He would kill me here, not keep me. He had brought me here to get rid of a problem. I would disappear like all the other victims Reagan couldn’t find.
“Wait. I can help you,” I said loudly enough for Madden, who was almost out of the room.
“I have no use for you,” he replied coolly.
He used a child to draw me here. Of course he would kill me and likely hang my body from the gates afterwards.
Cahir’s fingers began to shimmer, his eyes narrowing in focus.
“I’m a diviner,” I rasped, the words loud and desperate.
Cahir froze, hesitating.
“I’m a diviner. I can help you,” I pushed on. “I can read the threads. I saw what you did with Reagan’s curse.”
Madden paused again and watched me with renewed scrutiny.
“I heard you in that cabin,” I said. “You are a time weaver. You shuffled his threads.”
That earned a slight tilt of his head. His cloak whispered around him as he strode back, faster now. I still couldn’t draw a single breath.
The urgency in his movements suggested he was alarmed. Or running out of time.
“Who knows this?” he asked, his tone harder now.
“I will tell you if you let me live. I will help you.” It was the only option I had, and a perilous one, bargaining with a man who hated me.
“You are half-breed. You can barely wield, from what I’m told,” Madden said.
“Because Reagan didn’t want anyone to know. We both understand how coveted diviners are.”
“And you are volunteering to help me?” His voice slowed, assessing me.
With my wrists bound and the Scions anchoring me in place, I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
“I don’t want to die,” I said quietly, letting him see my fear, my weakness. I made myself look fragile, harmless. Everything he already believed I was.
Madden narrowed his grey eyes and stroked the rough stubble along his jaw, weighing my worth.
“Then prove it,” he said. “Divine for me.”
Chapter 51
Reagan
Laughter cracked through the post’s cramped chamber until Reagan found himself giving in to it.
“He kept going on about finding a woman in the human lands, said he wanted to train her,” Freddy slurred in Reagan’s direction, ale shining on the rim of his cup. “I told him it would take a miracle for any good-looking redhead to give him the time of day.”
Reagan’s teeth scraped together, but the subtle reaction was buried beneath the dim magelights. Freddy was far too deep into his cups to notice, but Heil did. The Captain’s eyes closed for a moment.
“I’d guard those remarks if I were you.” Heil’s tone carried the sort of patience reserved for men who ought to know better.
He should, yet Reagan’s mood was far too good to let Freddy’s drunken rambling sour it. Even sober he decided to tolerate it.
“Well, it wasn’t actually my saying,” Freddy said with a somewhat apologetic look.
Finn, who had been lounging on another chair, leaning his temples on his fingers, frowned. “Yes, it was.”
