“Are you hurt?” When I don’t answer, he repeats his question, tagging on my name.
I shake my head, gawking at the sweat-slicked brow of the man lying lifeless before us.
Breathing raggedly, Justus sweeps his hand across his twin’s forehead as though to feel for a fever. When he suddenly goes still, so does everything inside of me, because, before my very eyes, lines of blood appear on the surface of the man’s sallow flesh in the shape of that same strange ‘M’. Justus slashes his finger through the sigil, transforming the dead version of himself into the dead version of another man—Dottore Vanche.
I sit back on my heels.
More soldiers pour into the room. I stare at them without really seeing them.
“My apologies, Maezza.” Justus rises from his crouch. “I didn’t know that my healer—”
“Kill him!” Dante points toward Justus. “Guards, kill him—”
No one moves. Or rather, their heads swivel but no one makes a move to end Justus’s life.
Dante backs up a step, knocking into a chair, sending it skidding. “Why aren’t you heeding my command! I’m your king! You don’t answer to the general. You answer to me!”
Justus raises his palms. “Maezza, the perpetrator has been killed.Youkilled him.” My grandfather speaks slowly, as though addressing a child.
“You—you—” Dante’s finger bobs as the eye not shielded by his palm drops to me, then past me, to the corpse on the floor. “I don’t—” Lips stretched in a frightening grimace, he swings his attention back up to Justus.
“I’m sorry, Maezza. Meriam put me under some spell and drew a sigil on the healer’s forehead that not only made him mad, but that made him resemble”—he rolls his lips together, then wrinkles his nose as though the sight of himself dead were nauseating—“me. I’ve seen to her punishment.”
“Punishment?” Dante sneers. “I will kill that witch. After I kill your granddaughter.”
Well . . . fuck. I eye the door, wondering how far I could get before the soldiers catch up to me. I could hide, but then what? I roll my eyes toward the ceiling, suddenly remembering the low rumble from earlier. What if—What if I could get whatever’s out there to crumble this place?
I push onto my feet.
“Grab her!” Dante roars.
Before I can raise my arms, Cato has my wrists pinned behind my back and vines are crawling around my body, incapacitating me. I stare at Justus, about to beg him to help me, but I stifle my plea because I no longer know whether he’s on my side, or if it was the healer and Meriam aiding me all along.
Justus strides toward Dante. “Your Majesty, let me look at your eye.”
Dante stares and stares at his general with the one I didn’t injure. Slowly he lowers his palm. I’m so numb with shock that the sight of his scarlet-veined eyeball and blood-streaked cheek doesn’t contort my insides.
Everything about this moment feels surreal.
“Get me some fresh gauze and a packet of the Nebban chemical!” Justus yells. “NOW!”
One of the soldiers leaps out of the room.
“Sit, Maezza.” Justus gestures to the chair. “I will do all I can to counter the effect of the iron but I cannot guarantee I’ll be able to save your eye.”
Dante watches Justus, his expression guarded, skeptical. As he finally sits, his attention drifts to the inert healer. “I thought—I thought it was you, Justus.”
“I understand how it looks, but please know that I would never betray you. I want Luce to belong to us. Only to us.” Justus’s words seem to slacken the tension in Dante’s shoulders.
“I will kill Meriam.”
“I told you. I punished her.”
“She deserves to die.” Dante says this while looking straight at me.
“If they die, we’ll have no more magic, and the Shabbins will come and aid Lore.”
I try to make sense of timelines. The healer arrived the same day as my unbinding, but Justus went to fetch him after Meriam released my magic, no? Unless he was there all along? My mind buzzes with confusion.
