“Nineteen days. Not a word. No sign of life. Nothing. I was sure that you had been recognized and Sauven had you stashed in some dark hole. I considered what I would do if you turned up floating face down in the Dokkon. Instead, I find you here, in the company of a woman without an identity. A woman who showed up out of nowhere, who has access to information she shouldn’t have, and who likely has been planted here by one of the Eight Families to get close to me or you.”
“The world doesn’t revolve around the two of you,” I told him.
“Be silent,” Solentine told me.
“Or what? You’re going to kill me? Ha.” I just didn’t care anymore.
Solentine turned to Everard. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving the kingdom.”
Solentine looked at him for a moment. “Divine, I think you might be serious.”
“I am,” Everard told him.
There was something in my hand. I looked down at it. I was still clutching a clump of the Butcher’s hair. Somehow, I had held on to it the whole time. I stepped to my desk and dropped the clump onto a piece of paper. Some hair had stuck to my sweaty hand, and I brushed it off on autopilot.
Solentine shook his head. “Fine. What’s done is done. Fatefire leaves recognizable scars. There is nothing I can do to erase the gash in the Vanquisher’s plaza. Tomorrow the capital will know that you are here.”
He was right. That green crap had carved right through the stone.
“Sauven will be told. He will panic and lean on the knight orders. They will scour the city looking for you. If you’re recognized, and Sauven can prove you broke the Accords, we’re done.”
Again, he was right.
“Here’s how we fix this. You leave Kair Toren tonight and go straight to Selva. I will tie up loose ends here.”
He didn’t tie up loose ends. He severed them. That’s what Shears did.
“The loose ends work for me,” Everard said.
“Just her then.” Solentine looked at me. “She is a threat, Ramond.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She belongs to me.”
Solentine blinked.
I laughed. It sounded exactly how I felt, bitter and apathetic.
“Now isn’t the time to be distracted by a woman,” Solentine said.
“I’m not distracted,” Everard said.
Solentine examined me like I was a poisonous bug. “What do you really know about her? What’s her family name? Where is she from? Why did she approach you?”
“I know enough.”
“Let me confine her until we get some answers.”
“No,” Everard said.
“She will be perfectly safe, and once we resolve our current problems, we can revisit this like rational people. Let me close this breach in our walls before the enemy streams through it.”
I would not survive that confinement. Solentine had decided I needed to die.
