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“Then how was he able to sense you?” Maude asked.

Lilith groaned quietly, melting into the chair. “He said he could smell me.”

Jarek’s piqued interest died with that information. Flares didn’t detect each other through smell, but through shivers and heart palpitations. Judging by Lilith’s honest reactions and his own encounters with Escardians who relied on escence use, this made sense to him. He could do her a favor and validate that. “Escence increases the user’s senses and perception. And while I don’t know much about multi-blessed souls, it’s fair to assume a vessel surging with such power would have some sort of ability to sense a Flare.”

Lilith acknowledged that with an empty glance in his direction.

Sterling waved an impatient hand toward Kyer for his notebook. “What did he look like?”

“Pure Failish. Tan skin, short red hair, dark red eyes.” She motioned toward Sterling. “Your build. I’d say he was late twenties, early thirties, if the form he presented was his true one.”

“You at least did enough to pay attention,” Jarek noted.

“I’m willfully negligent, not intentionally stupid.”

“All I heard was stupid,” Maude mumbled.

Jarek buried the beginnings of his smile at Lilith’s responding snicker.

“You were willfully negligent,” Kyer said before winking at Jarek. Sterling passed him back his notebook. “Maude, go get Mia. I think we’ve kept her waiting long enough.”

If Lilith’s aura was perpetually nervous, Maude’s was an everlasting mist of blood. She hardly ever displayed the bright colors that normally surrounded her father. The sour tone from Kyer certainly didn’t help lighten it when she pushed from her chair, leaving the room ringing with the scrape of its feet against the floor.

Kyer blew out a long breath. “She’ll come around.”

“You’ve got too much faith.” Sterling crossed his arms behind his head.

“She doesn’t have to,” Lilith murmured, receding into herself.

Like Maude, Jarek had doubts behind every word she spoke, but he found his attention gravitating toward Lilith whenever she was distracted. Every interaction she had was fascinating, stemming from a place of familiarity, so much so that he wasn’t nearly as annoyed with her as he was this morning. She was brought here against her will, and though it stemmed from selfishness, she was trying. She wasn’t lying, and it seemed like she’d do what they asked to protect Luka.

What she sought for him was admirable. It was something he once wanted for Caine.

Lilith jerked herself back up, and Jarek broke his stare while she listened politely to Mia’s plight after she reentered the room and sat across from her.

While not a spectacular vassal territory like the others at the center of the continent, Markoth had long ago proven itself useful. It offered the empire a sought-after blossom known only to this region of the continent—the key ingredient in the miracle cure that extended lives in the north. In exchange, Markoth was left untouched from soul harvests. Mia’s now deceased husband had run the territory with a kind fist from what Jarek could gather, keeping his town in Reatia’s good graces by honoring that trade.

That arrangement fractured once the siege in search of Lilith started.

After the death of her husband, Mia fled to this reach in the weald, to an old family home, seeking out Kyer for assistance. Kyer had no interest in repairing the arrangement. He had been looking for a way to push Markoth toward full secession from Reatia entirely.

Lilith’s actions in Reave happened to light the fuse for it to finally happen.

Jarek’s gaze flickered to Rimore’s most valuable major. Nearly fifty now, Kyer was wise beyond anyone’s grasp. Jarek was sure he was an Escardian with his affluence for knowing things others could not. Turns out, he was just well researched. Kyer seemed to know anyone of little or great importance throughout Eocera.

He was an honorable man whom Jarek would follow beyond the horizon of the Sanguine Ocean if he asked.

“Lithance flowers? As in the key ingredient for Licane?” Lilith’s genuine spark of interest brought Jarek back to the conversation at hand.

Mia paused her story. “What about it?”

“It comes from Markoth? All of it?”

“Yes,” Mia said, nodding solemnly. “The temperature of the soil this close to the coast supplies just the right amount of nutrients for the trees to develop. Markoth grows it, and Reave retrieves it. Under normal circumstances.”

Lilith’s face scrunched. She leaned onto the table toward Kyer as several ideas planted, or unpleasant memories surfaced, Jarek couldn’t tell.

“You mean to disrupt Reave’s supply for their medicine,” she stated.