“Oh?” I feign coolness. “And what might that be?”

“We’re going to attack Arberly, and we need you to help us.”

My stomach drops low in my gut, but I keep my expression indifferent. “Another poorly planned attempt to strike the Queen like what my advisor saw during court? I’d rather not dirty my tunic for something doomed to fail.”

His expression tightens. “No, this is nothing like that. We’ve been planning this for months. The attack you witnessed was merely a distraction to keep her spies sniffing in the wrong places. Had you not rescued us, we had our own plan for escape. We’re going to attack the city itself and show those loyalists who live there just how vulnerable they, and their Queen, really are.”

“What exactly is the target?” I ask, my heart now pumping a fast staccato.

“The target is the thayar processing tower, though the mission is to steal what we can from it, not destroy it. The merchant district is the distraction. That, we plan to leave in ruins.” My mind races, trying to think of a way out of this, a way to stop them.

“What do you need our help with?” Silene chimes in, ever the strategist.

Krantz looks at her like he hadn’t remembered she was there. A sneer crosses his face. “We need Prince Hawthorne’s help to sneak us into the processing tower. It’s heavily guarded, since it contains the largest supply of thayar in the entire kingdom.” He looks at me. “Once we saw how easily you kept Fionn and Silene cloaked, we knew we’d found the last missing piece we needed to pull this off. My people will cause a distraction in the merchant district, while you get a small group of us in and out. It’ll be simple.”

I desperately want to look toward Silene or Fionn sitting next to me to see if they’ve determined a way to stop this. But if they had, they’d have said something. “What are you planning on using the supply of thayar for?”

Once again, he gives me that cold and calculating smile that makes my skin crawl. “Don’t you worry, we have plenty of other plans in motion that will put that to use.” I clench my jaw once, struggling to hide the frustration I feel.

“I’d be happy to help.” I shove down my nausea.

“Excellent, Your Highness,” he says, smoothly. “We leave in an hour.”

Hawthorne

Eastern Velmara is home to a powerful family of light channelers. They have endless myths and prophecies about a prince who will be born in a time of darkness to bring the light back into the world.

The Secrets and Stories of Velmara