The Cursed Heir

Chapter Three

Cassie awoke to whispers. Strange. Silvana and Skylar both preferred to get ready in silence in the mornings, and they were usually outside by the time the sun forced Cassie from bed. Had something happened? Or were they planning something?

As silently as she could, she swung her feet to the floor and slunk toward the entrance to the main room of the hut. Her ears strained.

"How many?" Skylar was asking.

"Two," Silvana replied, rushed and rough. "They were following the same trail."

"Add that to the five last week—unless you want to count the one Elora reported—and we have..."

"A serious problem," Silvana snapped, having no patience for Skylar's logic.

What were they talking about? Seven of something. Cassie inched closer to the doorway, trying to catch the hushed whispers as they floated past. Her foot hissed a trail through the packed dirt of the floor of the cottage, quieter than their voices—yet they instantly silenced. Cassie held her breath, held her body, and willed herself into invisibility. Be quiet!

Whatever it was they were discussing, they obviously didn't want her to hear. Were they plotting? Were they afraid?

After five heartbeats too tortuous to do anything but wait, they continued.

"So I was right," Skylar murmured.

"Disappointed?" his sister taunted him.

He had in fact sounded disappointed, a heaviness to his words that had Cassie clenching her jaw anxiously. For all the dire predictions he liked to make, Skylar's attitude was normally unflappable, as though the logic with which he fought to view the world would be disrupted by any emotional excess. Skylar worried preceded complications.

Had Silvana spotted Longheirce in the region again? Was he coming for her?

If that were the case, however, why weren't they including Cassie in the conversation? Without warning her, she would only end up in danger. And Cassie in danger meant danger for them all.

So if it wasn't Longheirce, then what?

"I'm not disappointed," Skylar said. "It's just another complication."

Silvana sounded more confident. "We'll handle it."

"Handle it?" Skylar uttered a curse that had Cassie blushing to the roots of her covered hair, and for the first time, she heard him raise his voice. "That isn't a solution." There was a metallic clatter. One of them had flung something down. "Don't come at me with that. I carried you from the fire, and I will do it again if I must, but I'll be damned if I watch you let someone else set the flames!"

Silvana's voice, in counterpoint, returned to its normal dry tenor. "Well, that's sure to help."

Even if she had slept through the rest of the argument, Skylar yelling would have woken her by now. Cassie scuttled back to her bed and half-heartedly rustled the sheet, trying to imitate the sound of getting up. Would they believe she had not been eavesdropping?

"Skylar? Silvana?" she called quietly.

Another sigh from Skylar—hopefully a sign he was calming down. "We're in here."

Cassie shuffled into the main room, absent-mindedly tugging on the edge of her cap. "Everything okay?" she asked. The two of them were on opposites sides of their battered table, arms crossed and still tense, shooting each other mulish glares. "I thought I heard—"

"I...dropped a knife," Skylar said, almost sheepish. As though presenting evidence, he retrieved a dagger that was embedded in the opposite wall.

"Sideways," his sister helpfully supplied.