Page 47 of This Monster of Mine

The words knotted in her head.Why am I mentioned here?She read it over and over until Jovian’s cramped writing had imprinted itself behind her eyelids, barely noticing the study door grate open as Kadra returned with Decimus. His eyes narrowed at her white-knuckled grip on the fireplace’s mantelpiece. When he strode over and took the scrap of parchment, she let go without protest.

No one could accuse Kadra of being an expressive man. His features could have been carved from stone as he read, evidently proficient in Urdish. Then, she saw it. A tightening of his temples. She waited for a sardonic smile, some tell of amusement at the mention of her, at the fact that no one still knew it was him. Then he looked up.

Her breath caught. A horrible coldness filled his eyes, swallowing all emotion until the man staring out from them barely seemed human. Her grip on the mantelpiece went slack.Why aren’t you pleased?He’d walked away from her body.This doesn’t make sense. But if she’d been a more foolish woman, she’d have called the look in his eyes almost … bleak.

Taking the scrap from Kadra, Decimus stared at it, perplexed. “Is this a code, Tetrarch Kadra?”

“It’s Urdish,” Sarai said at the same time Kadra asked, “Was Jovian interested in the Sidran Tower Girl?”

Decimus’s tear-ravaged face pulled tight with misery and affection. “On Truth, he was obsessed with her. He was a first-year Candidate the night it happened, and he never got it out of his head that there was more to the story. Swore he’d be the first to crack why she died.”

“Did he have any theories?” Sarai asked hoarsely.

“Plenty, all stemming from the same premise. Everyone wondered how the girl snuck past all the magi guarding the Academiae, but he was convinced that was a misdirection.”

Her hands shook. “Why?”

“He spent so much time in the Hall of Records. Said an old plan of the Academiae detailed an ancient passageway built into the foundations for the wealthy to flee in the event of attack. He theorized that the Sidran Tower Girl must have entered that way. But the fact that she knew of the passage led him to the same premise every time.” Decimus wiped his eyes. “She didn’t sneak in. She was invited.”

A bolt of pain slammed into her, so sharp she wondered if her head had cleaved in two. Flashes of a storm and the slow build of rain threatened the weakened barriers of her mind. She tried to speak, but air just wouldn’t come.She was invited. Her lungs strained.Invited. She dimly heard Kadra asking Decimus if Jovian had shared his theories with others.

“He was thick as thieves with Tetrarch Cassandane’s former Petitor, Livia.” A pause. “Awful what happened to her. Her mother never recovered. Wanders on the outskirts of Cassandane’s Quarter last I heard.”

Another dead Petitor.Black consumed Sarai’s sight, nails cutting into her palms as she tried to stave off the panic attack.She was invited. But she hadn’t been a fool at fourteen. If Kadra had invited her anywhere, she’d have run in the opposite direction. The only person in Edessa whoseinvitation she’d have accepted would have been … Butthat’s impossible. Cisuré hadn’t known the Sidran Tower Girl’s identity until Othus’s vigiles had brought her in after Sarai kept calling for her.

“Who were his suspects?” Kadra asked, and she wanted to scream—to throw everything in the open and wrench out the truth of why he’d been there that night and what he’d done.

“I don’t know, he—” Decimus’s breath caught. “He and Livia always whispered about the Metals Guild. This letter, it would have been to her. She even helped pay for our scutum when he was short on coin. He was on that waitlist for months—” He broke off, wiping his eyes.

The Metals Guild?She couldn’t make sense of it, the locus of her being centered on oxygen.Aren’t they only known for manufacturing scuta and weapons?She could only vaguely make out Kadra’s voice as he thanked Decimus for his assistance. Drawing on every ounce of strength, she did the same as Decimus left the study, and then leaned against a wall, discreetly counting her breaths. The tightness in her chest slowly dissipated.

“What do you think?” Eyebrows drawn low and broad shoulders limned in sunlight, Kadra seemed ethereal. One of the Wretched in human form. And she simply couldn’t hold back any further.

“Why are we really investigating this?” she asked quietly. “If you want me to choose you over the Tetrarchy, I think I deserve some answers. Jovian, and now Cassandane’s former Petitor, why dig all this back up?”

“Do you want the dead to have justice?”

“Of course I do, damn it! But why wait this long? It isn’t like you needed me to start.”

He finally looked at her, and she was suddenly in the middle of stormfall, lightning striking on every side.

“I did.”

True, her magic informed her, but she already knew. Alongside the cruelty and cunning on his face was a gravity that shook her to the core. Like he saw something in her. Like she was crucial to whatever he was planning.

The room seemed to rise and spin with them as the unmoving center and then eased back down, everything sharper, harder, murkier. She understood none of it.

And as they returned to Aoran Tower for another day of petition-reading, all she could think about was what he could see in her, and what she and Jovian had witnessed to warrant death.

CHAPTER NINE

Sarai’s first day of trials began with stormfall.

She kept to herself on the journey to the vigile station, unsure of how to act around Kadra after his pronouncement at Decimus, and stayed out of the way while Kadra’s people loaded their mounts with pens, inkwells, and parchment in between shooting her the occasional glower. By the time they were done, Edessa was roaring to life with the sun, bright-eyed tradesfolk preparing to hawk their wares under a lightening sky.

Following Kadra out of the station, she stared when he dismounted at a bazaar where—to her bewilderment—he drew up a seat at a shopkeeper’s table. Queues wriggled to life within seconds, and Sarai suddenly found herself the focus of every Urd in the vicinity as Kadra quite literally prepared to hold court.

Here?Lost, she watched his vigiles clear the center of the market to place two chairs there, rudimentary seats for the plaintiff and the defendant. She’d heard of fancier goings-on in Sal Flumen.

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