“There.” Victor’s jubilant declaration reaches my ears as if it’s coming from far away.
I gulp air. Close my eyes.
Tell myself it’s a good thing I’m a fucking monster. It lets me do what I need to protect my kingdom without regrets.
Opening my eyes, I remind myself I’m in control. I’ll punch my chest and deliver the mind-clearing pain soon enough. “Show me.”
“Just a moment,” Victor mumbles, snatching up a cloth before continuing to Thyra. “Press this to the wound in case it bleeds.”
It won’t. I know it won’t.
But I guess she obeys him because the edges of the cloth tickle the nearest parts of my back that must not have been burned beyond feeling.
Victor places the set of pliers he was using down on the workbench, depositing the silver object he extracted onto the surface in front of me.
It’s mangled. Curled over on itself like a leaf that a butterfly used for a cocoon. One end of the cylinder has multiple sharp points, as if the metal melted and spread out in the air, only to cool into sharp points.
But its original form was undoubtedly circular. And it’s etched with?—
My head draws back quickly. “That’s a Frost coin.”
Mangled, curled into a cylinder, sharpened at one end. But it’s clearly Frost currency, used only by highborn fae because of its value.
Victor turns the mangled coin over. “Why would Stellen bring coins to a fight? That seems an odd thing to do.”
“Unless the coins were already there.” I catchThyra’s eye, knowing full well she could lie when I ask her, “Are these coins used in the village where I found you?”
She shakes her head. “Not silver ones. The villagers trade with all kingdoms, but payment is always in the lesser coins: nickel and copper. I’ve never seen a silver coin before.”
I want to shrug it off.
So Stellen or one of his people brought a bag of coins for…some unknown reason.
“Did they intend to pay someone?” Victor asks.
My lips twist because I don’t like this mystery. “Pay for what?”
Victor arches his eyebrows meaningfully at me. “That may be an important question.” He shrugs. “Or a completely irrelevant one.”
He leaves the mangled coin on the bench as he turns his attention to my helmet.
“Well,” he says. “At least you have half of what you need.”
My brow furrows at him. I don’t think he’s talking about the broken steel covering my face. “What do you mean?”
“Forgive me, brother, for pointing out the obvious.” He straightens and gestures at Thyra. “You have the Oracle but not the blade.”
Where she stands behind me, Thyra’s head tilts sharply. I’m certain my own expression mirrors hers. The inside of her right arm is clearly visible, and so is the blade’s image.
Come to think of it, Victor should have reacted to it already, even if he thought it was only an inked image. He’s studied the blade’s history thoroughly, to near obsession, in fact.
“I have the blade.” I wrap my hand around Thyra’s arm. “This may look like ink, but it’s far more than it appears.”
Victor glances at her arm. “Ink?”
I prepare to explain how the blade sank into Thyra’s skin,along with the way she used it to create four threads of power, even if I’m still puzzling over what they meant.
Before I can speak, Victor squints at me. “What ink?”
