Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Ivy
Ilean my hands against the tabletop as if I can push more information out of the polished wood. “What about the other scourge sorcerers you met in Florian? What talents did you hear of that they could wield?”
Filip rubs his hand across his mouth, knitting his brow as he thinks. His shoulders have slumped during our conversation as he’s admitted how little the higher-ups in the Order of the Wild let him in on their larger plans.
“I know there was one who had some kind of gift for heat,” he says.
“She could use it to burn people to encourage them into compliance or destroy things the others didn’t want seen.
At least a few had gifts for stirring emotions—trust or fear…
There was a man recruited at the same time I was who could run twice as fast as anyone should be able to for short distances. ”
At the other end of the table, Alek nods. His quill scrawls across the notebook where he’s recording everything the defector can tell us about the Order’s plans and abilities.
He writes the last word and glances up. “I suppose just about any gift could be useful to the Order’s aims in one way or another.”
Filip offers a miserable grimace. “They wanted to bring in as many people as they could. People with gifts who could expand them with the scourge sorcery, people who didn’t have gifts just to spread the word and silence anyone who argued…”
He looks down at his hands. “I was so stupid to get caught up in their talk to begin with. I wasn’t brave enough to give more than a few toes for the small gift I got, and somehow I thought I deserved to make it more?”
I don’t know how to answer his self-recrimination when the fact that so many people have gotten swept up in Lothar’s treacherous conspiracy frustrates me beyond end. The best I can offer is a brief shrug. “Maybe that small gift will make some difference against them now.”
It seems unlikely. Growing crops a little faster isn’t going to win over those who are already caught up in the Order’s propaganda.
Even his former colleagues couldn’t find much use for him if they sent him off on this potentially suicidal spy mission.
It’ll be a perfectly good talent when we have peace, though.
I lean back in my chair, sorting through the questions I meant to ask. “Their precautions beyond the city walls—how much are they monitoring the area around Florian? How far out?”
Filip wets his lips. “It may be more now that you’ve disrupted their influence. But when I was there, the Order was focusing most of their efforts on keeping control over people in the city and securing the walls themselves. They didn’t care much about the farmlands nearby.”
Alek lets out a rough chuckle. “Very efficient of them. Reserve their efforts for where the population is most concentrated.”
I exhale in a sigh. “Well, if they’ve kept up that approach, it’ll at least be a little easier for—”
A voice cuts through my statement, bellowing through the halls of the country residence. “Baron Cyris! General Stavros!”
The urgency in the yell has me shoving back the chair with a rasp and springing to my feet. Alek and I exchange a fleeting glance before we both hustle to the front hall to find out what the ruckus is about.
I jerk to a halt on the threshold of the foyer.
Three of the baron’s guards stand in a tense ring around a slumped man who’s bound tight with rope and dripping blood from his forehead.
The slackness of his pose against the floor suggests he’s unconscious if not dead, possibly from the blow to the head.
Alek and I aren’t the only ones who’ve been drawn by the clamor. Casimir and Rheave both appear within moments of our arrival, along with a few of the rebels from Pima, a couple of the estate’s staff, and all three of the royal heirs.
At the sight of the future queen, the guard who appears to be in charge holds up his hand to ward Petra back. “Don’t come closer, Your Highness! We don’t know what he might be capable of.”
Petra reaches out to hold Princess Klaudia and Prince Jacos with her, but even as her jaw tightens, she arches an eyebrow. “He doesn’t look as if he’s capable of doing much harm at the moment. Who is he?”
Before they can answer, Stavros strides into the hall. The title may no longer be fully accurate, but the massive man still looks every inch a general.
Baron Cyris hurries in close behind him. “What’s the meaning of this commotion?”
The lead guard dips his head to his employer. “Sir, we found this man sneaking around near the estate. He attempted to run when he realized he’d been spotted, but we were able to subdue him. I think he’s a spy for the Order of the Wild. I expected you’d want to—”
Rheave breaks in with a sudden step forward. “He’s a daimon.”
Everyone in the room goes still and silent as they absorb that declaration. Then my daimon-man takes another step toward the bound captive, and two of the guards jerk up their swords.
Rheave blinks at them with obvious confusion. “I wouldn’t harm you.”
The lead guard seems to prefer to ignore him when he isn’t approaching, looking instead at the baron. “The spy isn’t even human, then. One of their animated slaves. He won’t tell us anything. We should end him now before he comes to and has a chance to blast us with that magic of theirs.”
I’m not sure which part of the scene jolts the hasty words from my throat. Maybe it’s the sorrow that flashes across Rheave’s sweet face or the helpless sprawl of the captured daimon, or maybe the hint of a sneer in the guard’s dismissive words.
Whatever the case, I find myself pushing forward to stand by my inhuman lover. “No! Not like that.”
The guard’s expression turns incredulous—with a flicker of fear he manages to master quickly. “You’re not the one who gives my orders.”
“Her judgment is worth listening to all the same,” Stavros says firmly. He folds his arms over his chest. “What are you thinking, Ivy?”
I glance at Rheave and then at the rest of the spectators. My gaze catches on the faces of the royal children: Klaudia’s, pale but determined; Jacos’s, wide-eyed with obvious anxiety.
