When the cell door creaked open again, I didn’t look away.
I hoped—I might have even prayed—my thorns were sharp enough to draw blood.
17
Kit
The blow left me disoriented. My vision was hazy, though I was vaguely aware of the three guards dragging me up another flight of stairs and into a room that was empty but for two chairs set facing each other several feet apart. They pushed me down into the one facing away from the door, and one of them secured my wrists to the back legs so I couldn’t lift my hands.
Then they were gone. Silence swelled in the empty room, and the fuzziness of my head slowly dissipated. Rage and fear sharpened in its wake, lodging deep in my chest and adding their own unique sting to my cacophony of pain.
I didn’t have to worry about Penny being unable to lie this time, but that didn’t ease my mind. He was in no shape to endure any sort of interrogation. He needed a warm bath and a good night’s sleep, not vicious, probing questions about what happened in Wendwood. Especially not without me there to offer comfort when he had to talk about the fire.
I wasn’t left alone for long. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before the door behind me opened and footsteps sounded on the wood floor.
“Kit Koesters.” Matina dragged a hand across my shoulders as she came around in front of me. She had my Penny-menacing knife tucked into her belt, along with a sheathed blade of her own. A wicked smile parted her lips when she took in the mark on my face. “Well, isn’t that a lovely sight.” She rubbed her thumb over the bruise blooming on my cheekbone.
When I flinched away, she grabbed my jaw to steady my head so she could press her thumb into the tender flesh. Then she leaned in close, her breath hot and sour against my face.
“If I had my way, I’d see you with bruises more often,” she hissed. “Insubordinate, entitled little shit.”
She withdrew to settle into the chair across from me and tugged my knife out. She remained quiet for several moments as she dragged the flat of the blade up and down the thigh of her slacks like she was sharpening it on a whetstone, all the while maintaining unwavering eye contact.
I surmised she was trying to appear threatening, but I wasn’t afraid of her. There were rules to interrogations, and there wasn’t much she could do to me. Besides, I had nothing to hide.
“No one escapes the militia,” she said finally when her stare down didn’t phase me. “So how are you here? Did you cut a deal with them? Agree to be their spy? Or did you simply lead them here?”
“The militia wasn’t involved, so there was no one to escape or make a deal with,” I said.
I walked her through what happened, starting with Anders setting the first fire and culminating in our two-day walk in the cold and the snow to get back here. I left out our overnight stay at an inn on the way—paid for by the coin pouch Margo had snuck back into our bag, which we discovered when we stopped for lunch on the first day—but made sure that I stressed that we left no trail and weren’t followed.
Matina’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed the more I talked. By the time I was finished, she looked like I’d just told her I kicked her dog. She leaned forward, pointing my knife at me like an accusation.
“That’s not what we heard.”
“I’m sure it isn’t,” I retorted. “Unlikely that Anders would admit to anything when he was the aggressor here.”
“The problem is,” she began, the ghost of a smirk turning up one corner of her mouth, “I know Anders better than I know you. I trust him. I havenevertrusted you.”
I didn’t have a response for that. Shedidn’tknow me. She, like Merrick, hadn’t approved of my return to Ashpoint, and she’d made that no secret when Vi had brought me to rescue Penny from her interrogation on the day we arrived. Son of Vaughn Koesters or not, I was as good as an outsider in her eyes.
I was relieved, at least, that they’d assigned her to me this time and not to Penny. I just hoped he was faring better than I was.
“Wendwood didn’t even call the militia. Anders was long gone before they could even send someone, so there was no point. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Maybe,” she said, knife inching closer to the soft skin beneath my chin, “you can start with why you came here in the first place.”
“It’s been months now, and that’s still in question?”
“You never gave a satisfactory answer,” she snarled. “You hated it here. Youran. And yet, here you are again.”
I didn’t rise to her escalation, keeping my face and tone impassive. “Iranfrom my father, not from the Bone Men.”
She barked a laugh and tapped the underside of my chin with the flat of the blade. “And you expect me to believe that four years after his murder, suddenly you wanted back in?”
“There’s nothing left for me out there,” I lied. “I could never escape the rumors, the stigma.” My breath hitched, and for a moment, evenIbelieved the manufactured emotions that clogged my throat. “I was tired of being run out of town after town. I was ready to come home.”
“Our Right Hand might be swayed by your sob story, but I’m not.” She lurched forward and pressed my knife against my throat, hard enough that I had to lean back to avoid its sting. “You didn’t belong here then, and you don’t belong here now,” she hissed. “Tell me what deal you made with the militia.”
