The Plan B recruit gone wrong. Garrett. Every wizard in a wide radius around the Capitol—Ella’s mad attempt to topple a government she was sure would stomp out the League and Lydia both. And after that, sick with regret but still driven to do something, Ella threw herself irrevocably into the very last body she would choose if her mind had not been co-opted.
Ella started to laugh. Sharp. Frantic. “So—so we should have thought to add a sentence to our Vows that said, ‘Not including killing people or turning ourselves into our rapist brothers, of course’? Is that it?”
“I knewit was a bad idea.” Beatrix looked away, unable to face her friend. “Iknewthe Vow was horrible and I didn’t try to stop you from taking it. I didn’t even warn you.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Itis. It’s far more my fault than if it had been the knitting! At least in that case, I had no idea what the consequences might be, which is bad enough, but the Vow—the Vow I knew from personal experience is mercilessly effective at forcing your hand!”
Ella stood up from the couch and put an arm around her. “Stop,” she said quietly. “We were all half an hour removed from seeing what we thought was an attempt on Lydia’s life. None of us were doing our best thinking that night.”
Beatrix leaned into her friend, breath hitching.
“PlanB,” she said, the thought coming at her abruptly. “Would we have even tried it if we hadn’t been under Vows?”
Ella cocked her head. “I still think that was a pretty good idea. If Lydia hadn’t stopped us …”
She trailed off, the rest self-evident. If they’d seen Plan B through, there would probably have been no attempt on Lydia’s life. Rosemarie would be with them, safe. Peter might not have been taken.
If the Vow was the reason she’d wanted to avert the march, she wished that she’d heeded its warning.
“Look, it’s good news if it was the Vows,” Ella said tentatively. “Now you can knit as much as you need to.”
Beatrix clapped a hand to her forehead. “I could have beenpracticingall these months!”
“Right, well—we’ve still got … um … twenty-one hours and ten minutes.”
Twenty-one hours and ten minutes before their risky field trip with Vice President Draden. She lifted her chin. “Let’s not waste a second of it.”
He burstin as they were finishing dinner. Martinelli, facing the door, said “Morse” from the side of his mouth, and that was the only warning that Peter—his back to the door—received before he was dragged out of his seat.
“Well?” Morse glared at him. “What have you accomplished?”
“I—ah—made some progress.”
“Explain.”
“I’m almost certain we’ve identified the reason the explosive radius shrunk. We think two of the spells and one of the runes are setting off a problematic reciprocal?—”
“You can fix it?”
“I believe so, yes,” Peter said.
“What progress have you made toward your actual goal?”
“Well, first I need to get the radius back to?—”
“Your goal,” Morse said, softly, malevolently, “is five miles. You have three days to get it done.”
Peter stared at him, shocked. “What?”
Morse said nothing. Peter saw his own stricken expression reflected back at him in the wizard’s dark glasses.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Martinelli said, putting himself between them again and—Peter winced—poking Morse in the chest. “That’s impossible, and anyone who knows a whit about R&D will tell?—”
Morse flicked a hand. Martinelli flew backward, arcing over the table and hitting his seat with anoof.
“Look, I haven’t a clue how to get it to five miles!” Peter said.“Noone does! There’s absolutely no way I can figure out a solution in just three days!”
