Page 81 of Thorns & Fire
‘Could have fooled me,’ Wren muttered, picking at her nails beneath the table.
The chronicler shot her an annoyed look and scratched something down on his parchment.‘Do you have any personal records, diaries, or documents from the time that you’d be willing to share?’
Wren balked.‘You want my...’
‘Personal documents, yes.’
She shook her head.‘That won’t be possible.’
‘Are you intent on obstructing the progress of the war’s written histories, Miss Embervale?’the chronicler chastised her.
She clenched her jaw.‘Many of my personal documents were destroyed in the battle of Thezmarr.If you recall, much of the fortress sustained irreparable damage.’She didn’t mention the notes and observations she’d kept since then.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously.‘Very well.How about you tell me of Samra and Ida – the two alchemists whose heads were found on the spikes of—’
‘Don’t.’Wren’s blood ran cold.‘Don’t speak of them.’
The historian’s quill paused mid-scratch across the parchment.‘Elwren, if I am to paint an accurate picture, I need to explore every perspective.It’s my understanding that these young alchemists were captured at Thezmarr and tortured for information—’
Wren’s hands flew from beneath the table and slammed down on the surface, lightning sparking across her fingers and knuckles.The chronicler’s chair scraped back as he scrambled away in shock.
Images of her friends’ severed heads flashed before her – their eyes missing from their sockets, their mouths agape, screams etched on their faces.‘I said,don’t.’
Wren couldn’t breathe.The High Chancellor had also implied that Sam and Ida had been tortured for information about Wren and her alchemy designs, that it might have been her friends who had given up the knowledge of her work on the magic-suppressing manacles to the people who became the new traitors to the midrealms—
‘See here, Miss Embervale,’ the chronicler panted, his hand onhis chest.‘You said you would cooperate.I cannot record your version of events if I’m under threat.’
Wren reined in her panic.‘My apologies,’ she murmured.‘Sam and Ida...They were friends of mine.’
‘An account confirmed by several other interviewees,’ Crane said, sitting back down warily.‘Which was why I thought you might be aware of why they were interrogated so thoroughly.’
Wren was going to be sick.Her magic roiled within her unchecked, unchallenged, and her heart was racing, pounding in her chest.The lightning that had crackled across her fingers was growing—
The door burst open, and Torj Elderbrock filled the frame.‘This interview is over,’ he stated, moving to stand beside Wren and stare down the chronicler.
‘You have no authority here, Warsword,’ Crane argued, albeit with a paling complexion.
‘No?’Torj challenged.‘Fucking try me.’
Crane’s eyes scanned the towering warrior, and slowly, he began to gather his things.‘The High Chancellor will be hearing about this—’
A blur of movement followed as Torj snatched a handful of the historian’s robes.‘You tell the High Chancellor that if you badger my charge again – in fact, if you so much as look in her direction – I’ll finish what I started after the Gauntlet.’
Wren didn’t remember standing, but now that she was, her knees were buckling beneath her.Torj and the chronicler were hazy as the Warsword dragged the latter towards the door.
Wren’s lungs weren’t taking in enough air, and the walls around her were closing in, inch by inch, ready to crush her.Sam and Ida had been tortured because of her, tortured to their deaths, their heads mounted on spikes for all to see.
My fault.It was all my fault.She couldn’t breathe.Her vision was all white spots.
She heard Torj say something in the distance.
But it didn’t matter, because she was falling.
CHAPTER 31
Torj
‘To truly understand the past, one must study the historian as much as the history’
