AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hudyakis curls against her as if he can protect her from the memory, and the obvious hits me.
“You had a soul guardian to protect you physically and mystically.” I nod toward the owl. “Dyphena didn’t. What if he was blocking the dark magic? I should’ve seen the possibility sooner.”
Jace scowls. “Wilborne was chanting in the old language. That bastard’s probably behind any hex.”
“I didn’t notice him chanting.” What else had I missed in my rush to get to Rosemarie? I glance at her and can’t regret my decision to push past Wilborne, Cutter, and the others when I remember the look of absolute terror on her face. Now, she’s safe and as relaxed as anyone could hope amid our talk of murder and magic.
Rosemarie runs her fingers along Jace’s arm. “I didn’t hear his chanting. Not that I would have understood him without my translator. Before the runes.” She blushes as though she recalls how we invoked mating magic in addition to the runes’ spells.
I bite back any teasing since Jace looks ready to storm from the tower and challenge Wilborne to a fight to the death. “No gargoyle has the kind of magic to twist the mind,” I remind him. “Not like our shadow magic.”
“None who have announced it anyway,” he adds. “Or maybe it’s spellwork and sorcery instead of inherent magic. That’s how Wilborne could’ve done it.”
“But why risk it?” I ask.
“To knock Rosemarie out of the competition,” he says, running his knuckles over Rosemarie’s shoulder when she shudders.
“But why would he have gone after Dyphena?” I don’t stop, not even after my twin winces. “Wilborne’s candidate didn’t advance beyond the first trial last time. What would he have gained by attacking Dyphena with dark magic at her coronation?”
“You’re talking about motive,” Rosemarie says. “A motive to kill her, to hurt me.”
My gut drops to the floor as if I rush to fly too fast in a heavy gravity realm, and I snarl. “No one will hurt you. I forbid it.”
She grins at me, a wistful curve of her mouth that makes me want to hide her away from the world because they’ve already tried…on my watch. And I failed to protect her from the dark magic.
Jace looks even less sure of our ability to keep her safe than the awful worry spinning through me. “How would we figure out who has this motive to harm?” he asks.
Rosemarie goes silent and thoughtful for a moment, biting her bottom lip. I want to kiss that ache away, but I still until she’s ready to speak. She brought up the idea of motive and murder. It’s only fair she have the floor to talk it through. “Dark magic like the kind that twisted my thoughts—how does it transfer?” She looks to me as though I have answers, and I desperately search my memory of studies of forbidden arcane.
“Through spells, touch, ingestion.” I think harder, calling up old readings I haven’t read since before Dyphena’s death. “It could even be sewn into the clothes you wear or laced into the bed where you sleep with a variation of an ill wish charm.”
“Who cooked for Dyphena?” she asks. “Prepared her clothes? Cleaned her room? Did her laundry? Came in close contact with her?”
“Rona,” Jace says. “The Spidress. The entire keep. The other candidates.” He shrugs, the gesture ending in a defensive hunch. “She wanted to make friends with everyone, and we were less guarded then.”
Rosemarie frowns, a line marring the space between her brows that I want to soothe and rub away. “So anyone and everyone could be a suspect except the two of you?”
My blood goes cold. “I could be a suspect even if I swear to you that I had nothing to do with her demise. How can I prove my innocence when we didn’t even know the threat? Or what would happen in the end?”
I can’t say the rest out loud. If I couldn’t save a candidate sleeping a single room away from mine, how can Rosemarie trust that I’ll keep her safe? I should’ve seen something, should’ve guessed. Hell, I should’ve listened to Rona’s suspicions as more than the rant of a grieving brownie. I could’ve asked my father for a stay on our trial or our sentence while we tore apart the keep looking for the culprit. Now, it’s a century since that fateful coronation night, and I’ve done nothing but look to the future without resolving the past.
Rosemarie runs her foot along my inner thigh and waves her hand. “Of course you didn’t do it. Neither of you could have.” The soul guardian chirps, and she glances his way. “Huey would have likely changed into his other form already if Rona was out to hurt me. Besides, she was the one who insisted Dyphena wouldn’t have harmed herself.”
“Which only eliminates three from our list,” I say.
“You can take the Spidress off it,” she adds. “Huey and I have been alone with her.”
A reasonable inference. “It has to be one of the other Diviners with a candidate,” I say. “Someone who would benefit.”
With a tip of her head, she studies me. “What if it’s tied to the wyvern crossing the Bridge?”
“A way to separate us from you.” I curl my claws into fists. I should’ve seen through the distraction.
“It won’t happen again,” Jace promises her. “The queen was questioned. She has no memory of giving permission to anyone to cross the Bridge that would’ve allowed the wyvern to be there. This is something bigger. A conspiracy, perhaps. We will have to stay by your side every moment.”
She leans against him. “There are still too many people to consider.” When she runs her fingertips over his arms, I have to concentrate on her face and not the desire to wrap her in mine as well. “Is there anyone who wasn’t here at the time that we can rule out?” she asks.
Jace nods. “Darok. He wasn’t at the keep then. I’m not even sure he was alive. He’s young for an orc.”
