19 A Liar #3
The longer she read, the more certain she was about what she had seen. He was making it sound like a freak accident, like Kolborn had tripped, his dagger drawn, and sliced his own throat. No one would believe it.
The door creaked open and Jurah stepped back inside. He paused when he saw her at his desk, then sighed.
Vaelira held the parchment in both hands, her fingers trembling with restrained heat. “This is a lie.”
“I’m following orders.” He didn’t return to the desk. Instead, he sank into the chair by the hearth, staring into the flames.
“Why?”
“Because it’s my job,” he snapped, turning to her. “I swore an oath to serve the Crown. You know nothing of it.” A pause. “The last reports had people spooked. If the Guard panics, the people panic, and scared people make poor choices.”
“They should be scared,” Vaelira said, flinging the parchment onto the desk. She rose to her feet, her voice rising with her. “Better fear than ignorance. Better a frightened city than a dead one.”
Jurah nodded slowly. “I know, but it’s not my call.”
Vaelira glared at him, and the man Axel had described, the man who had put orders over what was right, took shape. She crossed the room, making for the door.
“You are not to speak of it,” he said.
“I’m not the only one who saw.”
“That’s a direct order, recruit.”
Vaelira closed the door behind her.
As she crossed the courtyard, she spotted Ressa and Fang sitting on the bench beneath the tree. Ressa stood, meeting her halfway. “We need to talk.”
“Not here,” Vaelira said, glancing at the other recruits heading into the refectory for lunch.
A few moments later, the three of them were crammed into Fang’s bedroom. Ressa and Fang sat side by side on the bed, backs to the wall, while Vaelira perched on the edge of the dresser. The room was surprisingly neat. Aside from several books lining the windowsill, everything was tucked away.
“How come you get a bigger bed?” she asked, feet dangling. Fang’s bed was twice the size of her own.
“Have you seen me?” Fang said glancing down at his massive frame.
“Good point.”
There was a pause. Fang glanced at Ressa. Vaelira didn’t like seeing him like this. Nervous didn’t suit a man of his strength, least of all in the privacy of his own room.
Ressa sighed. “You knew the demon was coming.” It wasn’t a question.
Vaelira had only begun to admit that to herself. How had Ressa noticed?
“You were like a hound on a scent,” Ressa went on. “At first, I thought you were staring at Kolborn, but your focus was off. I shouted but you didn’t even blink. Then the demon appeared and I realised.” Her voice hardened. “How did you know?”
Vaelira saw the weariness in their eyes, the caution. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “I didn’t summon the demon.”
Ressa and Fang exchanged another glance, but they didn’t interrupt.
She hesitated. They’d given her the chance to explain herself, even when they suspected the worst. She could give them this.
“I don't know how to explain it,” she continued, quieter now. “My ears started ringing. I couldn’t hear a thing. It got so cold. I don’t know what made me look, but it was like something shouting at me to pay attention.
” She shivered, remembering the brush of ice down her neck, the blur of movement, the slash of shadow.
She gripped the edge of the dresser and decided against telling them what she’d tasted before the demon appeared. Blood.
“It wasn’t him calling me,” she continued. “It was something else, like I was being watched, or warned. I don’t know, it happened so fast.”
The silence stretched. Ressa’s expression was unreadable. Fang chewed his lip, but he didn’t look away.
“I didn’t summon it,” Vaelira said again. “But I didn’t stop it, either. I just stood there and watched him die.” The words hung heavy in the room, like the storm clouds still blanketing the sky outside.
“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Ressa said at last. “No one could have.”
She was right, and to think, the demon could have come for her next. Any of them. It had been the perfect opportunity.
“And even if you had shouted,” Fang added. “Would they have seen it? Believed it? We’ve told them what you both saw and they still don’t.”
Vaelira shook her head. “Jurah saw the body, he knows what it was.”
Ressa leaned forward slightly. “And?”
“He's covering it up,” she said. “The report says Kolborn tripped, cut his own throat.”
Fang blinked. “That’s ludicrous.”
“He said he was under orders,” Vaelira continued. “That if the guards panic, the people panic. I gave him an earful about it.” She looked between them, daring them to accuse her again. “That’s the truth.”
“Vaelira,” Ressa said slowly, “he’s the Lord Commander of the Royal Guard, and you challenged his authority?”
Ressa was right. When had she become so bold? Perhaps it was Elijah's influence, or maybe her exhaustion at the games this city seemed to play.
“I don’t know what to think,” Ressa said. “But I know a liar when I hear one, and you’re not lying. Not to us, at least.”
Fang gave a grunt. “Anyone who has the balls to chew out our Commander and break curfew probably isn’t summoning demons.”
Ressa frowned. “How’d you come to that conclusion? That sounds exactly like the right sort of person.”
He shrugged. “Would be too obvious.”
Vaelira let out a small laugh, the tension in her chest finally easing.
Ressa leaned back against the wall, stretching her legs across the bed. “I still think you’re hiding something,” she said, looking pointedly at the golden dagger strapped at Vaelira’s hip.
“Who isn’t?” Fang said, jabbing an elbow into Ressa’s side. “Now that you mention it, who was that woman I saw sneaking out your room the other morning?”
Ressa smacked his arm. Vaelira rolled her eyes. “You’re both insufferable.”
“And yet here you are,” Fang said, his grin returning.
She laughed with them both, her hand resting on the dagger, the cold of the metal biting into her skin. She didn’t move to leave, and neither did they.