Page 149 of Of Masks and Fury

“Prepare yourself,” Trew finished quietly.

“Not really.” I could barely speak past the tightness in my chest.

“Since my mother’s death,” I said, “my father has held the Day of Mercy more often, sometimes three times a year. But in the past year, they’ve been held even closer together, within weeks of the last. And the number of people put to death in each group is not going down.”

The room went very still.

I realized even the companions had quieted. Pherin had stopped her soft sounds from the headboard. Gavelle sat motionless on the windowsill. Even Levar had lifted his head, his small eyes fixed on me.

Animals knew grief when they heard it.

Trew shifted beneath me, and I felt the change in him, the careful control of a man who wanted to break something and was choosing not to. His arms stayed around me. His breathing stayed even. But his jaw had gone tight.

“Either he’s become more zealous,” Lexie said quietly, “or more people are manifesting abilities.”

Derren shook his head. “Which doesn’t make sense unless something fundamental has changed.”

The pieces clicked together in my mind. I turned to look at Trew, finding the same realization reflected in his eyes.

“The wasteland appeared sixteen years ago,” he said. “Right around the time your mother was murdered.”

“And my father’s paranoia about magic escalated.” I looked around at my friends, seeing understanding dawn on their faces. “It all happened at once.”

Kerralyn’s pencil had gone still over her journal. “My research showed the wasteland’s appearance coincided with a spike in magical manifestations across all courts. I thought it was just better record-keeping, but what if the opening in the veil has allowed magic to leach through?”

A chill ran down my spine. If the veil was causing magic to manifest in people who might otherwise never have shown abilities?—

“My father would see it as confirmation of his worst fears,” I said. “Proof that magic is spreading like a disease.”

“My father died sixteen years ago too,” Trew said. “Under circumstances that were never fully explained. My mother followed him a few weeks later. The healers said grief weakened her, that she caught a fever she couldn’t fight off.”

Too many deaths. Too many coincidences. Too many mysteries converging on that single point in time.

I turned to look at Trew.

He was staring at the middle distance, his jaw set, somewhere else entirely. For just a moment, beneath the king and the soldier and the man who never stopped planning, I saw the boy who’d lost both parents in the space of weeks and been told it was grief and fever.

I brought his hand to my mouth and kissed his knuckles. He looked down at me.

Nothing needed to be said. I just needed him to know I’d heard it.

His fingers tightened around mine.

Even with Trew’s wards around my room, I felt exposed. Watched. As if speaking these truths aloud had drawn attention we couldn’t see.

And somewhere in the shadows of the castle, I worried someone might be listening.

CHAPTER FORTY

ISI

Kerralyn yawned, then quickly covered her mouth. “Sorry. It’s just… It’s late. We’ve been on the run for days, and we’ve covered so much tonight.”

She was right. The torches had burned low, and exhaustion made my arms and legs feel heavy. My mind kept racing, turning over every piece of information we’d uncovered, but the rest of me was being left behind.

“We’re leaving in the morning to find the place your mother may have owned,” Lexie said. “Which is,” she glanced toward the window, “not far away.”

“Not until I get at least a little bit of rest,” Derren said, stifling his own yawn. He nudged Dare with his foot. “Come on, bud. Time to sleep. We need clear heads for tomorrow.”