my chin.
The curse waited until I was done eating before it resumed the stabs of pain into my heart, the punishment for nearly kissing Tavar and for speaking to my mother. Wouldn’t want hunger to impede your performance, it murmured between pains, seeming calmer now that it could take its anger out on me without an audience.
It was several minutes before I heard the clink of dishes being washed in the sink downstairs.
My last thought before I fell asleep was that I’d do anything to keep my mother out of Elektra’s grasp. Anything at all.
Chapter 10
“Consider this.” Dad’s voice was cold and clear, harsher than I’d ever heard it. “The penalty for treason is stiff. Likely death or lifetime imprisonment. But if you cooperate with our investigation, the judge may give you favor. There’s a good possibility that your sentencing hour will end in mercy, not execution. Do you understand?”
I held my breath as I watched from the back of the room, my attention stretched between the horrifying interrogation unfolding before us and Tavar’s stiff, silent presence beside me.
The man and woman sitting across the table from my father seemed to shrink in size, as if growing smaller might make their treason diminish. “Yes,” the man whispered. “We’ll consider it.”
Dad set his hands on the table. “You’ve admitted to plotting to collaborate with those who call themselves Masters,” he said slowly. “Have you had contact with them, or are you working alone?”
“For the last time,” the disheveled gate guard said, his voice high, “we aren’t collaborating with them. It was simply a thought— A discussion— Perhaps a bit of planning, yes. But it’s just what anyone else would—”
He broke off stammering when his wife nudged him with her elbow, her cuffs clanking against the table where they’d been chained. “We just want to survive,” she said, raising her chin defiantly. “Just like anyone would want.”
“And if your survival requires collaboration with a group of mass murderers?”
“The Masters are stronger than we are,” the gate guard interjected. “Everyone knows that. And we’re just sitting here, helpless in this forsaken city, behind walls that won’t even stop them, waiting for their next attack. They’re stronger than us!” He straightened, seeming to forget his fear in a moment of frustration. “What I don’t understand is why you Sentinels won’t accept that.”
Dad leaned back in his chair. “Have you had any contact with the Masters?” he repeated stonily. “Or are you working alone?”
The couple glanced at each other, then shook their heads. “No contact,” the man said. “We sent out messengers with a plea for mercy, but we couldn’t find them.”
“So you won’t be any help in the investigation, then?” My father’s voice was deceptively calm, almost bored.
They paled. “We just want to live.” The wife’s nostrils flared. “We shouldn’t be punished for that.”
“Not for wanting to live, no.” Dad stood. “But for plotting to use your fellow gate guards to help the Masters invade the city? For setting a plan into motion to assist the Masters as they enslave or kill your fellow citizens, in exchange for your own survival?” He pushed his chair in and gestured to a heavily armed Sentinel nearby. “The law has a thing or two to say about that.”
It was all I could do not to look at Tavar when we filed out of the room to debrief with Raven. I’d heard whispers of a movement in Asylia to collaborate with the Masters, but this was the first time Raven and my father had allowed us to see the investigation at work.
The ugliness turned my stomach. These people had a choice, unlike me, and yet they still wanted to give up?
“There are more like them.” Raven led us to the meeting room down the hall. She shut the door behind her, then crossed her arms. “We don’t have many names. Mainly rumors. But we’ve gotten our hands on a few written plans, if you can believe it.” She shook her head, her eyes shutting briefly. “They think there will be mercy for collaborators. Willing to sell the rest of us out to save their own skin.”
Mercy, the curse purred, is simply not our way. But we do enjoy hearing them beg for it.
“How dangerous are they?” Tavar’s tone was dark. “How big of a threat?”
“Not as big as they think,” Raven said, her shoulders dropping as she sighed. “The Masters aren’t going to collaborate with their victims in any meaningful way. The closest they came to that was