Chapter 7 #2
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.”
Rheave hums to himself and bares his teeth with a fierce smile. “He knows you got away, that you have your mind back. He’s afraid of you.”
The daimon-man is probably right. Of course Lothar wouldn’t take the chance that I could use the magic he was so eager to exploit against him. I should have realized that to begin with.
The effort I put into the jab of power was still expended—and still took some toll. As I turn my head, I think I catch a flicker of sapphire blue—soldiers, maybe daimon, coming to arrest us. I have to—
I blink hard and look again through the stutter of my pulse.
There’s no one wearing blue at that corner of the square at all. The closest is a woman staring up at Lothar who’s got on a green dress.
I don’t entirely have my mind back, no matter what Rheave says.
So when a tingle of magic passes by me a moment later, my first instinct is to assume it’s another hallucination. But I wait, concentrating on the feeling, and it lingers.
I scan the square and adjust my position, taking a small step forward and then to the side to track the direction the magic is coming from.
As I follow my impression of it, a filmy figure swims into view, standing on the other side of the street we emerged from with his narrow face set in a mask of revulsion.
I tug on Petra’s arm. “Your father’s third magical advisor… What was his name? Tinom something? He’s here!”
“What?” She peers in the direction I’m looking. “Where?”
She can’t see him. He must be using some kind of distracting spell that I was able to overcome once I knew where to look.
Right. His specialty was illusions, wasn’t it?
He definitely doesn’t appear pleased with his colleague’s speech. I waver and decide to take a gamble.
Better to start adding to our allies than fling my own magic around again.
As I march straight up to the magic advisor, his gaze twitches to me with a flicker of surprise. I fix him with my firmest stare. “Are you on Lothar’s side, or are you ready to start saving the kingdom?”