Page 122 of Nights of Blood and Magic

“Find the one who did this,” Alcaeus ordered.

“She could have done this herself,” one Templar said.

“No,” Kitsa’s voice cut through, “these are not self-inflicted.”

A quiet stirring sparked deep in Idonea’s core, like Current, but thinner, patchy, wavering. It radiated through her limbs, twitching all the way to her fingertips and toes. She'd known this exact tremor only once before.

When she crossed the veil. Memory slammed into her with brutal force.

Snow. The oak. Black veins threading through the air. The tear like an open wound. Hands grabbing at her. A voice, low and wrong, whispering her name.

She gasped and shot upright, head spinning, the world momentarily doubling and then snapping back into place.

“I’m not dead?” she asked.

Kitsa let out a breathless laugh of relief. “No. Not even close.”

Idonea blinked down at herself. Her ribs were tender, but the skin was smooth, no gashes, no bleeding.

“How do you feel?” Alcaeus asked.

She remembered the knife. The warmth pouring through her fingers. The certainty that she was dying. Now there was nothing but tenderness beneath her hand. Her stomach twisted.

Idonea swallowed, her throat full of grit. “Fine.”

“Who did this to you?” he asked.

Her mind flashed to Elzhbeta, to the bite of the blade sliding between her ribs. And to the hatch, the hidden passage.

Elzhbeta was working with the daemon. She not only knew about the relic, but where the relic was. If Idonea named her, the Templars would drag Elzhbeta away before Idonea forced answers out of her. Before she could find the relic. Before she'd any chance of stopping the daemon.

Idonea needed Elzhbeta alive.

“I didn’t see." The lie sat badly in her throat.

Alcaeus frowned and glanced towards the cottage. “It looked like a fight in there.”

Idonea clenched her jaw. “I said I didn’t see.”