I stalk toward her, not taking my eyes off her, the same I would for any other enemy. “How did you get into my realm?”
That question, out of all of them, makes her the most nervous. Interesting.
I feel her panic like poison on my tongue, just as sharply as I’ve felt her pleasure. I shove those thoughts away, those memories, because they were atrick. They weremeaningless.
I repeat myself. “How. Did.”—awitch like—“You. Get. In.”
I bend down to meet those eyes. Green. The color of deception, of greed, of serpents. She’s afraid now, but not of me. Afraid for someother reason. I can see it and feel it, wrapped with her panic. She cowers.
Then, her blade is suddenly at my throat.
The witch.
Weaving truth with lies, as if she could possibly know I can feel her heart spike like her pulse is beating beneath my teeth.
“Get.Out.” Spit flies from her mouth, and I flinch. Disgusting. “Of. My.Room.”
She says it like she has affection for this place that is so very clearly a prison. She says it like she could possibly order me to doanything.
She pushes her blade into my skin.
I could turn it to ash. I could turn her entire realm to ash.
Instead, I portal away.
I’ll be back.
The witch wants to trick me? I can trick her too.
The next day, she returns from training to find her room torn apart. Her stuff is everywhere. I’ve ripped open drawers, moved her bed, strewn her clothes and swords everywhere.
The moment she sees the mess, a wave of crushing sadness hits me. Then, churning worry. Her emotions are sharp, and theyburnfor some reason.
“No, no, no, no,” she cries, and her words should please me. I should smile.
I don’t.
I watch her run across her room, her worry flaring. With trembling fingers, she rips open one of the floorboards—
And there it is. My relic. The one I made a quarter century ago.
How did she end up with it?
I watch her fold over, her back-bending relief like a rush of cold water. I can almost feel it trickling down my own spine.
Did she find it by accident? No. She’s barely allowed to leave her room ...
Perhaps it was given to her.Leftto her. I’ve watched her for long enough now to know the only two people she ever sees are her guardians, and, given their treatment of her, the last thing they would do is hand over a portaling device.
It wasn’t them. So, who?
I look around this room. The panes weren’t always painted over, I reason. The room has existed longer than Isla has; it belonged to someone else before her. Her mother.
Could an ancestor have gotten it? Even her mother?
For the first time, a possibility rises like a question as I again consider my general, the person the relic was made for. The last person who had it. Could Isla’s mother have stolen it from my general? Did he end up here, somehow?
That doesn’t make any sense. We weren’t looking for the sword in the Wildling newland.
