The councillors seemed unmoved.
"Why?" I asked bluntly. "I thought the keys were the priority, not this thing. If I die here, those keys will remain out of your reach forever."
"And if you do not stop this thing within the next seventy-two hours, the end result will be the same."
I frowned, confused. "What result?"
"The keys. If you do not find this killer, then the keys will slip away from our grasp regardless."
Fear slithered through the confusion. "And, why, exactly, would you think that?"
He smiled, but there was nothing pleasant about it. "Because the council recently took a vote on your situation. The decision was deadlocked, three for killing, three against, three undecided."
My gaze swept them. These three. I swallowed heavily.
"And?"
"And," he said flatly, "you have precisely seventy-two hours to prove your worth as a hunter to us, or an execution order will be issued."
Chapter 7
"Touch her, and you die," Azriel said, his voice as flat as the councillor's, but somehow far more deadly.
The councillor merely smiled. "I know enough about reapers to understand that would not be a wise choice on your part."
"I am not strictly a reaper, and I am not bound by all their rules."
The councillor raised an eyebrow and looked somewhat disbelieving, but Hunter touched his hand, then said, "Killing Odale will only sway opinion further against you. After all, you are apparently the one person who can find these keys—and there is some belief among the council that it would be better to leave the keys lost than to have anyone else gain them."