine is dry.”

“Keep it,” she said as she helped me to my feet. “It isn’t as if she’s coming back for it.”

She said it matter-of-factly, but there was hurt there, clearly. She had taken a lover knowing she wouldn’t stay, and yet she still missed her.

“There’s something I don’t understand, something from my vision,” I mused aloud after a moment. “Why did Ceren take all the Varenians? If it was only my blood he wanted, he could simply have taken my parents hostage and lured me to him that way.”

“They must have something Ceren wants,” she said. “Or more importantly, something he needs. More soldiers for his army, perhaps?”

I shook my head. “They’re malnourished. And they’ll never fight for Ceren willingly. He would have to use bloodstones to control them.” Was that his plan? To lead his soldiers with his mind? The thin vein I’d seen in the tunnels below New Castle wouldn’t yield enough stones for an entire army. “There must be more bloodstones in the flooded mine,” I said, more to myself than Adriel.

“And?” she asked.

A horrible thought struck me, sending chills over my entire body. “He doesn’t need the Varenians to dive for pearls anymore.” I sat down again as the room began to spin around me. “But he still needs the Varenians to dive.”

16

I couldn’t know for sure if Ceren had captured the Varenians to mine for him, but I also couldn’t think of another good reason for bringing them to New Castle. Adriel agreed that it was a likely explanation, so I was eager to share the theory with Talin, Zadie, and Sami. If Ceren really did need the Varenians to dive, he wouldn’t kill them, which bought us a little time. But I wouldn’t know anything for sure until we went to New Castle, and I had no idea if Talin was having any luck enlisting the Galethians’ help.

The old Nor would have already been on the road south, armed with a half-formulated plan and driven solely by the need to act. I thought of my time in New Castle, where I’d been alone and without allies, until I made the decision to trust Lady Melina, Ebb, and finally Talin. I wasn’t without allies now, and I was going to have to trust that we had the best odds of helping the Varenians together.

Adriel herself had become the most unlikely ally of all. Sensing my anxiety, she put me to work to keep my mind occupied. She concocted remedies and tinctures from herbs, wildflowers, mushrooms, berries, and other unidentifiable substances she kept in glass vials for the people who came by the cottage. At one point, she sent me out with a book filled with drawings and descriptions to fetch a special kind of mushroom for a tea. I managed to bring back several poisonous mushrooms along with the correct ones, and the berries I picked on a whim gave me a rash. Fortunately, Adriel had a cure for that, too.

“Have you found anything useful?” she asked the following morning, nodding to the book in my hands. I’d spent all last night reading it and was fairly certain I’d actually lost intelligence in the process.

“No,” I huffed, nearly tripping over a stone as we crossed a field. Adriel was gathering a rare herb that only bloomed one week each year. Lungflower, it was called, or godsbreath, a small, innocuous plant with tiny white buds as soft as down. I would never have noticed it if Adriel hadn’t pointed it out. She gathered the buds, leaving the stems to die and regrow again next year. The buds would be dried and used in tea to ease a sick patient’s congestion.

“Come now,” she said, taking my arm so I didn’t trip again. “You must have learned something.”

Our horses were grazing in the field nearby, and the sun was warm despite the crispness in the early autumn air, but I was too exasperated to appreciate it. “Every time I think I’m getting somewhere, the book tries to trick me.”

She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “What do you mean?”

“Take this, for example. ‘Bloodstone magic royals keep; bonds of death that run skin-deep.’ Does that mean that the bloodstone only works as long as it’s in contact with the wearer’s skin? Or does that mean that once the bloodstone is removed, the wearer dies?”

She shook her head, lips curled in an amused smile.

“I’m glad you find my frustration comical.” I flipped to another page. “And this. ‘Bloodstone wearers willing are; control is weakened from afar.’ That seems to mean Ceren can’t control his guards from far away, which would make sense, considering how easily the captured guard was taken. And it explains why he would have come to Varenia and Galeth himself. But I could be reading that completely wrong. I just don’t see why the entire thing has to be written in riddles. Aren’t books supposed to be helpful?”

Adriel placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Breathe, Nor.”

“Meanwhile,” I continued, “Ceren has an entire village of Varenians at his disposal, and a mine’s worth of bloodstones he could force them to extract.”

Her grip tightened. “We don’t know that yet.”

I tried to take a deep breath, but I felt like I was wearing a corset. We didn’t know anything, which was the problem. If Ceren could bring on the visions by drinking my blood, then I could be transported back to New Castle at any minute. The visions and dreams had been scary enough when I believed it was my own subconscious controlling them. Being under Ceren’s control was far more terrifying.

“Let me see,” Adriel said, holding her hand out. I passed the book to her, open to the page I’d been studying. I’d alternated between reading each line as closely as possible and skipping around, hoping I might stumble upon something that made sense. The book was filled with a lot of information that had nothing to do with bloodstones or blood bonds, too, and sifting that out took additional time and effort.