him to. He dropped the keys into my hands, thinking they were the table by his door. I pulled the cell shut behind him. He froze.
“What?” He spun, frantic, and shook the bars. “What did you do to me?”
I leaned against the wall across from them. Behind my back, my hands trembled. Everything hurt. Every part of me was alive.
“Nothing,” I said. “Less than you did to me.”
I didn’t know I could be so cold.
The soldier laughed, deep and dragging out of his throat with a rasp. Alaine’s silver necklace glittered at his wrist. “Do you know what they’re going to do to you? You go out that door, you’re dead.”
It had taught me many things, this nation called Demeine.
“Yes, I know very well what they’ll try to do.” I ripped her necklace from him and tied Estrel’s shoes. “They’re going to underestimate me, and I’m going to teach them not to do it again.”
To any of us.
Twenty-Five
Emilie
My mother left, and the soldiers—Chevalier Waleran du Ferrant’s apprentice and two hacks—checked me over to make sure she hadn’t slipped me anything.
“That’s very insulting,” I said to the apprentice. “Have you no respect for my mother or our name?”
This apprentice was my age, some younger son from one of the newer families, and he followed the orders Chevalier du Ferrant had left to the letter.
“It’s not an insult, Madame,” he said, head ducked. Even with me in shackles, he clung to the rules of polite society. “It’s standard.”
After an hour, he was still guarding me, and my mother was most likely far enough away.
“Are we still going to war with Kalthorne?” I asked him, sighing as if I were bored.
He glanced back, eyes narrowed. “Of course. And your needless outrage at His Majesty means we will be fighting ourselves as well as Kalthorne. Chevalier du Ferrant is having to focus on rousing up soldiers instead of preparing for those Thornes.”
“Needless?” I stretched out my legs. “But not false?”
“His Majesty is more necessary than some hack,” he said, but he shifted and looked toward the door. Neither of the hacks he worked with was here. “Without him, we are nothing.”
My mother had left me with a deep, unsettling certainty that Demeine was going to crumble if this continued. A lot of people were going to die, and there was no need for it. Without the chevaliers, the nobles leading the charge, would the army fight? They hadn’t wanted to, certainly. Kalthorne hadn’t either.
There would be no safety while His Majesty and his court ruled, and this apprentice wasn’t assuaging those fears.
“I was du Montimer’s hack, you know.” I focused on the parts of me in charge of panic and fear. Stopping my body from recognizing pain would be too much, given how tired I was now, and this would hurt. If I was in shock, my reaction would be dulled. That would be enough. “I would bet you were one of the soldiers I healed with him.”
My heart sped up, my palms began to sweat, and a little tug of fear took hold of my stomach. A light-headed flutter filled me.
The apprentice shifted again, rocking from foot to foot. “I was very appreciative of our physicians while I was there.”
I bit down hard on the collar of my shirt and dislocated my thumbs. Pain shot through me. The shackles clattered together as my hands, sweat-slicked, slipped from them. The apprentice glanced back at me.
“What are you doing?” he asked, stalking toward me.
I raised my hands, free and crooked, and channeled enough magic to slam my thumbs back into place and leave welts down my skin. He stopped.
I didn’t need to do magic to know what had been done to him. The way his scar had healed, the way his bones felt strong and repaired beneath my prodding, was all Rainier. I pulled the spectacles from my face and threw them aside. He drew his sword.
I channeled magic without a care, drawing it through my fingers and twisting them, sending it out to the muscles in the apprentice’s mouth where Rainier had healed a fractured jaw. I didn’t need a way into this boy’s body. Rainier was familiar enough. The muscles seized. The apprentice clawed at his mouth.
No wonder physicians and chevaliers used hacks. I could do anything—for a price. Already, my hands shook and thin strips of skin peeled away from my nails where the magic had channeled. My thumbs were black and old-blood brown with bruises.
“You got stabbed.” I peeled away the