The Foolhardies 178 The Morning After

The idiot was snoring as he slept without a care in the world which annoyed me as we'd had so much trouble fighting off against the hashas.h.i.+n who'd stolen his face.

I sat up in bed thinking about counters for poisons that I would need to stock up on now. Last night's embarra.s.sment won't be repeated.

My eyes glanced around the room, and only then did I realize that we weren't in the infirmary I left Luca in the previous night.

We were in Princess Aurana's suite, the pale blue walls and white gossamer curtains were similar enough. Perhaps we were in one of the adjoining rooms that led to her bed-chamber.

That thought made me blush, and remembering the princess in her thin day-gown made that blush get even hotter.

"What's with the dopey grin on your face, Dean?" Ashley called from the open doors on the left side of the room. "Thinking of something pervy, weren't you?"

"O-of course, not!" I lied. "I was poisoned, you know."

"Sure, that's all it is," Ashley grinned.

She knew I was fibbing. She'd seen my reaction to Aurana's attire last night, after all.

I turned away as she walked over to my bedside with a basket in her hand and saw through the open window that night had fallen yet again. This meant I'd spent a full twenty-four hours in the Fayne, something I'd never done before.

My eyes glanced down at the hand that carried the bracelet that kept me in the Fayen but I discovered my arm was bare and that the bracelet had been removed.

"Apparently, those temporary anchors are bad for a visere's health if used for too long," Ashley explained as she sat on the wooden chair next to the bed. "And you were already knee-deep in health issues with the amount of poison in your bloodstream… Berrian took all day just to drain it out of you."

"So that's why I've been asleep so long…" I understood. "Edo got up just when the fight was getting interesting."

"Edo is a half-ogre with natural resistances… you're human, Dean…" As she said this, there was a definite crease on Ashley's forehead. "No matter how amazing you've become at warfare, don't ever forget that you're still just human with easily breakable body parts."

"Yes-yes, mom," I joked.

Calling her mom just made her frown even more.

Her obvious concern warmed my heart, and as I stared into her face, I realized that I was beginning to notice how pretty she was more and more. No wonder Ty crushed hard on her back in the day, maybe even now.

These teenage-boy thoughts threatened to overwhelm my composure and would have made me blush even more, and Ashley would no doubt have picked up on that. So, to avoid further embarra.s.sment, I asked Ashley what happened after I pa.s.sed out.

She explained that Edo didn't even get a chance to avenge himself as the hashas.h.i.+n tried to escape the moment the Inquisitor and the Lord of Stars entered the room. He dashed in the opposite direction from the Silent Hall's entrance and headed for the window on the other end.

"And he would have gotten out to if he hadn't decided to finish his business while making his escape," Ashley admitted.

"The Princess—"

"Was very, very angry at how injured you were from the fight," Ashley revealed, a shadow of something I knew was fear pa.s.sed over her face. "I'd never seen Aura go nuclear like that before…"

As interested as I was to know what happened, Ashley just teed up that comment and it demanded a response, "Really, you don't remember when she nearly burned down Broken Sellsword's Canyon's Lowtown?"

"Ah, yes, that," Ashley admitted with a laugh.

She continued her tale and told me that the princess herself had ended the threat of the hashas.h.i.+n with a wave of her magical fist, literally. Apparently, Princess Aurana had used up all her new spells that night, even going so far as to summon her last and most powerful spell, the Fire Fist.

It was an apt name for a spell that literally called down a column of fire from the heavens to slam down onto its target like a fist smas.h.i.+ng a bug on the floor.

"She really did smash him like a bug… repeatedly too," Ashley said while miming her fist slamming onto her open palm and grinding it there. "It probably helped that you'd injured the hashas.h.i.+n to the point where he was already struggling to keep Luca's form."

"Did the princess — did Aura kill it?" I asked.

I a.s.sumed using the name of Princess Aurana's alter ego was fine given where we were, and I was getting tired of saying princess all the time.

Ashley shook her head. "The hashas.h.i.+n is currently locked up in the dungeons and is being treated for burn wounds along other wounds you gave it."

"Has an interrogation been done yet?" I asked.

Ashley shrugged. "Not that I know of… but the Inquisitor has offered her services when it happens… apparently, she and your pal, the Lord of Stars were attacked too."

