Page 95 of This Monster of Mine

Discomfort lingered between them, seeping into every crevice of their silence. Spotting Gaius in conversation with another vigile outside, Sarai sighed.

“I need to head out. Thank you for looking out for me. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’stibi gratias ago.” Cisuré looked wan and fragile. “No commoner speak, remember?”

Hand on the door, Sarai forced a nod. “Of course.”

As she left, her smile vanished.

You’re in the palm of a seasoned manipulator, and you don’t care. Cisuré’s accusation haunted Sarai for days. The manipulator in question continuedto hold court without her while she and Gaius scoured the Hall of Records for the rest of Jovian’s and Livia’s letters to no avail.

They’d practically ransacked every archive pertaining to architecture, limestone, and old palaces to determine what Jovian had meant by “pre-Tetrarch walls” and found nothing. The two had either taken great pains to hide their last ones before death, or destroyed them, in which case Sarai was doomed.

Worse, the coming Month of Flowers was notorious for stormfall during the transition between winter and summer. If she’d had even a fraction of a chance to obtain a scutum, it was gone now.

Two weeks from trial, she gave up on the Hall of Records and marched all the way to Sidran Tower before she could change her mind. Her Fall was the only lead she had left. A knot of fear formed in her stomach when the tower’s grim spire entered her vision. Gaius looked askance at her when she stopped.

“I hate to say this, Petitor Sarai, but you won’t find much. Many magi and students searched for clues afterward to no avail.” He followed her gaze to the tower’s uppermost balcony. “That girl fell from the worst possible place. Right onto cobblestone. Any other tower and she’d have lived.”

Clarity hit her with sudden, devastating force. Sarai turned to Gaius. “Say that again.”

“None of the other towers would have resulted in a fall that bad.”

Chills prickled at the back of her neck. “Why?”

“The balconies are largely too low. Most have grass below them.”

Gaius watched in bemusement as she paled and sank to the ground, pieces swimming in her head. Kadra ignoring the Petitor deaths, then suddenly investigating them after she became his Petitor.One.She ripped a flower from the ground. Kadra pronouncing that Jovian had fallen to his death.Two. Kadra looking unsurprised when she’d related seeing Helvus stage Jovian’s death at Sidran Tower. He’d known that there was nowhere else the Petitors could have been thrown from.Three. And he’d long known that the scuta were lightning rods. Her skin crawled.

Every second of their investigation, he’d been a step ahead.

“Petitor Sarai, are you going to pull out all the flowers, because I don’t think the agromagi maintaining them will be pleased,” Gaius said nervously.

She stared at her clenched fists, holding mounds of daisies.

She had to ask. She couldn’t keep spinning wheels in her head. “I need to talk to Kadra.”

“But we just—” Gaius stared at the sky, brow furrowed. “Petitor Sarai, get inside!”

A blinding flash illuminated their surroundings as a seething mass of steel-gray cloud rolled overhead. She and Gaius joined everyone racing pell-mell across the ground to squeeze into the closest instructional hall. Inside, she watched as lightning took the sky from sunset to day. Wind rattled the windows, and a few magi-in-training swallowed, eyes huge in their young faces.

An hour passed in desperate prayer to all the Elsar that there wasn’t a scutum in their vicinity. When the lightning finally dwindled and the rain pattered to a stop, there was a collective sigh of relief.

No one would have seen Jovian and the others die in a storm like that, she thought grimly. Helvus’s clients had known what they were doing.

Outside, Gaius fidgeted nervously until she finally asked him what was wrong.

“Could I return to the station?” he mumbled. “It’s just … my partner was on the city battlements today. Can you return on your own?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to deny it, but she understood his worry. “Of course. Go to them.”

Alone, she oriented herself toward Aoran Tower, selecting one of the westward paths and wishing she’d brought Caelum with her. She plodded along until hoofbeats sounded behind her. Moving off the path to give the rider room, she paused when the horse stopped.

“Petitor Sarai, what a surprise.”

Every one of her muscles locked in place. Inch by inch, she turned to meet Tullus’s smirk, and fear gripped her. This man was not here to talk.

Her throat worked. “Good evening, Tetrarch Tullus.”

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