Lioran sighed the kind of sigh that deflates a person, even one as prideful as him. “I wanted to allow you passage to our shores when the children were sick. I thought the plague was a normal consequence of all the ice you have here. I had no clue it was provoked.”
My gaze instantly flew to Ryker. His face hadn’t changed from that unforgiving sharpness, even as I felt the energy tremble in him.
“Beren persuaded me not to,” Lioran went on. “He said your fall would be our triumph and you’d already turned your back on us, in attitude, if not name. I agreed. I–” He clenched his jaw and tightened his lips, but the truth finally wormed itself out of him. “–I wanted you to know your place. Even at the risk of those younglings’ lives.”
Dax was right.
There were many, many, many more bad men than good ones.
“I didn’t know your mother would die,” he whispered. “Please believe me.”
“It makes no difference,” Ryker said through the whirlwind roaring inside of him. “The gods will judge you all the same.”
“Did Nadya reveal how she set off the plague?” I asked.
It couldn’t have been difficult if one girl had managed to ravage an entire city. Which meant the same heinous strategy could be used in other locations.
Like Aquila.
“Are your ears clogged?” Lioran said, sounding more nasally. “I told you I hadn’t known about her involvement–”
Lioran yelped as Ryker grabbed his hair and pulled his head back until the pulsing veins on his throat stood out. His neck was bent at such an unnatural angle, a mere flick would have finished him.
Ryker didn’t even look down at him.
“Careful how you speak to the Huntress, Lioran,” he said coldly.
Lioran winced and gargled intelligible words.
“You will apologize and tell us everything you know. Or you will regret becoming our prisoner,” Ryker said in that same detached tone. A Commander’s voice. “Got it?”
“Y–ye–”
Ryker let him go.
Lioran hunched forward, pitifully gasping breath after breath.
I didn’t care.
“I’m so–sorry, Huntress,” he wheezed.
Only then did Ryker step away. Lioran recoiled as he brushed past him.
Good.
“That heir of hers planned everything. And before you ask, only Beren knows who sent her,” he said, voice now raspy and subdued. “Only Beren knows exactly where she comes from. Somewhere cold, he said. Had toughened her up.”
A quarter of Malhaven was cold. Few places were colder than the Northern Clans’ territories, however.
“What about those masked attackers?” I asked. “Where do they come from?Whatare they?”
“Abominations.” Lioran shivered. “They don’t drink. They don’t sleep. They’re drawn by fire, as if they want to let the flames destroy them, but they can’t. They just showed up with a missive from that blasted heir. Even Beren avoided them. But we needed all the help we could get to invade the crater…”
“So you accepted them among your troops,” Ryker drawled. “Like true, righteous leaders.”
“Someone had to walk through that deadly mist,” Lioran protested.
“Where did you get the poison?” Dax asked, voice darkening.
