Page 41 of Ironhold, Trial Four

“To ensure that she fought you in the final of the champions trials, having suitably discredited you first,” Lady Emin says. She examines long, lacquered fingernails. “You say that as if I don't know. The trouble is you didn't have the decency to die when you should have done. It would have saved everyone a lot of pain. I wouldn't have had to send people to your village. I wouldn’t have had to pay someone to tamper with that dampener you wear. I wouldn't have had to locatethe one assassin, for human beast whisperers were a natural target.”

“You sent Callus?”

She laughs then. “Do you think he just showed up by himself? That he simply chose to be here? That no one helped him to get insidewithout anyone realizing what he was?” She sighs. “It would have been cleaner had he succeeded. Although I suppose it robs me of a certain amount of satisfaction. I'm going to hurt you now. And if you try to stop me in any way, I'm sure the guards will be happy to help me.”

She stands, taking a thick wooden cane from the couch on which she's sitting. She beats me then, hitting me again and again with surprising force, hard enough that I can feel the bruises rising almost from the start of it. I try not to cry outbecause I don't want to give her that satisfaction, but I can't hold back after a while.

But that's the least of it. She knocks me down and looks into my eyes, forcing me to seeexactlywhat she wants.

She plunders my memories for the worst moments, show me the moment when I was taken by the soldiers, the times I have been hurt in the colosseum, the times I have felt the lowest. She shows me the deaths of my friends.

Worse, she twists the memories. She takes moments that should be happy memories for me, and she changes them. She takes the memory of lying beside Alaric, and she twists him into a beast from nightmare, tearing me apart with claws. I try to tell myself that it's just an image, a dream, but it feels so real that I scream with it.

She shows me Alaric dying, even though I have no memory of that. She shows him executed for his crimes in a dozen different ways. She shows Rowan cut down on the sands, killed by Vex, even though I know that Rowan was the one who won the battle. She shows me these memories over and over until I can barely remember what is real and what is not.

She shows me the memory of my mother standing on a chair when I was a girl, frightened of the mice when I could not understand why she should be. Lady Emin gives a justification to that fear, because she shows a string of hungry mice and ratsrunning up the legs of the chairin a swarm so vast that someone might disappear into it. I see them biting my mother, clinging to her as they gnaw at her flesh. I see her pulled down by them, into that vast swarm, her screams blending with my own as the rats turn their attention to me.

On and on it goes, her power less controlling than her daughter’s but no less vicious for all that. I want to reach out with my powers to stop her. I want to summon a shadow cat to my side to kill her. I want to do it, but I know I can't. Lady Elara’s admonition rings in my skull. I cannot show the world that I still have my powers, I cannot let anyone see what Selene Ravenscroft has done for me.

If I summon a beast here, everyone will know that I have killed a noble. I will be executed for it, probably without even a trial. Whatever power I have, I am helpless here. I might be a beast whisperer, might have as much power as any beast whisperer alive, but all I can do is lieon the cold floor of the chamber, crying out as Ravenna's mothermanipulates my every fear.

I tried to find solace in some of my old memories. I tried to remember the incident with the mice the way it really happened, but she won't let me. Instead I spread my consciousness out among the actual mice of the fortress, trying to find a place to hide from her. I'm not sure it's enough.

I don't know how long it is before she leaves me weeping on the floor of the chamber, hurtboth physically and mentally. Lady Emin goes to the door and pauses, looking back at me with contempt.

“I think I'm going to enjoy being your patron. I'm going to break you, Lyra. I'm going to summon you to my villa, of course, and there I will have far more inventive ways to hurt you. Perhaps I will evenhave the men I have sent to your village bring some of their captives to meso you can watch them die in front of you. I will take everything you hold dear. It won't be enough to make up for you taking my daughter from me. But I'm still going to do it.”

She leaves me there lying on the floor, and a part of me just wants to lie there and weep, wrapped up in the pain shehas inflicted on me. But her last words draw something else up through me. I cannot let her hurt more people. I cannot let her kill more of the people of my village.

My mind reaches out to the mice the way I did that day when I was a little girl. But I am not a little girl anymore. I am not someone who is purely peaceful, capable only of kindness. I am not the healermy mother wanted me to be.

I am a beast whisperer and, as Lady Emin heads out into the night in her carriage, the rats and mice of Ironhold go scurrying after her.

EPILOGUE

The morning comes and with it a summons to speak with the emperor. I am so hurt that they must relent and give me a cart to ride on, rather than progressing down into Aetheria with shuffling steps. When I reach the palace, I barely have the strength to walk through the halls. The guardstake pity on me, holding me up as I walkto the receiving room on the edge of the garden.

There the emperor is waiting for me, along with Selene Ravenscroft. The moment I see she is there, I know that my life is about to end.

“Kneel,” the emperor commands.

I do it as much because I don't have the strength to do anything else as because I respect him now.

“Do you know what happened early this morning?” He demands. “Lady Emin, your new patron, was found dead. She had been eaten by mice.”

I am careful to keep any expression off my face. Especially the confusion I feel right now. Not at what has happened. I know what happened because I'm the one who sent the mice. I'm confused because by now, surely Selene Ravenscroft has told the emperor what she did for me? Surely they have already pieced together what happened?

“That’s…” I think back to the memories Lady Emin forced on me. I will never be able to think of my mother now without a small part in my mind insisting that she died, consumed by a wave of vermin. “…a terrible way to die.”

“Are you going to deny you had something to do with it?” the emperor demands. He makes an impatient gesture. “Oh, I know you don't have the power, not with that dampener in place. But you must have gotten someone to do it. Who?”

“I didn't get anyoneto do anything for me,” I say. “After she came to me, I didn't speak to anyone last night. I just lay there on the flooruntil the guardscollected me in the morning.”

“Selene,” the emperor snaps. “Check if she's telling the truth.”

The arch magistrate moves to me. She places her hands on my head. “Do not fight this. You remember how painful it was.”

I remember how painful a lot of things were. So I show her. I show her everything Lady Emin did last night. Every painful memory she constructed within me, every agony she inflicted. I show her the noble woman's parting words, a threat to my village and my family. I let her see all of it becauseshe already knows more than enough to condemn me. I need to understand why she hasn't.

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