That caused my own brow to furrow, and I recalled the words the hashas.h.i.+n had given me, "You are not on my list," I repeated.

"Apparently, there were a lot of people on his list," Ashley added.

She explained that other than Aurana, the other three big names within Palanquin Palace yesterday were attacked as well.

The Patriarch was attacked by nearly twenty members of the Claw, minus the ones fake Luca and I killed, and they'd discarded poison in favor of good old stabbing. Too bad for them that Darah herself guarded the Patriarch's rooms.

In the cloister garden where I once had a chat with him, Darah and Thors painted the stones with drow blood. They even left one survivor for interrogating purposes.

Apparently, the reason there were so few Crippling Blades lying in wait to ambush Aura's escape party was because the rest of them were attacking Chris Pint and his entourage in the palace's east wing guest suites.

Ashley explained that Chris Pint didn't even bother to fight them and left the management of stopping the a.s.sa.s.sins to Thea and his other female companions.

"He's got a lot of those," I chuckled. "A full-on harem."

Ashley caught me staring at her.

"Don't even think it, Dapper, or I will smack you silly," Ashley warned.

"I wasn't thinking it at all," I protested. Then I quickly changed the topic back to the earlier discussion. "So what happened to the Crippling Blades who went after the Lord of Stars?"

"I was told that the enemy didn't last long against the Starfall clan's elites," Ashley told me while her eyes narrowed. "Somewhere down the line, we're going to be fighting them too, won't we?"

I shrugged. "All alliances end… and this one hasn't even been finalized yet."

I recalled Chris Pint's warning while we stood together on the palace battlements and surveyed the city below.

"He really likes the view," I repeated, almost smiling to myself as I imagined that fight, if it came, was probably going to be the hardest one yet.

"The Under Ring also had another target besides Aura too," Ashley told me.

The Under Ring's a.s.sa.s.sins weren't just after the head of Aura, but they tried to take out the Inquisitor too. Apparently, the Justiciars have become a thorn in the Underworld's side, especially with regard to the slave trade, and they must have believed eliminating the woman who'd been given the nickname 'Breaker of Chains' was the first step in ensuring the resurgence of a flouris.h.i.+ng slave trade outside of the Undercroft.

"That's a lot of good intel you have there," I noted.

"The Inquisitor discussed it with us after Aura beat the hashas.h.i.+n," Ashley explained.

"Breaker of Chains… that is a cool t.i.tle," I whistled.

"Certainly better than the Boy Touched with Fire," Ashley chuckled softly.

"I didn't ask for that, you know," I countered as I leaned back on my seat. "That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ardeen Spellweaver thought of it on his own."

Despite our long and at times loud conversation, Luca had barely stirred.

Ashley explained that the mental attack that was done to him was a lot more severe than we thought. The hashas.h.i.+n literally siphoned his memories off him and he needed time to recuperate from that.

While the visual of the hashas.h.i.+n sipping through a straw attached to Luca's played in my mind, Ashley began unwrapping the basket in her lap.

I peeked inside and saw that it was filled with cookies, the Mudgardian kind. Oven There were at least a dozen double chip chocolate cookies inside. They had a fresh from the oven aroma that wafted up to my nose that nearly made my mouth water in antic.i.p.ation.

"Dude, these are my favorite," I whistled.

"Yeah, Ty told me," Ashley smiled, and for a second, I thought I witnessed the shadow of a blush on her cheeks.

I blinked and they were gone, but I could have sworn I saw them.

Ashely pulled out a cookie and offered it to me. But she pulled it away when I tried to take it from her hand.

"What—"

"—You're injured, so just this once, I'll feed you by hand, alright?" she said.

Yup, I was most definitely blus.h.i.+ng now. But I nodded all the same as I imagined I was about to enter an entirely new territory I've never explored before.

Ashley placed the cookie within inches of my face, but as I opened my mouth to take a bite, the sound of laughter reached my ears.

I turned toward the door and found Darah standing there grinning from ear to ear.

"Hope we aren't interrupting anything," Darah teased.

Behind her were A sheepishly grinning Thors, and to my utter horror, Aura — her face turned away from me.