Varna and I hobbled slowly inside, leaning on one another for support. A shiver skittered down my spine as I glanced over my shoulder. The guards settled a heavy wooden bar into place on the inside of the doors.
Closing the gates was one thing, but barring them as well? That was not normal.
Something was wrong.
By the time I turned my head to face forward again, there was no possibility of escape without using magic. Guards surrounded us and tightened their grips on their weapons.
I tensed, my magic coiling around my fingers. "What are you doing? Get General Ehuna. She'll know who I am."
One of the soldiers stepped forward, leveling the tip of his spear at my chest. Tension coiled in the air that I didn't understand, the kind I could nearly taste on my tongue like blood and fire.
"General Ehuna is coming," he said grimly, and I made note of the way he spoke her title. "She ordered that you be detained until she arrives."
"For what?" I demanded.
More of the guards bristled at my belligerence, and my magic curled even more tightly around my fingers. I barely held on to my control, and I prayed that this was some kind of misunderstanding. I would talk to Ehuna, and this would all be over.
The guard's eyes met mine, and more fury brimmed in his gaze than I had seen anywhere in a long time. I resisted the urge to cringe.
Something was very, very wrong here, as though we had walked right into a trap.
“Forwhat?” I said again.
The guard hissed through his bared teeth as he regarded me. "For treason."
Chapter
Fourteen
“That isenough,” a familiar voice snapped.
My shoulders instinctively loosened when I recognized who’d spoken. Now that Ehuna was here, she would explain that this was all just a misunderstanding, and Varna and I could finally rest without worrying about being captured or killed.
But to my horror, when I looked at Ehuna, I realized that she wasn’t looking at the soldiers. She hadn’t told them to stand down. She had been talking to me.
I stared at her, my jaw slackened. Why was she mad atme? I hadn't done anything wrong. She could have been angry that I hadn't stayed where she’d commanded me to, but in light of everything else that had happened, I was a bit miffed that she was still angry with me.
It wasn't my fault that I had been snatched by Tannin’s giant bird, then dropped, then taken captive by the enemy. Yes, I should have stayed where I was told, but this wasn't entirely my fault.
"I don't understand,” I said to her. “Treason?"
A single word from her would have stood the soldiers down, and yet she stayed behind them, looking at me as if I were the threat here.
"We will speak,” she said, “but I have received word that you have turned against our cause, and I cannot in good conscience allow you to walk free until we get to the bottom of these accusations."
"But…you know me. You know I'm not a traitor. Whoever it is, they're lying." My mind whirled, searching for who might have been determined to see me punished, or at the very least locked away again.
It wasn't hard.
Tannin made the most sense. He had already warned me that he wasn't finished with me. Perhaps this was because of him. He was Ehuna's superior, so of course she would take his word over mine; she wouldn't have a choice.
But she wasn’t going to give me a chance to explain. That much was clear.
“Take her,” Ehuna said, turning away, and my heart climbed into my throat.
I lunged toward her, one last attempt to make her understand that this was all wrong, but the soldiers roughly grabbed me. A few of them nudged Varna out of the way as if they weren’t sure what to do with her, and I struggled even harder.
“Ehuna, please!” I begged, straining against the guards as they dragged me backward. My arms ached as if they were going to rip free from their sockets, but I didn’t stop.
