With a sigh, he relinquishes the paper.
I tuck it into the sleeve of my woollen jumper, resolving to read it when I’m alone. “There’s something else I need to ask you…something that might change your mind.”
He lets out a small chuckle. “I doubt it, lass, but go ahead.”
“It would help if you were willing to provide a written testimony that you were held captive by a lich. It would need to be done with a truth-spelled pen, of course, and witnessed by someone reputable.”
He scrubs a hand through his beard, paling. “You want to start a war with the Carltons?”
I shake my head. “No. I want to avoid blaming them altogether. But the parriarchs who aren’t yet aligned with them need to know what we’re up against. For that, we need evidence they can’t dispute. If you write your experience down, I hope I can keep them from demanding an interview with you.”
Myriad emotions flicker over his face as he thinks. “You have a plan?”
I wish. “I have allies.”
“Pierce?”
“And his grandfather.”
His jaw clenches. “Are you sure about them?”
“No, but I did drug them,” I admit, and he barks out a laugh, shaking his head. “So at least I know they weren’t lying. They’re still keeping secrets, and Benny has no loyalty to anyone outside of his house, but Mathias is probably the greatest danger arcandom has faced since I was born, and I—” I break off, taking a deep breath. “I’m frightened. It scares me that no one who murdered me was ever even suspected of being a necromancer. In the end, they fell to infighting and old age, not justice. Maybe that was my fault… Maybeallof this was my fault…”
If I had just told my story, maybe what happened to Jasper could’ve been avoided. At the time, I called my silence dignified, and if I’m honest, I still do. Blaring one’s pain to the world is so…gauche. Who would’ve believed me, anyway? A liminal nobody ghost throwing accusations at parriarchs?
How can I expect Jasper to do what I was too proud to?
“How could it be?” he refutes. “You were as much a victim as I was. Mathias is the only one responsible for any of this.”
Clearing my throat, I regather my composure.
“Be that as it may, it’s unfair to ask you to recount such an experience when you’ve only just started to heal from it. I’ll support whatever you decide.”
He hasn’t released my hand, and I can’t decide if that’s a good sign or a symptom of shock. Suffocating silence has swelled to fill the cracks between us. I open my mouth to rescind the request, only to think better of it and censor myself.
“I’ll do it,” he says at last. “But I want to tell my aunt and my parents first, as I should’ve in the beginning.”
“Fair enough,” I accede a little too quickly, then pause. “What will you tell them?”
He bites his lip, and I resist the urge to lean up and release it before he answers. “Everything.”
“And if they go to war?”
Jasper’s jaw sets in a determined line. “Maybe someone should. Maybe the right thing to do is to take the fight to them.”
War always seems righteous to those who haven’t lived long enough to recognise the endless cycle of it.
“Maybe.” My disagreement bleeds into my tone.
“Dinnae tell me you want to just carry on as things are?” he says. “The lich murdered you and almost killed me. Some nights I cannae even sleep because, despite the clan’s protection, nothing feels safe anymore.”
My heart seizes, remembering all too-keenly the fear that plagued me from the night I died to the moment Mathias allegedly took his last breath.
“I understand.”
“But you don’t agree.”
“I…” I trail my fingers through the fronds of the fern beside me. “I’ve existed for a long time. Perhaps that makes me wise; maybe it just makes me jaded. I don’t know. But what I do know is that nothing good ever comes from mass fear.”
