Chapter 66
LXVI.
Torren
I’m awoken from dead sleep by someone knocking on my door. Worried, I turn and look at the sun clock. It’s nine in the morning. I slow my heart. I didn’t oversleep.
Wait, what is happening? I went to bed with Kera beside me.
I reach out, but there’s nothing but a rough cotton bedsheet. She’s gone.
With a sigh, I sit up. I knew she had to leave and so it shouldn’t hurt. But it does. She crept out like I was a shameful secret.
I hang my head, but when I raise my chin, there’s Kera standing by the dresser, tying her dress back on. She smiles, stunning in the morning light, and my heart leaps in my chest. She’s here.
But then her smile fades. “I need to talk to you.”
She probably needs to find a discreet way to leave now that it’s morning and someone is at the door. I don’t blame her. The Verity Guild will be convening tomorrow, and we will sit beside each other as we hear Trajan Lowe’s case. So we need to—
I take a breath as everything crystallizes, my heart hammering.
That was the missing piece—the reason Medea struck this time, at this conclave.
This was the knowledge just at the edge of my mind.
Medea was after the Verity Guild because we will hear the treason case of her nephew.
Trajan Lowe was caught raising a private army, but nothing goes on in her province without her knowing it.
Now I see that those soldiers were actually for Senator Medea.
The incursion, the senators were important to the killer, but not for the reasons I thought.
With Verhardt and Eyo dead, she’d have the majority vote for a declaration of war, but Kerasea and I were still a problem.
Even in a war, the tribunals proceed—they had to during a war that lasted one hundred years.
She had the same dilemma I have experienced: how to topple elites of Pryor when they are so protected.
I would be naturally reappointed…unless I failed to keep the Senate safe, unless I failed as Praetorian.
Each time someone died, Medea was in favor of allowing me to investigate because she knew she could keep me from the information I needed, thereby making the case for getting me dismissed for incompetence.
And that is also the reason she framed Kerasea—because she had no other method to remove the High Priestess from the Verity Guild.
Priestess Mirial must have been conspiring with Medea, perhaps because she wrongly thought she could protect Kerasea or maybe it was ambition to take her seat on the tribunal, but then Medea tied up the loose end.
I’m right. I know I am. I just need the proof.
I am just about to tell Kera when the knocking turns to banging on the door. “Praetorian!”
I slip out of bed and throw my pants on. “Stay here. I’ll handle it,” I say.
“But—”
“I have things to discuss with you, too, but let me get rid of this first.”
Kera gnaws on her lip but nods.
The knocking continues, but I pause to kiss Kera on her shoulder.
I close the door to the bedroom and then open the front door. Julian stands there in his formal armor.
“We need to talk,” Julian says at the same moment I blurt, “I figured it out.”
It’s then I notice how pale and uncharacteristically somber Julian appears this morning as he rubs his knuckles.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Chief Justice Probus is dead,” he says.
With both Kera and me still in our positions, Medea must’ve had Probus killed. Ever resourceful, she picked a different target. Only, how did she do that while confined to her villa?
Julian partially covers his mouth with his hand.
“What is it?” I ask.
He sighs. “I am here to place you and Kerasea under arrest.”
The End For Now