They’ve accepted the one daimon among us as an ally because it’s hard to speak to Rheave and not see him as a sort of person. But all the other daimon the scourge sorcerers have captured have blended into a nameless mass simply labeled “the enemy.”
None of the spirit creatures ever wanted to hurt us. Don’t we owe each of them a chance to be something else when we can offer it?
Isn’t that the kind of compassion I want our future rulers to see is possible?
I don’t know if that explanation will win me any ground with the baron, so I consider the practicalities.
“Even if the sorcery compelling this daimon means he can’t tell us anything on purpose, we might be able to get him to reveal a little bit involuntarily.
It’d be incredibly useful to know why he was lurking in this area—how much the Order already suspects.
Whether there are others roaming around here. ”
The baron’s mouth sets in a hard line. “Is it worth the risk of the damage he could do when he wakes up? I wouldn’t want you to need to strain yourself defending us.”
The edge in his voice makes my hackles rise. Before I can respond, Rheave interjects.
“I can stop him,” he says quietly. “Our powers will deflect each other. And as long as he’s tied up like that, it’ll be easy to keep him under control.”
Petra lifts her chin imperiously. “Then please do that, and we should hear if the daimon will say anything to us. He’s as much a victim of the scourge sorcerers as those they’ve maimed and murdered.”
She flicks her fingers down her front in a gesture of the divinities, as if asking for the godlen to bless the upcoming conversation. My eyes meet hers, and she dips her head slightly in acknowledgment.
She understands my concerns without my needing to say the rest.
Gods help us, we do need a ruler like her on the throne. Someone who’ll listen before taking action.
Someone who cares for all her country’s inhabitants, no matter how unusual.
The baron isn’t about to argue with his future queen. He clears his throat. “Take him to one of the holding rooms, and let us know when—”
Before he finishes his order, the captured daimon twitches. A faint groan spills from the man’s lips.
Rheave rushes closer and kneels a couple of paces away from the captive, braced in case the sculpted man attempts to use his magic. The guards each take a wary step backward but keep their swords pointed at the bound form.
The captive’s eyelids flutter. He rolls onto his side and stares blearily at the assembled crowd.
Petra nudges her siblings a little farther behind her, but to my relief, she doesn’t insist they leave. She must know she can’t protect them from every danger of ruling—she wants them to see the hard decisions that might need to be made.
Rheave speaks first, in a low but steady voice. “Friend, I’m sorry for how you’ve been treated. We know you’re being pushed by magic, but your masters have used other daimon to hurt us before. Will you speak with us?”
The captured daimon only manages a grunt.
Rheave leans closer. “I was once caged by the sorcerers too. I shook off their hold. If you try, you might be able to as well.”
The man’s face tips toward the floor. For a moment, there’s only his ragged breath. Then he mumbles, “So long… So much power.”
The lead guard huffs. “Like the rest of them. They’ve got this one completely under their thrall too.”
He raises his sword, but the daimon’s words have snagged inside me with a tug of my gut.
I shake my head. “I don’t know… The others we’ve talked to wouldn’t say anything at all—or couldn’t. He’s trying.”
Petra’s tone gentles. “Ivy, freeing the daimon from that body may be the greatest kindness we can offer.”
I know she’s right, but something about this one’s behavior doesn’t feel quite like the captured spirits we’ve encountered in the past.
I walk closer so the slumped man can see me beyond Rheave. “The scourge sorcerers who made your body do have a lot of power—but we’ve been breaking it down. They have less than they did before. It’s worth fighting their control again, even if you couldn’t in the past.”
“Yes,” Rheave says. “We’ll help you. We want to be your friends, if you can pull away from the sorcerers.”
He sounds so hopeful that an ache forms around my heart. Should I have pushed this hard if the moment is probably only going to end in more disappointment for him? I know how much it’s bothered him that none of his fellow daimon have been able to make their new physical lives their own.
The captive’s jaw looks as if it’s clamped tight. He shivers in his bonds—testing them or simply showing his discomfort?
Rheave tries again, the usual brightness in his voice dwindling. “If there’s anything at all you can manage to tell us about why you came here, what your masters know and want to find out…”
“I can’t,” the man mutters. “I can’t. I—”
All at once, he twists at the torso, straining against the ropes. The guards cry out in warning. But as the man’s head yanks backward, an unearthly glow flares in his eyes that looks more desperate than fierce.
His voice spills out of him. “They told me to wander this county searching for signs of other daimon. And to find where those were, who they were. They know there’s one they can’t control staying with the queen.”
His gaze settles on Rheave, and a sudden smile curves his lips. “I found you. I found you, but they won’t, because I won’t tell them. We won’t let them bring me back. Right?”
Rheave beams at him so brilliantly he takes my breath away. “We won’t. We can stand up to the vicious ones together, all of us.”
A rush of my own hope smacks me in the chest.
I whirl toward Petra. “This is the first daimon who’s snapped out of their control.
It’s been weeks since I killed the sorcerer who was doing some of the compelling—we’ve taken more than a dozen of their sacrificial accomplices away since then.
The compulsion the Order imposed on the daimon must be weakening. ”
Petra studies me with more reserve. “Where are you going with this, Ivy?”
I fling my hand vaguely toward the world beyond the estate’s walls. “If we can bring the rest of the captured daimon over to our side, we’ll have stolen one of the Order’s biggest advantages. All we have to do is get to them.”