My eyes fluttered open to the sound of someone calling my name. I recognized the voice but couldn’t understand it.
“Where am I?”
“You’re with your father.”
“Darrow?”
Immediately, I knew that was the wrong thing to say. I opened my eyes to see Sir Henry seated in front of me, his mouth pressed into a tight line.
“Your former servant, Darrow, received a death worthy of his crimes against the Dominion.” Henry’s flat, apathetic tone could only come from a man who had ceased to feel for any of the hundreds of people he’d sent to their deaths. “It will be an eternal punishment.”
“Eternal punishment?” That was the fate of those who had been killed in All Spirits Forest during the war. To wander forever in a half-life without rest. I shook my head. “Darrow was killed inside a building during a Dominion attack. I saw it happen.”
Henry smiled, and my stomach turned. “We captured him before that explosion and brought him to this very room, where he unwisely refused to discuss your training in the Lava Fields. He gave Lord Endrick no choice but to send him to All Spirits Forest to join the other … prisoners there.”
Tears filled my eyes, but Henry rested his hand on my arm. “You miss your true father, how touching. Once we’re finished, I’m sure you’ll have the privilege of joining him.”
I suspected that would happen soon. My arms and legs were attached with binding cords to the chair in which I was seated. Other than our two chairs, the only furniture in this small dark room was a table, bare except for a single clearstone, our sole source of light.
I began trembling. This room had pulled confessions from the lips of innocent men and women, and had melted the wills of the strongest among them. Whatever might happen to me in here would be awful, but the true punishment would come afterward. The eternal punishment.
The door behind me opened and an icy shudder tore through me. I knew who had come. “Is the girl ready?” Endrick asked. Without a second look at me, Henry immediately vacated his seat for his king, though the gesture was ignored.
Instead, Endrick’s deeply lined face came into my field of vision. I recoiled from it, terrified of whatever might happen to me next, and I nearly became sick when he clutched my jaw, turning my face from one side to the other.
“You had a terrible accident,” Lord Endrick said. “You fell through a castle window.”
That wasn’t an accident. That was my escape after I’d failed to kill him, and we both knew it. My eyes flicked to where I had cut him with the Olden Blade, and I was disappointed not to see bandages.
Then he had the power to heal himself too. The next Infidante ought to know that. I wished I had known that.
He pushed back the hair on my forehead tenderly, as if he had any feelings for me warmer than loathing. I noticed a grip glove on that hand, and my panic deepened. I tried to pull away, but the cords had no mercy.
“How were you able to handle the Olden Blade?” he asked. “A Dallisor should not have been able to touch it.”
I pressed my lips together, determined to say nothing because if I did, I might tell him everything, simply out of fear. When it was obvious I wouldn’t respond, Sir Henry said, “She is adopted, my Lord. Perhaps there is Halderian blood in her.”
I was half Halderian, to be exact. And half Endrean. With the same blood as Lord Endrick, though I had no magic of my own.
“Where is the Olden Blade?” His tone remained so calm that it unnerved me. My legs were already beginning to shake.
All I could do was mumble, “I don’t know.”
Endrick looked at Sir Henry, who said, “If she were lying, I’d know.”
Endrick’s expression toward me became one almost of admiration. “You’ve hidden it even from yourself, very wise. Tell me, child, who has the secret?”
A tear escaped me, and though I had every possible lie in my head, when the words came out, they were the perfect truth. “It will go to the Coracks.”
> “How appropriate, since you helped that Corack boy get into Woodcourt to find it. What is his name?”
I faced forward again, determined not to reveal Simon’s name, nor Trina’s, the other Corack who’d come with me into Woodcourt. They didn’t appear to know about her.
“We know the Coracks forced you to betray us,” Endrick continued. “Now we’re returning the favor.”
I shook my head. “You’ll have to kill me first.”
Endrick smiled, hearing the quiver in my voice. “I’d rather not. You’re such an insignificant threat to me as Infidante, I’d rather keep you alive.”