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In her new line of work, intent would have lessened the sentence but not altered the crime. The absence of malice was important, but at the end of the day the damage was still done. Best intentions or not, she had gone twenty-seven years with a very different picture of her life, which left an uncomfortable question. Had this discovery damaged her trust?

Or her pride?

“Was there any part of my childhood that wasn’t based on a lie?” Unlike the rest of her questions, this one wasn’t a demand. It was plea that whatever came next somehow made everything that preceded it sting less.

“How much we all loved you.”

Saga opened the front door, and Leigh desperately reached for her arm to stop her. She saw Leigh a little more clearly then. Not as the aunt who had willingly participated in a family conspiracy, but as the last family member left to carry its burden. It couldn’t have been easy. But Saga’s heart was breaking all over again, and if she tried to spare even a piece for her aunt, she feared she might drop it all. “Please.” A word had never felt so powerful despite how weakly she’d spoken it. “I need to be alone right now.”

37The Tuatha Dé Danann was a title given in Irish folklore to the old gods once believed to have ruled Ireland until humanity fought them back.

Chapter 26 Avery

It was not Avery’s place to talk to lawyers. If all was right with the world she was meant to gather information, compile it neatly, and hand it over to the sentinel, who would then hand it to a magistrate, who would distribute it to a Justice and a Mercy, thus making it everyone’s job but her own to speak with lawyers. The trouble was, all was not right with the world. And the only path to right what was wrong in the world required a file so wrapped in red tape it directly demanded she speak to a lawyer about it.

A lawyer or Gideon.

Avery had made her appointment with her half brother but arrived at the Palace of Judication uncharacteristically early so that she might attempt to parlay with the Justice and avoid the elf altogether. For as much as Avery detested lawyers, she would have spoken to a hundred of them if it meant avoiding speaking to Gideon.

Still, that didn’t make the task easy or bearable.

Her arms folded over her chest and her feet began to move in a self-soothing fidgeting manner, falling into a very small waltz box step. At a glance, she might have seemed like someone postponing a needed trip to the toilet. But she was alone. And so the steps widened, and she allowed herself to turn, sweeping around the great hallway, elegant and partnerless. It calmed the pounding in her chest enough that she was able to waltz herself directly up to Justice Norton’s door and firmly knock twice.

“Enter.” The voice beckoned immediately.

Avery opened the door like a teenager who had been caught sneaking out of the house. Inside was far more cluttered and dusty than Mercy Radu’s office. The walls were lined with shelves, holding tomes, trinkets, and loose papers. Sitting at the desk she knew to be reserved for assistants was Justice Norton, his long tail curved around the bottom of it.

“I was wondering how long you were going to tap-dance out there before you knocked,” he commented.

Wilhelm NortonCockatrice, Age: Unknown

5’11”, thin build, black hair, medium complexion.

Court Justice.

Colleagues:

Velouette Radu (Court Mercy, zână), polar opposites but seem to carry a healthy work relationship.

Blind, with unsettlingly good hearing

“It was a waltz,” Avery said quietly. “Actually.”

“It was irritating,” the cockatrice responded. He moved the closed file from the top of his desk into a drawer. “What do you want?”

“I have it on rather good authority you were the Justice on the case concerning Patricia Aldridge.”

The man huffed through his nostrils disdainfully. “You should check that authority’s credentials.”

“You were not assigned her case?” Avery’s eyebrows raised.

“I was not her Justice,” he clarified bitterly, busying himself again by compiling the papers neatly and replacing them in the file. “If I had been, my recommendation would have been less kind.”

Surely, he didn’t mean… “Am I to understand that twenty years ago—”

“Eighteen.” It was rare for a creature like Norton to offer information with a direct question… But oh how did he love to correct people.

“Eighteen years ago, you were serving as a Court Mercy?” Her incredulous tone did not endear her to him any further, but she’d now confirmed Patricia’s case occurred the same year as John Hingley’s death.