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In a sickening way, the strategy makes sense. It’s a subtler approach than the typical, fatal scourge sorcery technique.
The sacrificial accomplices have kept their own gifts while staying ready to support their sorcerous leaders with them when called on. No one figure has been carrying massive amounts of power as if trying to match the divine.
Alek said it’d take the power of all the godlen to compel daimon. Are there at least nine of these ruined figures positioned around the city for the sorcerers’ evil purpose?
Where did they come from? Is this who Ster. Torstem had hidden away in the brothel’s attic?
Were they the prostitutes’ children? How could anyone in that place allow this horror to happen to kids they’d watched grow up?
Wendos hisses through his teeth and makes a sharp motion at the forms around him. “Concentrate harder! We need the daimon rampaging right through the inner wards if we want everyone to see the truth.”
My pulse hiccups. They have found a way to control the spirit-creatures, then.
But what truth could he possibly think he’s conveying?
His voice has gone even more ragged. Whatever his mad purpose is, he’s obviously happy to tear the city apart for it.
I glance at the stairs behind me, but there’s no sight or sound ofmyassociates. How long will it take for Julita’s men to follow me?
I dig my hand into my pocket to press the locket again, in case they won’t realize I’ve gone up the tower. I have no idea how long the magical signal lasts.
Wendos has to be stopped—but we need to know who he’s working with too. Where the other sorcerers are. What they’re trying to accomplish.
Ending this catastrophe isn’t as simple as running in there and stabbing the royal sword straight through him. I don’t know how to do this right.
Then the woman in the middle of the semi-circle stifles a sob, and Wendos’s attention jerks toward her.
“Get yourself together, Fyrinth,” he snarls. “Or would you rather Torstem dumped you back at the whorehouse where maybe you belong after all?”
Fyrinth?
I register the confirmation of my suspicions, of Torstem’s involvement and the brothel’s, but all that feels momentarily distant behind the chill that name provokes.
It’s not a common one in this city—I think it’s Icarian or Bryfesh in origin rather than Silanian. But I’ve heard it before, just a few days ago.
What are the chances that one of the orphans Torstem saw off to the Inganne’s temple had the exact same name?
Oh,Julita mumbles, just as the same realization hits me like a sucker punch.Oh, no. He switched them.
The women of the brothel didn’t sacrifice their own children. They sent them off to better lives at the temples.
Did they even know it’d be under some other child’s name?
The girl who was going by Fyrinth—her sacrificed little finger—just like one of the prostitutes I spoke with. It’s a common minor sacrifice. I never would have assumed…
That could have been her mother. And the real Fyrinth was secreted into their attic, with no one at the orphanage or the temple having a clue that she’d never ended up at her supposed destination.
No wonder the devouts spoke so vaguely—or outright fancifully—about their visits to the college.Theyhad never actually been, only the kids whose places they’d taken.
How far does the conspiracy stretch? There are dozens of brothels across Florian’s wards.
We have no idea how many devastated children the sorcerers have groomed and hidden throughout the city. How much power they might be calling on now.
Fyrinth sucks in a ragged breath and squares what’s left of her shoulders.
Whatever she does must help, because Wendos’s face brightens. “That’s it. I can feel that. It just might be enough…”
As he turns back toward the view of the city, my gut churns. There’s still no sign of my allies arriving.
