“Fine. I’ll find my own way,” I snap.
Torain turns and looks over his shoulder at me.
“Those steps lead down to the wrong side of the mountain. You have to go up to the proper landing and take a different stair down to get where you’re trying to go. Are you always this argumentative?”
I swallow down the fear that he’s trying to trick me, and follow him.
We go up another two flights of stairs. Then Torain leads me across a hall full of arched columns, and to another staircase, this one slightly curved. We descend. We pass a pair of servants, who bow to Torain, and then a squad of women in leather armor, their hair braided severely back. They nod to the witch and then eye mecuriously as we pass, and I keep my gaze locked on Torain’s back. Nobody tries to stop me again.
“The Coven of Ancients. What does that mean?” I ask, as we keep descending. His feet are light on the stairs, but he nearly trips at the sound of my voice, and then glances over his shoulder.
“What’s it to you?” he asks.
“What, I can’t be curious?”
“No.” He turns forward again and keeps walking. Right. I’ve got ties to the other side and I’m leaving. Of course he wouldn’t want to answer any questions.
I still have to try.
“Could the coven negotiate? If I could broker a peace, but it meant surrendering, could the coven agree to it even if Roiven—”
“No,” he says sharply. “Yes, we could, if all of us overruled him. No, we would not.”
He’s as stubborn as the King.
We reach the base of the staircase and pass a room with more plants growing in it. I'm going to miss the sight of greenery.
“The bond between Roiven and I,” I ask quietly. “It’s really unbreakable?”
Torain is silent.
“Come on,” I say. “That oneismy business. And what difference does it make if I know?”
“Yes,” he says briskly. “It’s unbreakable.”
“A marriage.”
“Yes. A marriage. It seems clear enough to me that he’s under your spell."
“Believe me,” I growl back. “He trickedmeinto this. I refuse to be his wife.”
“As if you could deserve him. How many of our kind have you killed?”
“I didn’t know better. I didn’t know I was…” I trail off. If Roiven hasn’t told them, I don’t know how Torain will take it.
“So it was fine to kill us, until we were like you? Yes, I've noticed your eyes. No, it does not endear you to me, knight.”
My throat goes tight. For a moment I'm speechless. The pain in my head stings, but it’s nothing I'm not used to.
He’s right, of course. But even if I had been fully human, once I realized the Empire was wrong about witches and their magic, I would have changed my mind about the war.
“And… the other one,” I finally say. “The familiar bond. Why doesn’t that one leave marks?” I glance down at my living arm as I ask, at the pattern that grew over my skin when I let Roiven into my mind. A permanent, physical reminder of the connection I’m regretting.
“It changes you in different ways.”
“Canthatone be broken?”
Torain stops so suddenly I nearly crash into him in the dim lighting.
