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Chapter 261: The servant they feared:
Alice blinked. “I know her. Dessa. She is a sweet child.”“Fetch her. Quietly. Bring her to this room. Tell no one, and tell the laundry-mistress she is wanted by the Sorceress.”“At once.” Alice glanced at Pell, and a flicker of something, pity, perhaps, or understanding, crossed her face. “Is he—”“He will live. If he behaves.”“I will go.”“Alice.”The servant paused in the doorway.“Thank you,” Melissa said.A brief, startled silence. Then Alice bowed her head, very slightly, and hurried off down the corridor.Elvyn stared at her sister. “You said thank you.”“I did.”“You never say thank you.”“I never had reason to.” Melissa bent, seized Pell by the collar, and hauled him upright with a strength that belied her thin frame. He stumbled, nearly falling, and she steadied him with a hand under his elbow. “Can you walk?”“I think so.”“You had better. I have no intention of carrying you.”“Where are we going?” Pell whispered.“To see the one man in this palace who can still be reason
Chapter 260: The Wrath from the Valley:
“Who pays me,” Melissa repeated, in a very quiet voice.“Yes.”“He wished me to remember.”“Yes, Sorceress.”“How thoughtful.” She rose slowly, the dagger loose in her hand. “And what else did your captain say about me?”“That you are dangerous. That you are not to be trusted.” Pell wiped his face with a trembling hand. “That Lord Varek believes you may turn against the crown.”“Does he.”“He said that if you did, he would see to it that you were—” He stopped.“That I was what?”“Removed.”The word hung in the air. Elvyn felt something cold coil in the pit of her stomach. She looked at her sister, and her sister’s face was perfectly smooth, perfectly calm, a mask of white porcelain without a single crack.“Removed,” Melissa said. “That is a gentle word.”“Yes.”“What would it entail?”“I do not know.”“Guess.”“Poison, perhaps. Or the Scribes. A knife in the dark.” Pell’s voice shook. “I truly do not know. I am only a watcher.”“A watcher who was told to deliver a threat.”“I was told
Chapter 259: Last Chance to Confess:
“It is three stories to the garden. You would break your legs. And then I would simply walk down and collect you.” She shook her head. “No. You will not be leaving this room through the window, Pell.”“I was not—”“Stop lying. You are exhausting me.”She pressed the tip of the dagger into the hollow of his throat until a thin line of blood ran down and pooled in his collar.“Last chance,” she said. “I will count to five. Then I begin.”“Sorceress, I beg you—”“One.”“I cannot say—”“Two.”“He will know! He will know it was me!”“Three.”“He has men everywhere! He has eyes in the kitchens, the stables, the chapel! If he learns I spoke, my sister will—”He stopped.The word hung in the air like smoke. Melissa’s expression did not change, but something behind her eyes sharpened.“Your sister,” she said.“I did not mean—”“What about your sister?”“Nothing.”“Pell.”“She is only a child,” he whispered. “Sixteen. She works in the laundry. He said— he said that if I ever failed him, if I ev
Chapter 258: The Varek's spies:
She did not move. She knelt beside him, utterly still, the dagger steady in her hand, and the minutes stretched out like cooling wax. The fire popped. A log sank into the ashes. Outside in the corridor, one of the guards shifted his weight and then froze again, as though he had been caught breathing.Pell’s breath grew ragged. Sweat ran down his temples and soaked into the carpet. His eyes closed, then opened, then closed again. Every so often his lips moved in a silent prayer, and each time they did, Melissa’s fingers twitched, and the prayer died unspoken.“You are stalling,” she said at last.“No.”“You are waiting for something. Or someone. Or you are telling yourself a story about how brave you are.” She sighed. “I have seen it many times. A man decides he will say nothing, and he builds a wall in his mind, brick by brick. He thinks of his family, his duty, his master’s gratitude. He tells himself that the pain will end, that the Sorceress will tire, that someone will come.”“No
Chapter 257: A Rat in the Wall:
The man on the carpet did not answer.He lay with his head wrenched back and the point of the dagger pressed into the soft hollow of his throat. His chest rose and fell in short, whistling gasps, and a thin line of blood ran from the corner of his eye down into his hairline. Every few seconds his whole body shuddered, the aftershock of being worked like a puppet, and each time he swallowed, the blade rose and fell with the movement of his throat.“I will ask once more,” Melissa said, in the same soft, even voice. “Who sent you?”The man’s lips moved. For a moment Elvyn thought he would speak. Then his jaw clenched, and a stubborn, terrified glint came into his eyes.“Nobody,” he whispered.“Nobody.”“I— I came on my own. I wished to see— to see the Sorceress. I have heard stories. I only wanted to—”“You wanted to see me,” Melissa said. “So you crept into the wall of my chamber, behind a tapestry, in the dark, and stood motionless for the better part of an hour while my sister and I s
Chapter 256: Who sent you to spy on Sorceress Melissa?
I always do.”“Do you intend to go through with it? Truly? Do you mean to help Darius kill the boy?”Melissa did not answer at once. Her fingers tapped a slow rhythm against the stem of her goblet.“I told you,” she said. “I am undecided.”“I know. But I need to understand. If we attack the island and the boy dies, the golden clover dies with him. And if the Hand is truly trying to free something that—”She stopped.Melissa’s head had turned, very slowly, toward the far corner of the room. Her grey eyes had gone flat and cold, fixed on a patch of shadow behind the heavy tapestry beside the hearth. The goblet in her hand stopped moving.“Sister?” Elvyn said, uncertainly.“Hush.”The word was barely a breath. Elvyn froze. The fire popped. A log shifted in the hearth. And in the silence, faint and thin and utterly out of place, came a tiny, almost imperceptible sound, the soft scrape of a boot against stone.Melissa rose.She did not rise quickly. She stood up from the table like smoke u
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