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She flicks her fingers down her front in a gesture of the divinities, as if asking for the godlen to bless the upcoming conversation. My eyes meet hers, and she dips her head slightly in acknowledgment.
She understands my concerns without my needing to say the rest.
Gods help us, we do need a ruler like her on the throne. Someone who’ll listen before taking action.
Someone who cares for all her country’s inhabitants, no matter how unusual.
The baron isn’t about to argue with his future queen. He clears his throat. “Take him to one of the holding rooms, and let us know when?—”
Before he finishes his order, the captured daimon twitches. A faint groan spills from the man’s lips.
Rheave rushes closer and kneels a couple of paces away from the captive, braced in case the sculpted man attempts to use his magic. The guards each take a wary step backward but keep their swords pointed at the bound form.
The captive’s eyelids flutter. He rolls onto his side and stares blearily at the assembled crowd.
Petra nudges her siblings a little farther behind her, but to my relief, she doesn’t insist they leave. She must know she can’t protect them from every danger of ruling—she wants them to see the hard decisions that might need to be made.
Rheave speaks first, in a low but steady voice. “Friend, I’m sorry for how you’ve been treated. We know you’re being pushed by magic, but your masters have used other daimon to hurt us before. Will you speak with us?”
The captured daimon only manages a grunt.
Rheave leans closer. “I was once caged by the sorcerers too. I shook off their hold. If you try, you might be able to as well.”
The man’s face tips toward the floor. For a moment, there’s only his ragged breath. Then he mumbles, “So long… So much power.”
The lead guard huffs. “Like the rest of them. They’ve got this one completely under their thrall too.”
He raises his sword, but the daimon’s words have snagged inside me with a tug of my gut.
I shake my head. “I don’t know… The others we’ve talked to wouldn’t say anything at all—or couldn’t. He’s trying.”
Petra’s tone gentles. “Ivy, freeing the daimon from that body may be the greatest kindness we can offer.”
I know she’s right, but something about this one’s behavior doesn’t feel quite like the captured spirits we’ve encountered in the past.
I walk closer so the slumped man can see me beyond Rheave. “The scourge sorcerers who made your body do have a lot of power—but we’ve been breaking it down. They have less than they did before. It’s worth fighting their control again, even if you couldn’t in the past.”
“Yes,” Rheave says. “We’ll help you. We want to be your friends, if you can pull away from the sorcerers.”
He sounds so hopeful that an ache forms around my heart. Should I have pushed this hard if the moment is probably only going to end in more disappointment for him? I know how much it’s bothered him that none of his fellow daimon have been able to make their new physical lives their own.
The captive’s jaw looks as if it’s clamped tight. He shivers in his bonds—testing them or simply showing his discomfort?
Rheave tries again, the usual brightness in his voice dwindling. “If there’s anything at all you can manage to tell us about why you came here, what your masters know and want to find out…”
“I can’t,” the man mutters. “I can’t. I?—”
All at once, he twists at the torso, straining against the ropes. The guards cry out in warning. But as the man’s head yanks backward, an unearthly glow flares in his eyes that looks more desperate than fierce.
His voice spills out of him. “They told me to wander this county searching for signs of other daimon. And to find where those were, who they were. They know there’s one they can’t control staying with the queen.”
His gaze settles on Rheave, and a sudden smile curves his lips. “I found you. I found you, but they won’t, because I won’t tell them. We won’t let them bring me back. Right?”
Rheave beams at him so brilliantly he takes my breath away. “We won’t. We can stand up to the vicious ones together, all of us.”
A rush of my own hope smacks me in the chest.
I whirl toward Petra. “This is the first daimon who’s snapped out of their control. It’s been weeks since I killed the sorcerer who was doing some of the compelling—we’ve taken more than a dozen of their sacrificial accomplices away since then. The compulsion the Order imposed on the daimon must be weakening.”
