Page 158 of Of Masks and Fury

The forest was very quiet.

“Poison,” Derren said grimly. He crouched down, studying her face. “Fast-acting. She probably had it under her tongue.”

“She chose death over capture.” Kerralyn’s voice shook. “Why?”

Because whatever she knew or whoever she worked for was more terrifying than dying in a forest.

I sat back on my heels, frustration warring with the dread spreading through my chest. We’d been close to getting answers.

“Trewyn!”

I looked up to find Coralee hurrying toward us, her ermine draped across the back of her neck. She slowed, picking her way over roots.

“I saw you from the window,” she said. “What happened?”

“Spy. She was outside my council chamber. She took poison before I could make her answer questions.”

Coralee studied the dead woman with the clinical detachment that had always unnerved me.

“Does anyone recognize her?” I asked, looking around the group.

Everyone shook their head

“She’s not from Syllavar,” Coralee said. She knelt beside the body, careful not to touch it. “Look at the mark on her wrist.”

I lifted the woman’s arm. A small symbol marked her inner wrist, barely visible against her skin. Circular, with intersecting lines that formed a pattern I recognized, very similar to the symbol from Velacross’s journal. The one I still had to search for in my father’s papers.

“What is it?” Isi asked, leaning closer.

“I’m not certain.” Coralee’s finger hovered over the mark without making contact. “But I’ve seen something like it before, in very old texts about?—”

The woman’s body jerked.

I scrambled back, pulling Isi with me. The others retreated as well, forming a loose circle around the corpse.

The woman’s skin began to shrivel, as if all the moisture in her body was evaporating at once. Her cheeks hollowed. Her eyes sank into their sockets. Her fingers curled into claws.

“Fates,” Lexie whispered.

Smoke began to rise from the desiccated flesh. The sharp smell of bitter herbs and old magic tainted the air.

The body burst into flame, burning with a blue-white intensity that made my eyes water. The heat of it drove us back another step, our hands raised to shield our faces.

In seconds, nothing remained but white ash that drifted across the forest floor, leaving only a scorched patch of earth where the woman had lain.

Silence fell over the wood. Even the birds had gone quiet.

White ash drifted across the scorched earth. A woman had been lying there seconds ago. Now there was nothing. Not even the symbol on her wrist. Not even proof she’d existed.

Someone had planned for this. Had built her death into her like a failsafe.

Coralee shook her head, her face pale. “Bloodfire magic.”

“What?” I’d studied magic extensively, but I’d never heard of anything called bloodfire.

“One would need to practice bloodfire magic to make their deceased body combust.” Coralee’s hands trembled as she claspedthem together. “It’s very old and forbidden. There’s no documentation of anyone using it in…” Her gaze went distant.

“In how long?” Isi asked.