Page 86 of In Her Own Rite

“You tore into my friend's chest in the common house.”

“I was careful to stick to the places I knew would be easiest to heal. I didn’t go too deep.”

“You snapped his leg clean in half.”

She looks up, shock registering in her face. “What?”

“Yeah. You broke his leg, and we don’t have healing magic for that anymore. He’ll need months to recover, and it cost him the chance to do his elder rite this year. So, nice work.”

She’s visibly stunned, her large gray eyes momentarily filling with worry. The scent in the air changes, and I can sense her honest regret. For the second time this week, I find myself surprised by her.

“That was an accident,” she says finally. “I didn’t mean to break any bones. I was careful. The Remnant leaders had their suspicions—”

“Hang on, which ones are the leaders?” I ask, looking at the page Sigur gave me earlier, with a list of the names of those we detained. This is the first piece of information she’s let up.

Thalia gives me a long look, as though deciding something. “Matis. And Blaise,” she says finally.

“They suspected you of…?”

She waves a hand dismissively, the other coming with it, tied at the wrist. “That I wasn’t in it for the cause. I needed to prove myself, so they had me do their dirty work.” She chews the inside of her cheek, and her big eyes stare up at me. They have the shifter ring, too, but hers is cooler and more silver toned than I’m used to, and I find myself unnerved by her gaze.

“I tried to steer clear of any lasting damage,” she says finally. “My mother was a healer. I knew which wounds heal fastest. I didn’t mean to break bone.”

“Why go after Gabe?” I ask. “Is it because his mother is high-up in the council?”

“Give me asylum and I’ll talk.”

I sigh. “Thalia, I believe that you know something. I want to make a trade with you, I do. But I needsomethingto prove to the council that you’re not just talking out of your ass.”

“So you won’t trust that I have information to share, and I won’t trust that you will offer me a place in exchange for it. It seems we’re at an impasse.”

I set my jaw. If the information she’s hiding is just stuff about why they came here, or what’s happening on the southern isles, I don’t give a shit. There’s only one thing I want to know, and I decide to come out with it.

“Are there more of you on the islands? People we didn’t catch?”

“Slow learner, aren’t we? I told you, I won’t talk without an agreement. If not for me, then at least for Nomi.”

I throw my hands up. “Iwantto help you—”

She scoffs. “No, you don’t. You want to help yourself, and you will reluctantly consider helping me to do it. Very noble.”

I breathe out sharply through my nose. She might be funny, if she weren’t so awful.

“Okay, well, I tried,” I say, standing up. “You said you wanted to talk to me, but it seems like you don’t have anything to say. I’ll have Sigur take you back to the common house.”

“Oh, that’s the grand plan, hm? And then what? Keep us there forever? Send us back to the southern isles, like you do with all the other prisoners you’re too good to keep here?”

I blink. “People who break pack code don’t belong on our islands, Thalia.”

“So you just dump them on our shores?”

I cross my arms. “How often does that happen? Once a decade or more?” Em’s father was one of the last cases, and that was almost twenty years ago.

“It happens enough.” She’s angry now, and her words come faster. “Oh, you have itso goodhere on the Fakaris, with your pack houses and your money and your mainland trade. And what, you think you earned this? What gives you the right to dump your cast-offs onto us, and then deny good people’s requests when they need safety?”

“I, uh—” I sputter, trying to collect myself. I never paid much attention in school when they taught us about this, and I wasn’t ready for a debate today. “The southern isles are unincorporated. People don’t need an agreement to come there.”

“Unincorporated, yes, but not uninhabited. What do you think it does to a people, to a culture, when we get the violent hand-me-downs from the wealthier islands?”

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