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“It wasn’t right,” she whispered.
“Lord Aster,” I started. “You knew him?”
“He was a close friend of my uncle,” Lady Cara replied. “He was always so nice.”
She seemed sad about leaving him behind.
“How did the queen know where to find us?” Aislinn asked.
“Hogan,” Lady Cara replied. “He followed you the last time you met with the resistance.”
It was like a needle made of pure, cold ice had been stuck into my brain. Lady Cara’s words pulled it off, and it hurt.
The night Aislinn and I went to the resistance came to me in a flash. I remembered the innkeeper telling us that a man was walking around our table after we’d left. A man... A boy who had turned into a man...
It was Hogan all along.
Hogan... Bleeding on the ground with a broken nose.
Hogan... Grown and angry at the mess hall...
The image of Hogan from those memories merged with one I hadn’t remembered from before.
A glimpse. A vision.
Hogan watching me hold Aislinn in that dark street.
I knew then. I should’ve recognized him.
And I should have remembered Master Leo’s warning.
“He was the man who was watching us outside that diviner’s shop,” I mumbled.
He had suspected me after I accused him of killing innocents, and then, he’d followed us to the resistance.
“When Hogan told the queen where you were,” Lady Cara continued. “She ordered someone to follow Feremir at all times. She waited until you led him to the resistance again.”
“But she didn’t want to wait any longer,” I whispered. “She tricked me into going back to the resistance. She left that parchment with me on purpose, expediting the process. The letter I found was a deception. She didn’t have a monster’s tail. It had been a lie to lure me.”
“She has it now,” Aislinn replied. “Yeen. What does she want from the monsters?”
“She will use her to get to the others,” I said. “The monster folk are drawn to each other. That’s what Lord Aster said, remember? His son wants to go to join their new leader.”
“I wonder who that is,” Aislinn mused. “Their new leader?”
I knew the answer. I just didn’t know how I felt about it.
