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“Yes.” Demos’s mouth twisted. “The fae have been verybenevolent.”
Vicer stepped inside and claimed a chair, giving me a nod. “Good to see you alive.” His cheekbones looked sharper, and a new line had appeared between his brows. But his skin had tanned beneath the sun, and he smiled at Asinia when she handed him a plate.
“You too,” I told him.
There was an expectant air in the tent, and all eyes turned toward me. I took a deep breath.
“What do we know about the hybrids left in Eprotha?”
Silence. I glanced at Asinia, who dropped her gaze to her plate.
My stomach churned. “Tell me.”
“We knew there would be retaliation for emptying Regner’s dungeon, Prisca,” Vicer said gently, and I nodded, but my throat was suddenly too tight to speak.
“How bad is it?”
“Daily executions.”
My lungs seized. Asinia reached out and took my hand. “The hybrids prepared for this as well as they could, Pris.”
Vicer rolled his shoulders. “We had to be careful before the prisoners were free. We couldn’t afford even a rumor to reach Regner. But the night we left, I sent messengers to each part of the city. I warned anyone who’d ever had a family member imprisoned to hide—no matter how distant the blood tie. We knew it was only a matter of time before our headquarters were discovered, so we cleared it out and set it alight.”
I smelled burning. Smoke rose from Madinia’s hand on the table, and I reached for my own power, ready to intervene if necessary.
“Prisca nearly turned her horse toward your headquarters that night,” Madinia hissed. “She was half dead but ready to sacrifice herself for the hybrids she thought were trapped inside.”
Vicer ignored the threat in Madinia’s voice, but his gaze jumped to mine. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” A chill slid over me at the memory of those moments. Of the helplessness. Fire and rioting, and the knowledge that something had gone terribly wrong.
“Pris.” Asinia squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back.
“I’m fine. How many are dead?”
Tibris winced. “Maybe we should—”
“How many?”
Vicer’s gray eyes were dark with grief. “A few hybrids a day. According to rumor, the king remarked that if he couldn’t burn the three hundred in his dungeon, he would make up the numbers from Lesdryn.”
Chains of fae iron were squeezing my lungs. Surely that was why I couldn’t take a full breath. My skin turned clammy, and I gave in to the urge to lower my head until the tent stopped spinning around me.
“We made it worse,” I managed to get out, my voice muffled.
“No,” Vicer said, the word carefully neutral, and I wanted to hit him for the tonelessness of his voice.
I lifted my head, ready to rip into him, and Asinia squeezed my hand again. Her face was ashen, but she glanced around the table, and I followed her gaze.
No one in this tent was neutral. All of us felt the helplessness. The rage. Including Vicer. Years of spying had allowed him to control his voice, his expression, but with us, he let the banked rage in his eyes free.
Taking a deep breath, I attempted to slow my racing heart. “What can we do?”
Demos sighed. “According to the message we received yesterday, Regner is getting careless. He’s so committed to his daily burnings, he proceeds with them even based on rumor and malicious gossip. After you killed his favored assessor, he summoned another to the castle, but he refuses to risk more hybrids being undiscovered in the villages—which means not enough assessors for the city.”
Assessors were rare. It took powerandtraining to be able to determine whether someone else had their power—and what that power was.
“Humans have been burned,” Madinia said.
