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Her hands ball into fists. “I could have stayed at the college—kept up the ruse—then I’d have been here when the scourge sorcerers took over…”
Casimir comes up beside her and rests a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Your parents wanted to keep you safe. And if you hadn’t been with them, it’s possible Klaudia and Jacos wouldn’t have escaped Lothar’s attack. You can’t blame yourself for anything that’s happened.”
She inhales sharply and gathers herself. “If we can’t?—”
She’s interrupted by a trumpet sound that carries from the balcony high over the temple’s doorway. The balcony where her parents and siblings—and she herself, before she became Petra—used to stand to oversee the riven executions.
A bluish glow forms around the figure who’s appeared there. His lopsided frame gives him away in an instant.
Lothar is here. He’s standing up on the balcony, looking down over us with a typically haughty expression, his formal robes draped across his tall but uneven body.
His voice rings out loud enough that it must echo through the streets all through the inner ward. He’s using magic to amplify it.
“Good people of Florian! Please stop and listen to what I have to say. I was once the secondary magical advisor to the Melchiorek family, and now I am the highest authority this country has left.”
“Because of his treachery,” Petra mutters. Even more color drains from her face as she glares up at him.
“I don’t claim any right to rule,” Lothar goes on. “But I saw so much wrong in the course of my duties that I feel it is my responsibility to guide our country into its new era. We must find our way back to the true will of the gods and the essence of what makes us alive.”
By maiming and killing other living things. Brilliant strategy.
I keep the sarcastic remark to myself, but a tremor shakes Petra’s body. Her hand drops to the dagger she’s carrying on the belt of her dress.
There’s no way she could cut him down from here. Even I’d have trouble keeping my aim steady across that distance without the help of my magic.
My magic.
Lothar’s next words turn tinny and distant through the rush of cold that courses through me. My power wriggles in my chest, sensing my interest.
I could end so much of this catastrophe right now. Lothar stands at the top of the Order of the Wild. He’s directed all their madness and violence.
Without him, they might not fall apart instantly, but they’d be deeply shaken. So much easier to break apart and overcome.
He forced me to kill people—he has gallons of blood on his own hands. Would destroying him really be murder or simply self-defense?
The chill comes with a growing certainty. I’ve tried to follow my conscience and the laws of the land, and where has that gotten us?
The king is dead. The man up there would murder the woman beside me if he realized who she is.
And I’m the only one who can definitely stop him, right here, right now.
The thrum of my magic expands to a roar inside my skull. It trembles through my nerves, but I hold it in with a clench of my jaw.
If I’m going to do this, I still have to be smart about it. The smallest possible effect so no one suspects—so I don’t tempt more insanity than I have to.
Thinking of how I dispatched my daimon guard, I train my gaze on Lothar’s neck and set my hand against one of the stones of the building we’re standing next to. I picture his throat crumpling inward as the stone’s surface bulges just enough to compensate.
My heart pounds, and I launch my power forward like one of Rheave’s arrows.
It flings out of me, smacks into the figure on the tower—and fizzles out as if it’s encountered nothing but air.
I flinch in surprise, and Casimir’s head jerks toward me. “What’s wrong, Kindness?”
Shame sweeps through me as swiftly as the certainty before it. How can I tell him what I just attempted?
Would the kindest man I’ve ever met still think I deserve the nickname he gave me?
“I—I tested him a bit with my magic,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. “He isn’t really there. It’s an illusion—some kind of magical projection, I think.”
