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She glances down. “With my bare hands. After I raced around the forest on all fours like a wild creature. These scourge sorcerers have very strange ideas about what the All-Giver would want.”
Her voice has lightened, but it doesn’t reassure me. She still sounds unnervingly detached.
I know that tone. Soldiers often get it after their first intense battle—when they’ve had to kill in ways they never imagined, when they’ve seen too many comrades slain in front of them.
Two chilling thoughts cut through me in quick succession.
The scourge sorcerers’ tactics are rattling Ivy more than anything I’ve ever seen.
How is she going to control her riven magic if they keep breaking her down?
“You shouldn’t go back,” I say before I’ve thought the comment through.
Ivy blinks at me, and a little of her usual keenness comes back into her gaze. It’d reassure me more if her next words weren’t, “Of course I should. I’m gaining their trust. I’ve got a better idea of how they think than I did before, and they’ll keep revealing more.”
“That only works if they leave you in one piece,” I retort.
She makes a scoffing sound that also sounds more like her usual self and swipes her hair back from her face. “I’m all right. It was just very weird. They’ve already told me I’m supposed to come back tomorrow night—we might get something concrete on their plans then.”
She’s putting herself in their grasp again that soon?
My pulse stutters. “Ivy—”
She holds up her hand. “We madeourplan, and I’m following it as well as I can. Have I screwed anything up so far?”
I scowl at her. “No, but—”
“Then let me do what I came here for. At some point you’ve got to believe I’m on your side and not the villains’.” She brushes her hands over her dress. “Now I’m going to get out of this ruined thing and get some sleep.”
She marches past me to the latrine to change. I hesitate in the middle of the room, but she’s obviously recovered from her initial shock.
What am I going to do, stand sentinel over her all night to confirm her magic doesn’t slip out of her in her sleep?
Some part of me wants to. Gods help me, some part of me longs to gather her slight but strong frame in my arms and let my own strength shield her from the horrors she’s experiencing.
But what happens tomorrow when the insane conspirators might put her through even worse? How long will it take before their madness starts rubbing off on her?
I retreat to my bedroom, but I can’t walk away from the qualms that are nibbling at the edges of my mind even more insistently than before.
How far can I really let her mission go?
If I judge the situation wrong, if I extend more trust than I should, the resulting disaster could be even worse than if the scourge sorcerers go unchecked. One of the riven unleashing her magic right outside the palace gates? Right in the samebuildingas the royal family during our meetings?
I can’t count on our companions to notice the warning signs. Even with my faulty sight, I’ve seen the way Aleksi and Casimir look at her.
It isn’t as if I don’t understand the attraction. The sly humor that can shine in her stunning eyes, the confident might in every movement of her lithe body—
ButI’mkeeping those compulsions reined in. The two of them appear to have welcomed her back into their trust—and who knows what else—whole-heartedly.
The security of the entire kingdom rests on my shoulders.
I slump onto the bed and close my eyes to try to get some rest, but it takes ages before I drift off. And then the images of Michas sear up from my unconscious.
Flashes of real memory: the riven sorcerer’s snarl, Michas’s face blanching in panic, the way the unharnessed magic wrenched through his body, tearing it limb from limb…
And in the dreams, Ivy stands here too. She echoes the snarl of the man from my memory.
She waves her hand, and another slash rips through Michas with a gush of blood.
