Page 94 of Sword & Sacrifice

Adelaide sighed. “I honestly don’t know. Everything would have been much easier if Alistair’s spirit had died with his body. What’s left now is an unstable version of a century-old mage, driven solely by ambition and base desires. He is powerful, obsessive, and unpredictable.”

Obsessive. Again, the image of how he’d last seen Valerian flashed through Archer’s mind, but it had a new edge to it. “How long has Valerian been possessed?”

“I don’t know.”

What if we’d stopped Valerian from chasing after Penn? If we’d forced him to stay behind while I’d gone after Penn myself, we could have seen the signs of Alistair’s possession sooner. Killed him before he could completely take over Valerian. But something still didn’t make sense to Archer. “What does he want with Castle Arn?”

Adelaide locked eyes with Archer, her hazel eyes hard as stone. “What has he ever wanted with Arnsveld?”

To rule it. To destroy it. To strip it of every resource until the whole mountain is a barren wasteland. Archer cursed and tried again to get out of bed. The blanket tangled around his feet and he struggled to kick it off. His muscles ached and trembled with frustrating weakness. This time, Adelaide didn’t even need to intervene before he collapsed back onto the bed.

“As I said, you’re still recovering.”

Nothing hurt, and even the wound on his back had healed, yet his body failed him in ways it never had before. This small failure wouldn’t stop him. “Get Norwin.”

Adelaide hesitated for a long time, then nodded. She left the room and called down the stairs.

A few minutes later, Norwin bounded up the stairs, balancing a tray of food. He set it on the nightstand and then stood at attention at the side of the bed. “Yes, sir?”

“Did we capture any of the traitors alive?” Archer ate as he spoke, trying to finish his meal quickly.

“Two of them, sir.”

Archer set his empty pate aside. “Did we find any of the others?”

“Carolin and Mahler followed three of them until they lost them in the forest. They crossed paths with us on our way here, then continued tracking the traitors.”

Which left several traitors unaccounted for. “We need to find out what their orders were. Why they split up, why they wanted Adelaide. Who their commander is.” Archer’s words trailed off as he spoke, his eyes drooping. He shook his head to force himself awake and glared at Adelaide, then the empty plate of food.

An amused smile quirked her lips. “I didn’t drug you, Archer. I don’t need to when your body is already exhausted. Go back to sleep. You can interrogate the prisoners when you wake.”

Falling asleep in the middle of an interrogation would ruin any attempts at intimidation. Reluctantly, Archer settled back into the bed and let himself drift off to sleep.

This time, when he dreamed, it was of the night he and Silas had spent together in this room, wrapped in each other’s embrace, melded together so tightly nothing could tear them apart.

“I’ll solve this one last problem,” Archer promised, “and then we’ll never be apart again.”

Chapter Forty

Another day, another dead body. Silas stared down at the lump on the barrack’s floor, covered with the white sheet from the bed. At least the medic had prepared him for what he would see this time. He crouched down and grabbed the edge of the sheet, tugging it off to reveal Quentin’s face, eyes cloudy and skin tinged slightly blue.

In life, Quentin had always been jittery and nervous, even before he’d been accused of murder. Now he lay still, his slack face the most relaxed Silas had ever seen it.

“Be honest with me, Griselda,” Silas said, his voice low. She stood behind him with Langley, Emera, and the medic who had declared Quentin dead. More witnesses than they should have for this conversation, but they were all people the general trusted. “Did you order someone to kill him?”

Griselda snorted. “If you’re hunting snakes, you want to keep a few live rats on hand. Quentin had the most information about Jacoby and the night of the fire.”

“Varro had information, and you wanted to kill him,” Silas replied.

“Varro also had an army of sycophants willing to blow up a prison to free him. As we can all see, Quentin was in more danger from his own allies than he was from us.”

The medic cleared his throat and said, “Actually, he died from natural causes.” He pointed at the fresh bandage on Quentin’s neck. “When he returned yesterday, I treated the infection, but it had already entered his blood. Probably the only healer who could have saved him was the Witch.”

Silas’ shoulders tensed at Adelaide’s title. Several days had passed since he’d received her cryptic messages and he still hadn’t heard from her, or from anyone else. Archer, Penn, Valerian—everyone’s silence made Silas feel like he was lost in a fog, shouting until his throat bled, but never hearing a reply.

Swallowing the surge of loneliness, Silas tried to focus on the problem of Quentin. “Was the spider bite some sort of curse?”

The medic’s brow furrowed. “Not that I’m aware of?”