“Here she comes,” Lochlan said, nodding at the door.
A woman came through the side door slowly, escorted by the man who’d left the room. She had a familiar shuffling walk and clutched a long scarf.
It was Auntie Mable.
I shut my eyes then reopened them, sure they must be playing tricks on me.
“Mable, it’s Lochlan. We can talk freely here. Do you have my latest report?” Lochlan asked, still holding tight to my hands.
“Yes, dearie, it’s here.” She raised one of the scarves Lochlan had given her and lightly ran her fingers over it, feeling where each bump was then moving down to the next row. “He said that he has Gil’s trust and that he’d bring her in today. The third shipment can be intercepted at the Trilshire port in four days. Once that’s taken, Roderick can be taken into custody as well. He has no further purpose.”
I froze, staring in horror at the knitted scarf, then back at Lochlan. Mable was blind…she must be reading a code that Lochlan had hidden within the knitting. No wonder his patterns were always so irregular and Mable was such a loyal customer. All this time, I’d assumed Lochlan was a mediocre knitter being kind to an old woman, but he had been passing information to the Nightsworn right under our noses.
During those meetings when Lochlan had been knitting while plans were discussed…he’d been recording everything we said. It had never been just an idle hobby to keep his handsbusy. It had been a calculated move to incriminate us. Icy dread paralyzed me.
No wonder he’d gone straight to the Nightsworn when he’d sold me to the slavers. Of course he’d been there the night the Syndicate was raided. He hadn’t been looking for me at all. He’d been part of the raid. Then he found me trying to escape and followed me. My vision swam. He knew all my secrets. He had told them everything.
“You’re one of the Nightsworn,” I whispered, horrified.
His expression hardened. “I am. And you’re under arrest.”
He had betrayed me. My identity was fully compromised. I had trusted him, and he betrayed me. One of the Nightsworn approached, uncapped a needle, and jabbed it into my arm. The last thing I saw before blacking out was Lochlan standing over me, hands still clutched around my wrists, with a hardened expression on his face.
He had never loved me at all.
CHAPTER 29
When I finally awoke, my head was throbbing. I sat up and pressed my hands against my closed eyes. Once I lowered them, I saw iron bars all around the prison cell. I’d been caged again, and this time, I didn’t have any lockpicking tools hidden up my sleeve. Nor did I have my weapons or the tiny vial of pixie blood I’d intended to give to Ambrose.
The tiny cell suddenly seemed even smaller. The walls were closing in and I was back in that trunk where the space around me was shrinking, shrinking, gone. There wasn’t enough air to breathe. I choked and wrapped my arms around myself.
“I’m sorry, Jillian.”
My head spun around. Lochlan was sitting on a bench right outside the cell bars.
“You—” I couldn’t think of an oath bad enough to describe him. “I trusted you. I kissed you!”
“Ihad to, Jillian. You don’t understand.”
“I understand plenty.” Tears filled my eyes. Why had I ever thought he cared about me?
“No, you don’t. I kept you alive.”
“I’d rather be dead than in a cage,” I spat. “You lied to me! You were so insistent that I tell you the truth, but you didn’t tell me anything.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“You were part of the Nightsworn this whole time? All the time I knew you?”
“Yes. But I never lied. You just never asked.” His hair still hung into his eyes, but this time, I didn’t find it attractive. He had been hiding his true identity from me all along. “I really do care about you.”
“No, you don’t. You made methinkyou cared about me, then you turned me in for the money. You and Elvin really aren’t different after all.”
He winced. “Jillian,” he began in a placating tone. “I wasn’t planning to take the money. I just needed to tell them that. Just listen.”
“No. I’m done listening to you. Get out.”
“Jillian…”
