“Everyone getdown!” Honovi yelled, already diving for cover, cursing the fact that he didn’t have a weapon on him.
But Karla did, pulling her wand fromsomewhereon her person, despite the fact weapons and magic were forbidden in the chamber. Honovi was never so glad for someone to break the rules than in that moment.
Gregor fired the pistol, and someone screamed as everyone tried to make themselves less of a target. The biting crackle of magic erupted from the tip of Karla’s wand, a jagged bolt of aether-backed power that wouldn’t block bullets but did knock Gregor back onto a bench hard enough to cracksomething—wood or bone, Honovi couldn’t tell from his spot on the floor.
Swearing, he caught Karla’s eye, her face washed of all color but lips pressed together in sheer determination. “Cover me.”
She nodded, tossing her braid over her shoulder and getting to one knee. She kept her arm extended, wand at the ready. Honovi heard someone moaning in pain, but he couldn’t think about who had been wounded—if it was his father—not when the threat hadn’t been negated.
Honovi hurried toward the Seneschal, finding the man struggling to sit up with a broken arm, eyes glazed over unseeingly. Gregor had lost the pistol from the hit or the landing. Honovi couldn’t see it anywhere, but his desire to locate it fell by the wayside once he caught sight of the burns from Karla’s wand on Gregor’s chest that scorched the same sort of scars he’d seen in Siv.
“Fuck,” Honovi bit out, pinning therionetkathat had once been E’ridia’s Seneschal to the bench. He knew, in that moment, the Eastern Spine would not be enough to keep war out of E’ridia. “Karla, I need you! He’s arionetka.”
“Leena’s been shot,” Alrickson called out.
Honovi let out a relieved breath even as he tightened his grip on therionetka. Then Karla was there, thrusting her arm over his shoulder to smack the tip of her wand against Gregor’s forehead.
“Sleep,” she snarled.
An aether mist enveloped Gregor’s face, and he breathed it in, fighting against the order. Whatever Karla had learned from walking through Siv’s mind, she must have employed some of that knowledge there in the chamber. It took nearly half a minute by Honovi’s count, but Gregor eventually went lax in his grip, head lolling to the side, eyes half-lidded.
Honovi didn’t let him go, watching the way his scarred and burned chest rose and fell, as if a heart still beat beneath his ribs, when it was all a lie.
Twelve
HONOVI
The high priestess of the Star Order in E’ridia curled her hand beneath Gregor’s chin. She tilted his head up and to the side as far as the restraint collar would allow, studying the Seneschal with a sharp focus that Honovi was familiar with. His mother had always been one he’d never liked to cross while growing up, more out of fear of disappointing her than fearofher. Isla of Clan Storm was kind and loving, but she had guided him down his road with a firm hand that allowed for no diversion.
She raised her left hand, holding on to her brass-plated wand, the metal body of it etched with knotwork. The clarion crystal at the tip glowed from the aether, his mother’s magic a warm cloak around her that was comforting in a way, despite the political upheaval they were all unexpectedly stumbling through.
Honovi’s mother was a tall woman, taller even than his father. Her graying black hair was braided back in a dozen small braids that blended together into a single plait that fell past her waist. The headdress she wore—six gold rings haloing her head with the star god constellations twisted through the filigree—made her even taller, but Alrickson had never minded looking up at her through the scant few inches that separated them. Honovi always thought they made a striking pair.
She’d been called away from a temple ceremony, and the dusky blue ceremonial robe she wore over her gown was embroidered with gold thread. The gold paint on her face done in intricate lines was meant for prayer in the star temple, not an interrogation in a crowded hospital room.
But Honovi’s mother was a powerful magician whose magic she had dedicated to serving the Dawn Star. She was skilled in a level of mind magic meant to be used for healing and guidance. That skill was just as useful in prying out the truth from therionetkaGregor had become and which he didn’t recognize himself as.
“I demand to be let go,” Gregor said, his words a little slurred from the pain medicine the doctor had given him after the burns on his chest were tended to. “I have done nothing wrong.”
“You haven’t, perhaps, but someone else has through you,” Isla said before pursing her lips. “Be still.”
She tapped his forehead gently with her wand, leaving a ghostly stain of magic on the Seneschal’s skin. His eyes fluttered shut, body going lax against the restraints he’d been struggling against.
“Is he not a traitor?” Alrickson asked.
Honovi spared a glance at his father, who hadn’t yet changed out of his ruined kilt and plaid. The white of his button-down shirt was stained in places with rust-colored dots. Leena had been one of the unlucky ones wounded in the attack against theComhairle nan Cinnidhean. She and two more of thecinn-chinnidhhad left the chamber on stretchers, bleeding from gunshot wounds Honovi wasn’t sure they’d recover from.
“He was made one,” Isla murmured, tracing the tip of her wand down the side of Gregor’s face to rest against his left temple. “Much like Siv was, I presume.”
She touched a hand to Gregor’s shoulder, fingers skating over the raised scar of the vivisection mark that crossed his chest. Honovi hadn’t gotten a good look at the one on Siv’s chest, wounded and hurting as he had been at the time. He’d studied the one on Gregor’s chest before the doctors wheeled him into the operating theater, joined by a magician to keep therionetkain check.
He wondered how long Gregor had been arionetka. Honovi would never know how long Siv was not herself, how long she was locked inside her mind, a puppet to some unknown master pulling her strings.
Inside Gregor’s chest would be the same sort of clockwork metal heart that had been extracted from Siv’s body. Karla had overseen the removal back in Amari, but the device had broken apart during the flight home, some bit of magic causing it to self-destruct, all its magic fading away no matter what Karla did to keep it intact.
What remained were broken pieces of metal, cracked gears, and shattered clarion crystals, whatever magic having powered the mechanical heart gone back to the aether.
It meant none of them knew who was pulling the strings, but Honovi could guess. It wasn’t proof, though, and accusing Queen Eimarille Rourke of such atrocities without it would hasten the war coming to their borders.
