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Gods smite me, have the scourge sorcerers figured out I’m a monster after all? Or maybe someone noticed my trick with the hounds during the festival.
But why would they have waited two more nights to do anything about it? It’s not as if they could even have been sure I meant to interrupt Ster. Torstem rather than merely creating trouble for the royals, which would be a mission I’d expect this bunch to approve of.
Or this really could be just another trial. Make methinkthey’re upset with me, see if I babble any excuses, reveal errors they didn’t actually know about.
I guess I’ll find out.
Ivy, Julita says, her presence contracted at the back of my skull,this could be really bad. If youneedto use your magic… I think you should.
My mouth tightens. My automatic reaction is to refuse, with all possible vehemence, but I’m no longer completely sure that’s the right answer.
Only as an absolute last resort. Only if it’s clear there’s no other way to escape—and that escape is worth the consequences.
The second I start treating these people like the enemies I know they are, everything I’ve put myself through to make it this far will be for nothing. We’ll lose the one small foothold we’ve gained.
My power continues to roil within my ribcage, but it doesn’t lash out too forcefully. It’s waiting like the rest of me to see how this situation will play out.
Whether I’m facing actual danger or only a staging of it.
I step into a small clearing that might be the one where I tore up the rabbit or a totally different spot—it’s all vague shapes in the night. The figure behind me says, “Enough.”
I jar to a halt.
More forms move in the darkness between the trees, shrouded in black like the knife-wielding healer was before.
Most of them I only catch vague glimpses of. I think there are four or five people lingering at the outskirts of my limited sight.
Two of the figures step closer, to the edge of the clearing where they stand side by side with a narrow tree trunk between them.
“You accuse this woman?” says the figure on the left. His voice is distorted like the one behind me but deep enough to definitely be male.
The other new arrival wasn’t given the same benefit of magical warbling. “I do,” he says, in a gruff but clear voice that sends a quiver through my nerves.
I don’t recognize it exactly… but I have the sense that it shouldn’t sound that way. That there’s something unnatural about its tone.
“Accuse me of what?” I demand, keeping my head high and peering at the unknown man through the darkness.
My nerves jitter with the sense of the presences around me forming a circle to pen me in. They’re afraid I might run for it.
This definitely isn’t good. But if it’s an accusation from an outside source, I might be able to turn the tables on my opponent.
Who could know anything all that incriminating about me?
The first figure, directly in front of me, draws himself straighter with a pompous air. As I note the way the black fabric shifts against his broad frame, the suspicion tickles through my head that I might finally be face to face with Ster. Torstem in his scourge sorcerer guise.
When he speaks again, I listen hard for traces of the law professor’s voice through the magical distortion. “Another of our number claims you’re a traitor to our cause. That you have courted our favor not to serve the All-Giver and see the world returned to its former divine grace, but to undermine everything we’ve worked for.”
A chill trickles through my veins. How could any of Torstem’s people have guessed that much? Are they simply fishing to see if it’s true without really believing it?
Presumably they don’t actuallyknow, or I’d already be dead.
Julita mumbles a string of curses and then speaks up in an urgent tone.I know how to play this. Act all sweet and innocent, like you have no idea how anyone could think that of you. Like you’re a naïve twit who’s too brainless to have even considered that these fiends deserve to be undermined.
I’m sure that’s how she would have played it, but the idea of acting like an idiot doesn’t sit right with me. It isn’t as if it’ll match what Torstem and his followers have seen from me before.
Innocence, though, I’m totally on board with.
I knit my brow. “Why would I want to undermine you? I’ve kept everything to myself, as you’ve asked.”
