Toran ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not right. You serve Orlonea. The least the King could do is compensate you for your service.” He looked up at Genna. “How have you managed to keep your family afloat? It’s been three years since you joined.”
Genna narrowed her eyes. “You speak of this to anyone, and I will gut you. I don’t care how important you are.”
Nes grinned. “Don’t worry. If he so much as opens his mouth, I’ll shut it. I have plenty of ways to do so.”
Genna glanced between them. On top of the table, her hands clenched into fists again. “One night, I went to the Ditch, pretending to be a guard on duty. Everyone in the Ditch is doing something illegal, so I thought I’d make a few arrests, impress a captain, and finally get into a legion.”
“That’s not how it worked out, was it?”
“Not exactly. I caught this guy using magic. He had a flask full of the diluted stuff. I confiscated his flask, then fled the Ditch.” She took a shaky breath. “That night, I locked myself in my room and consumed magic.”
Toran’s stomach churned. He shifted his gaze to Nes, to the flask on her hip.
“They’d forced us to consume magic in training. Any woman who wants to join the Guard has to. They record our reactions, but we aren’t allowed to know them. They knock us out before the reaction takes over so we can’t know what happens,” Genna explained. “I’d heard of people magically growing flowers out of their skin, and I thought that would be enough. If I could produce flowers from nothing, then my mother could sell enough to rebuild.”
“Is that how you reacted?” Nes asked, and Toran knew she was recalling Kile Pinyak.
“When I consume magic, I—” Genna inhaled deeply. She exhaled and said, “I create money.”
He blinked. “You…what?”
Genna swallowed. “With magic, my body expels gadots.”
“Actual coins?” Nes asked. “Identical to the real ones?”
Genna’s hand disappeared beneath the table. When it reemerged, there was a single gadot in her palm. “Here.” She dropped the coin into Nes’s outstretched hand. “Can you tell the difference?”
He watched Nes examine the coin. She ran her fingers over the surface and around the rim. She held it out for him to inspect. Taking it, he studied the etchings on the gadot, noting no imperfections.
“It smells,” Nes told him.
Genna leaned forward. “Smells? Of what?”
He glanced between the three women. Nes’s secret was not his to tell.
“Of magic,” Nes said. Lifting her shirt, she unhooked her flask and set it on the table. “Recognize this?”
Genna’s eyes widened. “That looks just like—”
“The flask you stole.”
“So you…?”
Nes took the flask back, hiding it under her shirt. “I can smell magic,” she said by way of an answer.
Toran slid the coin across the table to Genna. “But we’re not here to talk about Nes. She wasn’t the one thrown down the Witch’s Well. How did Fell find out?”
Genna rubbed her thumb over the surface of the coin. “Captain Fell caught me consuming magic.”
“And he wrote you up as a suspected Witch? Threw you down the well?”
“No.” Genna pocketed the gadot. “He found out a year ago.”
Like dense fog, silence permeated the room. It slithered around the spokes of their stools and crept up the table legs. He felt raw with it. Stripped down as what Genna was saying became clear.
“He used you.”
Nes’s gaze snapped to him, but he kept his eyes on Genna.
