Page 83 of Feralheart

“So you killed them.”

“Yes.”

She looked down at the body, then back at me. “Just like that.”

“They were going to kill you. I stopped them.” I kept my tone matter-of-fact. This was a problem I’d solved, not a line I’d crossed. “That’s what happened.”

“You didn’t call the guards.”

Also a good point. “There wasn’t time.”

“You could’ve called them after. Before you…” She gestured to the body.

I could have. The fact that I hadn’t was the thing I couldn’t explain.

“I’ll call them now.” I pulled a signal stone from my pocket, the kind that would bring castle guards without questions. But I paused before using it. “Unless you’d prefer I didn’t.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“An official report means an official investigation. Questions about why you were out here. Why they targeted you. Your fellow survivors might be questioned. One of them could be involved.” I watched her process that. “Or I can handle this quietly. The body disappears.”

“Burned to ashes like the other.”

I shrugged. “No questions. No complications.” I met her gaze. “I’m offering to eliminate a problem. Your choice.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her gaze went to the body, then to the ash settling on the grass, then to the garden gate.

“A commons woman alone in the royal gardens after dark, two dead men, and a prince my only witness. Who do your investigators believe?”

“Me.”

“And when you’re not in the room? When it’s me, a records clerk, and a family in Shaleside they can starve by docking one man’s wages?” Her voice went flat. “I’ve seen how questions end for people like me. I’ll be dead or tossed into the mines.”

She wasn’t weighing right against wrong. She was counting doors, and every legal one opened onto a cell.

“I guess I have my answer then,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “Make the body disappear.”

“You’re certain.”

“It’s not about trust.” She swiped her blade through the grass without looking at me. “It’s math. Yours are the only hands here that get to be clean.”

I nodded and pocketed the signal stone.

“Who do you think sent them?” she asked.

“Someone who doesn’t want you in the Scorching.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.” Not quite true. I could guess. But guessing meant investigating, and investigating meant caring more than I should about keeping a commons woman alive. “It could be anyone who bet against you. Someone who thinks commons shouldn’t be allowed to compete. Or it could be⁠—”

“A person who doesn’t like that I didn’t die in the trials.” She shook her head. “It could also be someone like your mother.”

The accusation gouged deeply.

My mother had nodded when I’d asked her to let the protocol violation stand. She’d smiled during the trials like she was watching theater, not slaughter. She most certainly would’ve noticed when I’d followed Eradin out of the ballroom.

“My mother doesn’t send assassins,” I said. “She doesn’t need to. If she wanted you dead, you’d no longer be breathing.”