He doesn’t want my answers. “You eliminated him because he was a threat. Just like Hubert.”
“I didn’t—please just—”
I feel Ragne shiver once more.
Emeric sees it too. He’s talking faster now, making his case before she can intervene. With every sentence, he steps closer. “You fooled me into”—his voice hitches—“into staying at the castle, so I wouldn’t stop you.”
“No—I n-never—”
“You came to the outpost to make sure no one connected you to Hubert’s murder.”
“Will you listen—”
“You didn’t know they’d find the penny.”
“Justlistento me!”
But as I look at Emeric, at Gisele, at Joniza, I can tell: Four years, and nothing has changed.
I hit the corner, and Emeric’s voice fades away.
There is nothing to help me. There is nowhere for me to run. I want to throw up again. I’m trembling so hard I can’t tell if Ragne’s still moving in my arms.
I feel like a stranger is in my body, like I’m watching this happen.
I’m not in this room.
I’m in Castle Falbirg, almost four years ago to the day, and no matter how I scream, no one is listening.
It’s four years ago, and I am bound to the whipping post, and I am burning.
It’s four years ago, and I am lying facedown on a table in a dim, suffocating kitchen, and Yannec is telling me it’s just a matter of time before the world finds an excuse to whip me raw again.
He was right. And now he’s dead.
Only it’s not four years ago, it’s now, and I have nowhere to go, and I can’t breathe, and Emeric is shouting, and Gisele and Joniza aren’t saying anything, and all I can do is brace for the fire.
Ragne rolls out of my arms.
Then she stands beside me as a girl, yanking my damp cloak over herself and leaning heavily on my shoulder. “That isenough!” she yells, slurring a little.
The room falls silent.
“I will not be a bear,” Ragne fumes, “because it scares you, likeyouare scaring the Vanja.” She points at Emeric. “I have been with her for almost all of the last week andyou are wrong. The Yannec was a bad, clumsy man who stank of poppy. He tried to cheat the Vanja, then he tried to hurt her, and she did nothing but get out of his way. He fell onto his knife after I surprised him. I could smell that she was sad when he died.”
“Whenweren’tyou with Vanja?” Joniza asks coolly.
“I have left the Vanja three times. Once was right beforehe”— she jabs her finger at Emeric again—“attacked her, once when she was stuck in the castle with the margrave all day, and last night when I helped you and the Gisele go home. There was no time for her to kill a Hubert Klemens. And never have I smelled human blood on the Vanja untilhisblood, right now.” Ragne pushes herself up a little taller, chin shaking as she looks at Gisele. “Yes, she is mean, but she is my friend, and she istrying. And you are all hurting her.”
There’s another brittle, jagged silence.
“But . . .” Emeric looks lost. “Why did you come to the outpost?”
I don’t know why that’s what does it, why that’s what breaks me. Maybe it’s that I’m hurt and scared and losing the adrenaline that kept those wolves at bay. Maybe it’s that I was trying to do something right for once. Maybe it’s that I was trying to do something forhim.
I rip open my satchel so hard the buttons fly off, find the leather journal by touch, and throw Emeric’s notes at him. They land at his feet before everything streaks and blurs with tears.
My legs choose this moment to give out. I slide down the wall and bury my crumpling face in my knees. Ragne crouches next to me, a hand on my back.
