Exhaustion and anger buzzed in her skull. “In that moment, I was.”
Blasius’s gaze glittered with triumph. “That isn’t how magic works.”
“It’s howdesperationworks,” she bit out.
“Why were you sodesperate, Petitor Sarai?” Spittle flecked his beard when he hissed the word. “Was it because the Magus Supreme’s death stripped you of the power he’d cloaked you with?”
The Aequitas fell dangerously quiet. Rage balled in her chest, pulsing with a violent heartbeat of its own. Because there were a thousand thingsthat had forced her into this Hearing. That she was uneducated. That she was a northern woman. That she was a salaried government official beholden to a people intent on tearing their own land to shreds in bigotry’s name.
And that there was no better way to get to Kadra than through her.
“Absolutely not.” Her voice rang clear.
Blasius’s eyes slitted when the Order’s Petitor-turned-Cleric confirmed that she wasn’t lying. “Then what made you sodesperate?”
Her breath puffed out in a smoky sigh swallowed by the wind. These hypocrites wouldn’t understand love if it slapped them. Turning, she glanced at the man who held her heart.
A muscle worked in Kadra’s jaw. He had told her that she didn’t have to do this, to cut herself open before a crowd once again. But to be a politician was to either outmaneuver people or be deposed by them. She wasn’t a Twelfth-Tier magus or a Tetrarch, but she could do this much. For him, for peace. Her smile was a quiet promise. Kadra’s gaze altered and sharpened as he sat up in his seat. She turned around.
“There is nothing that I wouldn’t do for Magus Supreme Kadra. No Threshold I wouldn’t cross for his sake.” She spoke faster when Verentia’s gloating smile parted. “Exactly as you all feel about the High Elsar, I imagine.”
The crowd’s stifled laughter altered to stunned murmurs. The final Inquisitor who’d been silent until now looked staggered.
“The two aren’t remotely comparable. You speak ofsentiment. What we hold is—”
“Wisdom and Wrath, do the Inquisitors for the gods hold nosentimenttoward them?” Sarai pressed a hand to her lips in feigned shock. “What is devotion without love? What keeps you tethered to your posts? Fear?”
A hush swept the Aequitas. Verentia shot the suddenly wordless Inquisitor a glare. “Thetargetof that sentiment is different. One is human, and the other so divine that—”
“And yet, I Summoned the divine because of a human,” Sarai mused. “How strange that your divine sentiment has Summoned no one.”
One by one, the Elsarian Order turned a becoming shade of puce. Looking inches from an aneurysm, Blasius shot to his feet. “For all we know, it was Ruin you Summoned not Death!”
Finally.They’d reached the pinnacle of the accusations against her. “And what have I done to merit thatoutrageousaccusation?” She knew she’d erred the second her voice rang out across the Aequitas. Too harsh, too loud.
Verentia’s measured chuckle made stark contrast. “We’re well aware that you have a temper, Petitor Sarai, but try not to embarrass yourself. You’re the subject of a Hearing. Rein it in.”
Her blood boiled. At the corner of her eye, she saw Kadra’s features harden with lethal promise. It seemed to be costing him everything to keep his word to her not to interfere.
Blasius took advantage of her brittle silence. “The facts are that you continue to hide your disfigurement, proof itself of an unnatural survival—”
The audience gasped when Sarai touched a bloodied fingertip to her armilla. She hadn’t needed to prick it with the pin slotted into the white gold bracelet. Her nails had already drawn blood from her clenched palms.
Crimson sank intonihumb, the rune for “Concealment,” which flared silver. The weak illusion over her skin faded, scars unfurling like vines. Hundreds of eyes fastened on her and slid away in disgust. She hated their morbid curiosity. She might even hate them.
Stalking toward the slew of priests on the dais to the Tetrarchy’s seats, she presented herself for their perusal with a raised eyebrow. “Well?”
Verentia seemed lost for words. Fascination briefly lit and vanished from Silvus’s gaze before it turned impassive.
“Inquisitors, yours is a tiresome reaction. I’m no priest with too much time for leisure, but a Petitor to a Tetrarch. I conceal my scars to save the minutes of gawking each petitioner would otherwise eat up during my workday.” Heat throbbed behind her eyes, making the tilt of her chin feelshort of the strength she wanted to exude. “Twice now, Lord Death has allowed me to live. A good portion of Edessa saw him at the Unraveling. Any accusations that I Summoned Ruin arebaseless.”
Blasius slammed a fist against the arms of his seat. “How are we to prove that? The memory is walled off, can’t be Materialized by a Petitor! We dug and dug, but—”
“Enough!” Verentia roared with sudden panic.
Sarai’s jaw dropped as Blasius’s meaning registered. “You’ve dug?” she repeated. “You Probed people who were at the Unraveling to see if I was lying?” She turned to the Petitor-turned-Cleric sitting on the steps, who avoided her gaze. “Searching people’s memories is apunishment, reserved for those on trial or on their deathbed before it!”
Blasius waved a hand. “They were handsomely compensated.”
