22. Torgan
TORGAN
Two hundred names, and I've been through the list a dozen times.
I stood in the hall and confessed everything to my family. The witch's counter. The twenty gold pieces. Months of carrying the vial while telling myself I would never use it.
Then I waited for Pa to take my head off.
He didn't. He listened to the end, stood, and said, "Find who took it."
Then he left the room.
It was the only indication he was upset.
Ma stayed a moment longer, fury boiling beneath her skin.
"You bought it and didn't use it," she said. "That's the only reason you're still my son."
She looked like she wanted to say something else and decided against it.
"Find out who did this, Torgan."
So I find them.
It's penance for my foolishness.
I sit at Pa's desk, poring over the guest list beside the map of the clearing Harek drew from memory. The circle for the kettarri. The tables where we ate the feast. The coat rack forty feet from the fires. The pavilions where we slept.
I've cross-checked every dryad through Mikka's family. I personally know everyone from the orc side.
The violin trio came from the western villages, and Kenna would vouch for all three of them.
There are only a few guests who weren't attached to either family. Lissy and her grandmother were two of them.
But there were others.
I strike through the names I know, one by one. The shorter the list gets, the more apparent the answer becomes.
Caden and Princeton Voss were there.
And I can't fight the evidence building in front of me.
But if I'm going to accuse the family that nearly married into ours, a family that would have profited from the union, I need more than a list of names.
Princeton Voss came to the wedding.
Princeton Voss retrieved his coat from the same rack where mine hung while I was too busy letting go of my guilt to think about the vial.
Princeton Voss's father told me in his own gallery that he wanted help ending Caden and Mirelle's courtship.
I told him no.
He told me we'd see.
And I can't prove one word of it.
If I move against a duke's heir with nothing, I create the exact scene the Duke wants. He'd have me in shackles for libel before I finished the accusation, and the trade negotiation would be over.
I'm staring at Princeton's name when I hear the carriage arrive in the courtyard.
I know she's here before I reach the window.
Saskia swings down first, then Brynna, then Mirelle. Agreeable. Unhurried. A stranger wearing my sister's body.
Then Lissy steps into my courtyard with a grim expression.
My heart drops through the floor.
She came.
As if she can feel me watching, she looks up at the window. Even from this distance, our eyes meet.
Her frown deepens.
Her whole body is stiff. Unrelenting.
She knows everything.