Everyone in the room holds their breath for a heartbeat, but when nothing explodes and the sorcerer fails to catch on fire, I hear long, shaky exhalations.
“Enough speeches,” the king barks. “Bring one of the nobodies.” Still in that almost out-of-body state of numbness, I stumble forward one tiny step, but Neville pulls me to a stop. The king isn’t looking at me.
He’s pointing at Lil. “That one.”
“No,” I cry out, but my voice is lost in Lil’s frantic shrieks.
It takes several guards to drag Bern away from Lil, and he still knocks two of them to the ground before a dagger hilt to his skull puts him down. The five guards around Kaelen and another five who rush to help unsheathe their swords, because the prince is fighting to get to the girl, too. It takes a blade to Kaelen’s throat to make him stop.
“No!” I shout again, struggling to get to Lil, but Neville’s arms are steel bands around my waist. He puts a hand over my mouth.
“Shut it, lass, or he’ll have you killed before you ever touch theravens-begotten amulet.” His voice is implacable but not unkind.
My weak struggles have no chance against him, so I reluctantly nod and subside, my entire body shaking like a victim of the bleeding fever. I glare at the sorcerer, who has tears standing in her eyes.
I want to spit on her.
Shemade this happen.
These deaths will be onherhead as much as the king’s.
“Be silent, Soli, goddess damn you,” Trick hisses from behind me. Shock sweeps through me when I realize I somehow, unbelievably, forgot he was in the room. “It’s a sadness, but it’s only luck that it’s not you.”
Neville’s face is too close to mine for me to miss his twist of disgust at Trick’s words. I can’t believe he said it, either, but for a different reason. Trick Jovann, one of the highest-ranking Guild thieves in Pallanhold, always says luck is for losers.
But wait. Why is Trick in chains? Yet another thing the king got wrong, unless he considers all criminals to be nobodies.
Lil shrieks again, and I realize my mind has been filling my head with irrelevant nonsense to protect me from the scene before me. The guards are dragging the sobbing girl closer to the box.
The sorcerer waits there, her head held high but her eyes stark pools of despair. She also holds one hand over her abdomen, as if she’s in pain.
I hope she’s in pain. I hope she never lives a day—a moment—without pain again.
“It’s all right, Lil,” she says, and I recognize the lie as soon as she speaks it. The Air Touched doesn’t think that any of this is all right, but she’s still going forward with her horrific plan.
Lil, desperate to believe anything that means she won’t die, grabs onto the sorcerer’s hand with both of hers. “Do you promise?”
Her childish voice, high and sweet and terrified, shatters something in me, and I lurch away from Neville and bend over, clutching my head to keep it from exploding into a thousand pieces. I don’t want to see this.
I don’t want to see this.
But I force myself to look up, although it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. If Lil can be brave enough to do this, I can be brave enough to stand witness.
Elianna, whose hands are trembling so slightly as to be barely noticeable, slowly reaches out and removes the lid. Then she exhales a shuddering breath and places it next to the box on the table.
“Now?” Lil asks, her voice barely a whisper.
Elianna nods but then clears her throat and speaks. “Yes, please. Now.”
Slowly, and with several false starts and flinches, Lil reaches one shaking hand toward the box.
I send up a quick, desperate prayer to Artemisen.Please let the sorcerer be right. Please let the girl touch the amulet safely.
With one final, guttural sob, Lil shoves her hand into the box.
And she doesn’t die.
Shetouches it, and shedoesn’t die.
