Page 88 of This Monster of Mine

“Petitor Sarai, you don’t belong here,” Cassandane said gently. “I knew it when I saw you balk at burning that man at the Robing. You’ll lose pieces of yourself the longer you stay. Kadra’s playing a dangerous game, and for some reason, he’s placed you at the center. Save yourself. The Metals Guild’s furor will die without a target.”

Stricken, Sarai stared at the ground.She isn’t wrong. To stay here in the face of charges for abuse of power was foolishness, and she’d partaken too much of that fruit already.

She’d never believed herself capable of cowardice. But right now, she wanted nothing more than to leave the Sidran Tower Girl in the past, abandon Ur Dinyé’s south to scuta that would kill them, and toss aside a man who had only sought to use her.

At her silence, Cassandane’s features grew pinched. “Take the chance. I’d prefer not see another Petitor die.”

There it is. Every time she wanted to leave, there it was. “Are you …” She took a deep breath. “Tetrarch Cassandane, are you saying the Petitor deaths haven’t been suicides?”

Something remarkably like fear passed over the Tetrarch’s face. “There’s nothing keeping you here.”

“You’re right.” Tears blurred her vision. “But I can’t sit back when Iknowthat someone’s about to be hurt. I wish I could ignore and focus on myself and be as practical as you are. My life would be the smoother for it. But I don’t knowhow. Thousands of lives have been and will be ruined by the Metals Guild. I can’t let that keep happening. If there’s a chance I can win this trial, I have to try.”

“There’s no chance, Petitor Sarai.” A bleak edge underlay the observation. “Not with these people. Only death.”

She nodded. “I’m familiar with those odds, Tetrarch Cassandane.”

“Then if they ever appear too great, come to me.” The older woman looked grim. “The offer stays open.”

If she did go, then all was truly lost. “Thank you.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sarai woke to a note from Kadra asking her to meet him in his office at the vigile station and to Gaius waiting outside Aoran Tower’s wards to accompany her.

Dismounting at the station, she ignored the vigiles’ whispers, everyone apparently aware of the bounty. Rather than have the grace to look abashed, a group in her path took her dour glare as an invitation to swarm her. Most were familiar faces that had ignored her for a month and a half, that had watched Tullus strangle her as though it were a spectacle.

Sarai crossed her arms. “Yes?”

Gaius looked nervous at the scowl in her voice. “Let me take you to—”

“Not bad yesterday,” a woman said. “I thought you’d be corrupt.”

“A month and a half of trials wasn’t enough to prove the opposite?”

She shrugged. “We had to see what you were made of. Plenty have tried to get into Tetrarch Kadra’s good graces to spy on him.”

Sarai didn’t mention that she’d agreed to do the same. “So watching Tullus strangle me was the best way of determining if I was a spy?”

The woman looked like she’d swallowed a lemon.

“My apologies.” Gaius gave Sarai a pacifying smile. “We should head to Tetrarch—”

“Still, Tetrarch Kadra must trust you now to install you here permanently,” another vigile interjected.

Her eyes narrowed. “Permanently?”

“To work in his office on occasion, as he does. We were wondering why he kept trotting you out to marketplaces every day.”

A muscle worked in Sarai’s jaw. “Trotting me out,” she repeated evenly.

“You’ve gone through six months of cases in six weeks,” the vigile blithely continued. “It’s quite something.”

The smile Sarai gave Gaius was all teeth. “Thatcertois.”

Gaius hurriedly steered her into the station. Leading her down a marble-tiled hallway bordering a courtyard, he indicated the door at the very end.

“That’s Tetrarch’s Kadra’s office. We’ll need to knock down a few walls to build yours. Until you’re safe, you’ll be working mostly in there.”

---