Elara didn’t need to see it. Unlike the one Nik had given her, Lafontaine’s was whole. Where did he get it? There’d only been enough copies for the rebels to have them.
“This photograph depicts Gaetan Arnaud standing with Corinne Rousseau and ten other known rebels!”
The crowd cried for blood.
Murderer!
Hang him!
“He had nothing to do with it!” Elara cried, finding her feet now. “Please. He didn’t have anything to do with the bombing.”
“Lies. He hid while your mother was hunted down, biding his time for another opportunity to destroy everything this city holds dear.”
Elara almost fell to her knees before Lafontaine. “No. You can’t do this.”
“The only answer to treason is death.”
28NIK
“Get out of my way!” Nik fought through the crowd. “Move!”
They were too distracted by their senseless paranoia to notice him. They were all watching the horror unfold on the stage. Everything Lafontaine had laid before them proved they had every right to be afraid: Rebels were among them, and they wanted to kill again.
Arnaud had been arrested under suspicion alone, the evidence so flimsy it wouldn’t hold in a real trial. But he wouldn’t get one. Not if Nik’s father had anything to do with it. And if Elara opened her mouth again, if she gave his father any sort of resistance, she’d be next.
Nik had to get to her first.
“Gaetan Arnaud,” Lafontaine declared, “you are charged with conspiracy to commit treason, as well as the murder of Souverain Lisette Plouffe. How do you plead?”
The hulking man didn’t even look up from where he knelt. “Guilty.”
“No!” Elara fought to get to him. “Don’t do this!”
“Silence!” Lafontaine ordered.
“The only thing he’s guilty of is beating your system!” Elara snarled. “For rising high enough, you had to knock him down. First with bills he had no hope to pay and now this!”
“Shortly after your success during the second round, it wasyourwords being chanted in the streets and plastered on walls,” Lafontaine added. “We found evidence of such propaganda in his bakery. Including paint and flyers for the rallies.”
Lafontaine held out one of the so-called flyers. Even from here, Nikcould see it wasn’t real. Someone had designed a fist punching through the memorial in the Senate lobby with information for a meetup near the southern tip of the Restes.
He would’ve laughed at its absurdity if he wasn’t so terrified for Elara. No rebellion would give up their location so easily.
But the privileged, sheltered audience didn’t know that. And they certainly didn’t care.
“It’s fake,” she said.
“How would you know?”
Lafontaine leered down at her. If she confirmed what they both knew to be true, they would arrest her under suspicion as well.
Thankfully, Elara changed tactic, embracing a quieter, softer side.
“Please,” she whispered. “He didn’t do this. It has to be someone else.”
“Then who, Rousseau?” Souverain Faucher piped up.
Shit. If Faucher turned against her, she’d never win.
