"Take me with you," I find myself saying.
Saskia's laugh has no humor in it. "Why? So you can watch our family fall apart?"
I swallow thickly. "Because I have to talk to Torgan My voice comes out steadier than I have any right to expect. "Because there's a thief who wants to end Mirelle's union, and she was about to marry into the same family that's been trying to take over my shop and my town."
I look at Brynna, who still won't meet my eyes.
"Brynna has research for me, and my friends' shops are under siege, and I?—"
My voice cracks, finally, right down the middle.
"And I need to look him in the face and understand what happened."
Silence.
A cart rolls past.
"She should come," Mirelle says pleasantly. "It's only sensible. Brynna, you do have the research, right?"
“I do,” Brynna says. “But there’s a lot, and without context…”
“Let me see,” I plead.
Nobody says anything.
Then Ysolde closes her eyes for one moment. When she opens them, the coldness has cracked just enough.
"Get your coat," she says.
I lock the shop with the unfinished masterpiece standing in the dimness behind the glass. Then I climb into an Oakenshade carriage full of silence, and we ride for the Hall.
I'm not humming anymore.
The doubt in my mind no longer needs to sneak up on me.
For the first time in my life, I'm riding straight toward the part of the story where the needle breaks.
22
TORGAN
Two hundred names, and I've been through the list a dozen times.
I stood in the hall and confessed everything to my family. The witch's counter. The twenty gold pieces. Months of carrying the vial while telling myself I would never use it.
Then I waited for Pa to take my head off.
He didn't. He listened to the end, stood, and said, "Find who took it."
Then he left the room.
It was the only indication he was upset.
Ma stayed a moment longer, fury boiling beneath her skin.
"You bought it and didn't use it," she said. "That's the only reason you're still my son."
She looked like she wanted to say something else and decided against it.
