“Don’t be naïve. They want blood. They always do.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s the past, Fernand! Who else has died since my mother? Who are they killing?”
“Us!”
He pushed open the Cradle door, and Elara wished she could scrub the scene from her memory.
A man was stretched on a cot. At least, it must have been a man. It was difficult to see beneath the swelling and bruising. His face was mangled, stitched improperly at awkward angles, and his skin was a sickening shade of purple.
“Colin.”
Jeanine’s husband.
The bright-eyed, hopeful man who used to sell magied trinkets in The Market. The same one Fernand had roped into his schemes. He was here, not dead.
But he might’ve been better off that way.
“Look as his hands, Elara.”
She would have, but they were gone. His wrists were cauterized and stitched closed. Acid burned up her belly, and she staggered back into the hallway.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because magie performed by anyone outside of a Société is illegal, andthisis the punishment the Counseil thinks they deserve.”
Tears blurred her vision. She’d seen police use excessive force. She’dseen them beat the defenseless before dragging them off to never be seen again. Now she felt foolish for thinking that was where it ended. How had she come to accept a life of fear where she ducked her head and lowered her eyes at every uniform she came across?
“Every day,” Fernand pressed, “more and more of our neighbors, our people, starve to death or are crushed by machinery runningtheirfactories. Every day, more people end up like Colin. We are fodder to the Counseil, and it has to stop.”
She’d lived for Fernand for years, and in that time, she’d heard so many passionate speeches, but none like this. This… this was new and rooted so deeply in his soul that she almost took a step toward him.
Blai interceded. “What happens when you don’t succeed, hero? What happens when you bring all these people down with you because you underestimated their evil?”
Fernand didn’t blink. “We’ll get back up. We always do.”
“Easy to say now when you’ve got that fire in your veins.” They poked his chest with the tip of the fan. “Trust me, it all turns to ash in the end.”
Fernand’s nostrils flared. Blai didn’t flinch.
When their pissing contest was over, Fernand acknowledged her again. “What do you want?”
How foolish it was to ask for anything when a man was suffering just behind that door. How foolish to ask for her problems to be fixed when the Restes was… dying. It really was.
“The Counseil are going to try and get the truth out of me,” she replied.
“What truth?”
“Anything. Everything.” She motioned to the club, the Cradle.
“Then make something to stop them,” he said.
“I can’t. They’ll be looking. I need an undetectable way of blocking them.”
He rubbed his face, sleeves drooping to reveal his arms, which were covered in little red marks barely the size of a pinhead. They’d left welts, some larger than others. All of it was angry. Fevered.
She reached. “What are those?”
“Nothing.” He covered them quickly. “I’ll need a favor in return.”
