Keely took another slow step back, her eyes wide and shocked as she watched them all warily. Gods. She really had thought he wouldn’t follow.
He wished he could reach her. Touch her. Do something, anything, to reassure her. But the tension in the tent was too high to risk her by provoking Andred any further.
Andred looked across to Usna. “Go and get her. I want her to be part of this.” Usna stepped back with a quick salute, leaving Tor and Andred staring at each other with open disgust.
Tor couldn’t imagine who Andred was sending for, and he didn’t care. “There is nothis. I’ve told you Alanna’s plans. Now let Keely come with me. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
Andred laughed, the sound harsh and humorless. “You think that we should reward you for exposing us? That we should let you go so you can add to that report, fill in all the details about our camp? Certainly not.” Andred tipped his head toward Keely. “You should have left with your friends, Tor. Trust me, she’s not worth it.”
Tor clenched his fists, breathing through his nose in a desperate battle not to reach over and throttle the man in front of an entire company of his men. “She’s worth it to me.”
Andred chuckled darkly. “This woman?” He gave Keely a slow look. “She’s the one who betrayed you all at Ravenstone. Everything you lost was because of her.”
“No.” That didn’t make sense. “Ballanor—”
“Ballanor needed a Verturian to recruit soldiers for him. Archers from the north who would gladly destroy Geraint. Keely was his liaison,” Andred replied.
Tor shook his head. “Ballanor imprisoned her. He was going to execute—”
Andred cut him off with a bark of mirthless laughter. “Of course he was going to get rid of her. He wasn’t going to leave the woman who could tell everyone what he’d done to walk around the palace, now was he?”
Tor’s eyes flew to Keely’s. To the look of stunned horror on her face.
It was me,she’d said, standing in her shift, glaring hatred at Ballanor,I hated this kingdom, and I hated this court.
He took a slow breath and then shook his head once more. No. He didn’t believe it. But before he could respond in any way, a soft voice spoke from the opening at the front of the tent. “Truth.”
Tor looked up to see a young woman stepping awkwardly inside. She had hair of dark mahogany, lying in soft waves over her pale skin, and the soft violet eyes of the Nephilim. A little taller than Keely, but very slight, fragile almost, with her pale skin and huge eyes.
And the entire left side of her face was a mass of shining, knotted burn scars. Starting over her eyebrow, traveling down her cheek and neck, to disappear beneath the collar of her gray woolen dress. She stepped carefully, favoring her left ankle.
“Daena.” Andred dipped his chin as the woman limped further into the tent. “Our truth seeker,” he added smugly.
“I did not betray anyone. Ravenstone was nothing to do with me,” Keely whispered, her face even paler than it had been, dark red blotches climbing her neck as she took a stumbling step backward.
“She hated Brythoria,” Andred said, arrogant certainty threading through his voice. “Hated the court. Blamed us all for the war against her people. Who knows, maybe she thought Ballanor would die in the massacre too, leaving the kingdom weak and ripe for invasion.”
“No.” Keely shook her head, her hand creeping up to rest over her throat.
“Truth,” whispered the truth seeker, as Andred continued, “She was the link to the Verturians. Someone had to know how to get a message through the passes. Someone who knew where to find the men who hated the treaty and would be prepared to travel to Brythoria to end it once and for all. Someone who knew where the treaty would be signed. Look around you, Tor, some of those Verturians report to me now, they’ve told me all about how they were recruited.”
“Truth,” said Daena yet again.
“Why would you tell me this? I don’t—”
Andred cut him off with a vaguely pitying look. “You need to know the truth about the people you’ve given your loyalty to. Do yourself a favor and cut whatever false ties you have to this woman. Come and work for me instead, Tor—we need someone with your strategic skill. The kingdom needs you.”
Keely looked at Daena, and then at him for a long, slow second. Her hand fell away from her neck and she straightened her shoulders. And then she looked away.
Why? Because she was hiding the truth as Andred had said? Or because she couldn’t bear to watch? Because she was certain he would judge her and find her wanting? Because the very last thing he’d said to her was that he didn’t trust her and now a truth seeker, the highest authority in the kingdom, was calling her a liar. Gods.
Images of Keely kneeling in the banquet hall flickered through his mind. Much of what Andred had said was true. She had hated Brythoria. Maybe she still did. But he also knewher. He knew how much she loved her friend. How hard she worked to protect the people she cared for. She had tried to protecthim,for gods’ sake. One of the veterans of the northern campaign.
Andred was saying Keely had risked Alanna’s life on the field of Ravenstone. That she would have destroyed the treaty her friend had sacrificed so much for.
The boy she’d loved had died because of that war. And he knew, in his gut—in his soul—that if Keely said she didn’t do it, she didn’t. It didn’t matter what evidence they had against her, or what the truth seeker said.
Andred would love it if Tor threw his experience—and the Bar-Ulf coffers—behind him. Making him doubt Keely was an excellent way to do that.
