Page 56
“But you will hunt it down?” Her gaze went between the three of them.
Alcaeus leaned back. “You’ll stay close to Lysander for now. We’ll revisit your other request again, later.”
Her brows lifted. “So, I’m not shackled, but leashed?”
“Don’t mistake freedom for trust,” the Magistrate said.
She stood abruptly, her chair clattering to the ground behind her. “I never have.”
Lysander waited outside, arms folded. “Well?”
“They’re cowards,” she said, brushing past him. “A witch cannot let a daemon live. Nor should you.”
He followed, steps falling into rhythm with hers. “Your father is right. We can’t afford panic.”
“They should,” she said. “A daemon doesn’t just appear. Something’s wrong.”
“I know.”
She halted.
He stopped beside her, close enough she could smell the nutmeg tang that always clung to him.
“It has to be tied to the relic you hunt.”
Her pulse slowed. “Then why obey them? Why lie for them?”
His jaw tightened. “Because if I don’t … someone worse will.”
She studied him. Not the cut of his jaw or breadth of his shoulders, though those were hard to ignore, but the tension in his posture.
“Then work with me.”
His expression flared. “I’m what I have to be,” he said.
Their eyes locked. The air between them stretched taut, and then she stepped back.
“Then let’s be what we have to be,” she said. “For now.”
He said nothing, but nodded once.
She wanted, needed, to return to the chapel. To the place where the girl died. Something still persisted there, a residue in the air, like ash in the lungs.
A Templar stepped before her, his gaze set on Lysander. “Exemplar Alcaeus has decreed she has no access to this area.”
Lysander’s silence was colder than the wind. Beyond the Templar, near the chapel’s entrance, Kitsa raised a hand in a silent greeting. Idonea lifted her own. She didn’t want to cause a scene, not yet.
“Come, then,” Lysander said.
But the Templars corralled them. They didn’t let her past the main square.
“Confinement,” she muttered. Rage pressed hot behind her ribs. They should be hunting, warding, preparing. Instead, they were guarding her.
“Very, well,” she said, “to my cottage.”
Lysander followed, silently. Instead, she paused in the entryway. His figure filled the doorframe behind her. With him inside, he couldn’t lock the door. A keen smile curled at her lips.
She sank into a chair at the table, fingers drumming against the worn wood with restless energy. “Shall you stand there all day?” she asked.
