Page 92 of Heart’s Rescue

Wait, what?

“Yes,” Arryn replies.

The room is spinning. Blood pounds inside my skull like I’ve just run all the way from the World’s End. I press my hand against the carved wooden panel to keep from falling over because I couldn’t possibly have just heard that. She couldn’t possibly have said—

“Why?” the king asks.

Arryn tosses her hair over her shoulder, and it’s such a familiar gesture that it hurts to watch. It’s what she did in my house, with Phaedron. It’s what she did in the shelter, in the cabin in Fringe. In the palace as we crept towards the inner towers.

“Rowan was… kind to me,” Arryn says.

“Wait,” Folwynn announces suddenly as if he’s just now catching up to the conversation. “What in the stars is a Rowan? Is that some sort of Lands Below way of saying prince?”

Arryn rolls her eyes so dramatically, so beautifully, that I swear they can see her all the way in the Worlds Above. King Galan’s thin lips twist into what’s probably as close as His Majesty ever gets to smiling.

“I will remind you, Prince Folwynn, that you have agreed to be quiet,” the king says.

Folwynn shuts his mouth with a frown. The king leans forward and cups his chin with his hand in a gesture that reminds me of Aloserin.

“Is that enough, though?” the king continues. “I’m sure many people have been kind to you, Lady Arryn. Perhaps even some people down here in the Lands Below.”

Even from here, I can see the blush rising in Arryn’s cheeks.

“I— I care for him,” Arryn says.

“I see,” the king responds as feast day fireworks go off inside every corner of my brain, completely obliterating thought.

“Him?” Folwynn snorts. “You don’t call me ‘him.’ You call me beloved!”

The king raises a hand and flicks a finger at Folwynn. “Remove him,” he says.

“What?” Folwynn shouts. “You can’t remove me! This is my rescue you’re negotiating!”

Aloserin steps forward silently. Folwynn doesn’t even know to pull back from Aloserin’s outstretched hand. A moment later, the monster from the Worlds Above is flat on his back on the tile floor and the room is silent once again.

“Thank you, Aloserin,” the king says. He turns back to Arryn. “Here’s the problem with heart magic, Lady Arryn. It only works if there’s a connection between a heart from the Worlds Above and a heart from the Lands Below. That’s why your prince’s heart was of no use to us. There’s no one in the Lands Below that your prince, as you put it, cares for.”

Arryn nods, but I see her shoulders sag.

“If we had two hearts,” the king continues, and now he’s raising his eyes to trace the wooden panel in front of me, “then the magic would work. We could push open a hole in the barrier. A hole big enough to get you, Lady Arryn, back home to the Worlds Above.”

Son of a bitch. I suck in a breath and stare at the king. What a master manipulator this guy turned out to be. I probably shouldn’t be surprised.

Arryn’s breath catches in a hopeful little gasp.

“I could survive the magic?” she asks.

The king makes a sound that’s almost like someone trying to impersonate a laugh.

“Of course, you survive,” he says. “Your heart doesn’t have any magic if you’re dead.”

“But,” Arryn continues, her voice trembling. “You would need another heart with a connection to—” Her voice pinches. She brushes her fingers over her collarbone, then continues. “To mine.”

“That is true,” the king says, looking right at me.

Arryn shakes her head. “Then, it won’t work. There’s no one down here who—”

“Fine,” I announce. Loudly.