Page 21 of The Incendiary

“You can still hear us?” My scream when fighting that soldier was loud enough to echo past the fortress walls, but normal voices?

“Umbras have remarkable hearing.”

“And a propensity for eavesdropping, it seems.”

I heard and felt Shera’s responding laughter.

“Your surname?” the captain demanded.

“I have none. I’m from Brinnea.”

The city’s name wiped the smirk off her face. And it wasn’t a lie. I was born and raised in Brinnea… four hundred years ago.

“When were you last in Brinnea?” she snapped, and I was momentarily confused. Then I remembered Gemma’s letter to Damond. They knew the queen had been in Brinnea with the Butcher the night they thought he’d offered her up to Molochai.

“During the Solstice,” I answered truthfully.

Every soldier tensed.

Letting them believe I’d been anywhere near the queen on the night of her death might be a reliable ticket in. They wouldn’t dare kill someone with such valuable information. At least, not before their Commander was given the chance to pry it out of me.

“Who do you answer to?” ordered the captain.

“Not Molochai.” They paled when I spoke his name.

The captain narrowed her eyes. “Then who do you answer to?”

“I answer to myself.”

“Oh, the commander will love that. Where is he?” she asked another lieutenant, who leaned close and whispered in her ear. All I heard was morning, search party, and hours. “For the gods’ sake!” Her bark made the lieutenant flinch. “What the hell does he expect to find? The queen’s severed body parts scattered across the northern province?” My betrothed hadn’t given up on me, then. “As if there’d be any of her left after the Butcher finished with her.”

I bit my tongue to keep from snarling and lashing out against her lies.

When the captain retrained her eyes on me, her dark lips tightened into a thin line. “If it’s Commander Winterton you want, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. He’s currently dealing with more pressing matters than some hell-raising imp.”

“Gods forbid the commander be inconvenienced.” Shera’s sarcastic internal voice sounded eerily saccharine.

“Then it’s a good thing I have nowhere else to be,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll wait.”

She pondered me, then gave a stiff, commanding nod. A male and female fighter broke formation and approached me.

“Hand over your pack and your blades,” the captain ordered. “All of them.”

I held out my arms to let them remove my bag and knives from the sheathes around my waist, but when one of them reached for the four-hundred-year-old dagger in my hand, my fingers tightened around the hilt.

No. This was a part of myself I wasn’t willing to give them.

The guard’s brows pinched as she studied the blade in my hand. Gavin had kept it dangerously sharp for centuries, and it showed.

“Especially that one,” she uttered. I rubbed my thumb along the smooth black hilt, branding the feel of it in my mind, my heart, in every place I could. “Now!” Her sharp bark made me flinch, but I obeyed. It wasn’t all I had left. Surely they wouldn’t try to take the rings around my neck as well. And yet, I couldn’t shake how the hilt leaving my palm felt like an ill omen.

“Take her to the western cellblock,” ordered the captain. “Scan the perimeter to ensure she acted alone. Commander Winterton will decide what to do with her when he returns.”

“Shera?” I called out to her. “Don’t let them find you.”

“Already hiding.”

“And for the love of all twelve gods!” the captain shouted, sneering at me. “Do not let this fun little surprise out of her cell.”