I crouch and wrap my hands round the bars. ‘It’s Elva.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Ingra snarls.
I deserve every scrap of her ire and more, yet the venom lacing her tone still causes me to wince. ‘I … I came to talk to you,’ I stutter.
‘I don’t talk to traitors.’
Grimacing, I try again. ‘Ingra, please –’
‘Goaway.’
I take a deep breath, wrinkling my nose at the fetid air. I wasn’t exactly expecting a warm welcome, but I need her to listen to me. I have to make her understand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmur. ‘For what I did.’
‘Tal frakhas,’ Ingra snaps in Veridian.
I know that one. She likes to mutter it behind Matron’s back.
Tal frakhas.
Eat shit.
I hesitate, then sit down opposite her. She makes an impatient sound and lets her head tip back against the wall. A vein pulses in her neck.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask gently.
She makes no response.
I notice two of her fingers are swollen, both bent at odd angles. My heart sinks. ‘Did they hurt you?’
Again, nothing.
I reach into my pockets for the stolen food – bread, cheese, ripe plums, treacle tart. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘How aboutIask the questions?’ Ingra growls through clenched teeth.
I nod, forgetting she can’t see me, then quickly add, ‘Of course.’
‘I thought I must’ve dreamed it at first,’ she murmurs quietly. ‘But if I had, I wouldn’t be here, would I?’
‘Dreamed what?’
‘The darkness,’ she says. ‘It wasyou, wasn’t it?’
I steel myself, then answer, ‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘It’s a … long story.’
‘Then you’d better start telling it.’
So I do. I tell her about waking up in the Earth Cleaver’s chambers, the terror that consumed me for weeks, about learning how tousemy magic instead of repressing it.
As I talk, Ingra’s hard expression turns to one of astonishment, even wonder.
‘You can see in thedark?’
