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The other figures around the ring raise their hands too. “We will be wild!”
I realize us newbies are supposed to join in too. There are a couple of others who hesitated farther around the ring.
On the second iteration, we all lift our fists and our voices alongside the others. “We will be wild!”
Torstem strides around the ring at a faster pace, urgency creeping into his voice. “We will throw off the taint left by the empire and the usurpers who thought to rise up in their place!”
“We will!” the rest of us echo, though my heart skips a beat. The usurpers?
He leaves no doubt that he’s talking about the current royal family with his next statement. “The Melchioreks barged in when the country was unsettled and tried to make it their own. But we know their way is not how it’s meant to be. We’ll destroy them all and let the gods decide the rightful rulers of our country as they once did!”
I force myself to join the shout, even though my nausea has returned. “We will!”
“We’ll hold trials to find the ones who are worthy, and never let the crown pass to anyone unproven!”
“We will!”
The whole world is blurring around me, but even through the muddle in my head, I remember Alek telling me about this sort of thing. How before the Darium invasion, there’d been kingship trials to determine who would inherit the throne.
He wasn’t upset that the trials had stopped. He said they were barbaric, that people who would have been great rulers ended up injured or dead.
Of course, the Order of the Wild seems to be all for barbarism.
“We’ll bring back all the old laws that were forgotten. We’ll honorourgods,ourpeople. We’ll celebrate life by truly living, in all its chaos and savagery!”
“We will!”
Is that what all this fuss is really about? They think Silana was better centuries ago, before the Darium Empire’s meddling and everything that’s followed?
A laugh I can’t totally explain slips out of me. It doesn’t matter—others are laughing around the circle too, joyfully. So pleased with throwing away five hundred years that I don’t think can all be bad.
But then, what has the stinking royal family done for me that’s all that good? It’s because of the king I’m here in the middle of this madness. I didn’twantto be.
What am I supposed to make of anything?
My head reels, and my feet stumble under me. Someone strikes up a tune on a fiddle—a dissonant, jerky melody that only jumbles my thoughts more.
Most of the scourge sorcerers start to move with the sound, curling their fingers and arching their backs, scratching at the air and leaping like the wild things they believe they are.
I find myself joining the strange dance alongside them. My body wants to reach for something beyond this place—something to steady me, something to hold me down. But there’s nothing but the chaos Ster. Torstem talked about.
We stomp and spring around the fire, my senses getting dizzier with each step. I grope for my convictions, for the solid sense of why I’m here at all.
I need to identify the conspirators. I need to find out exactly what they mean to do.
At the first thought, my power is already leaping forward in time with the mad dance. My heart lurches, and I snatch after my magic with all my self-control—
But I don’t have much left.
My riven power slips through my jumbled thoughts and flings itself at the problem I’ve identified. The figure just ahead of me staggers to the side.
He clutches at his face, too late. The mask and the illusion attached to it wrench away, revealing Olari’s boxy features, taut with a mix of drugged haze and sudden panic.
A surge of triumph rushes through my own panic to contain my magic. I figured he was a part of the conspiracy, but now I know for sure. I can tell King Konram. I—
Across the fire, someone shrieks. I heave myself forward in time to see another of the scourge sorcerers hunching over.
She’s clawing at her face—at the mask that seems to have melted down over her nose. It’s clogging her mouth. Only a whistle of breath escapes her.
