“Well, that’s why I’m her bodyguard and you’re not,” Rylan said with a grin as he spun Zuric around and shoved him into the guards’ waiting hands. “Now, let’s get this fat bastard out of here.”

“This isn’t over!” Zuric shouted as they led him from the room. “You may have won the battle, but the war is far from over!”

As we followed him out, listening to his shouted protests all the way, I couldn’t help but fear he might be right.

26

Iannis insisted on holding Zuric in the Palace dungeon rather than taking him to the Enforcer’s Guild, intending to interrogate the spy himself. Since Warin Danrian, the bank manager who’d been running the Shifter Royale, had been assassinated in his cell, it seemed better not to send high-risk prisoners there.

Iannis and I didn’t have another lesson scheduled until dinner, and Fenris had cancelled our Loranian lesson for today. So, with some free time on my hands, I rushed over to the library to see if Janta had made any progress with her investigation into my family tree.

“Are you nervous about finding out who your father is?” Rylan asked as he lengthened his stride to keep up with me. I’d hurriedly filled him in on the basic details via mindspeak, so no one would overhear, and he looked intrigued. “And what will you do once you know his identity?”

“Yes, and I don’t know,” I replied as we stopped outside the tall, wooden doors that closed the library off from the rest of the Palace. “I probably won’t be able to make any kind of decision until I do know who he is, and why he abandoned me.”

“Makes sense,” Rylan said as he pushed open the door, going ahead to make sure there were no assassins lurking on the other side. Despite my suggestion that he do so, Iannis wouldn’t dismiss Rylan as my bodyguard even though we’d captured the spy. He claimed we couldn’t be certain there weren’t more like him skulking about inside the Palace walls, and he wanted Rylan to stick close to me for now.

I asked the young librarian at the reception desk for Janta, and was told she was meeting with someone but would be available soon. Rylan and I settled down at one of the tables to wait, me with my spellbook primer and Rylan with a history text he’d snagged from one of the shelves. It didn’t take very long at all for Janta to show up.

“Good afternoon, Miss Baine,” Janta said, giving me a small, but friendly smile. She wore lavender robes today, her silver hair rolled up into a high bun, and a smile lit her eyes. “Thank you for the box of chocolates. They were a most welcome surprise.”