by Eva Chase
“With all due respect, Mr. Nightwood,” the judge said, “your situation and Miss Wakeburn’s may not be entirely the same.”
“Of course they aren’t,” Malcolm said, his voice turning derisive. “I’m the heir to a family second only to Rory’s. The Wakeburn girl couldn’t possibly have dealt the same kind of damage I’m capable of. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s impossible for Rory to have injured her, let alone murdered her.”
I couldn’t help glancing at Baron Nightwood again. He kept strict control over his expression and stance, but he couldn’t completely hide the furious glint in his eyes. No, this hadn’t gone according to his plan at all. My stomach listed with a nauseating combination of gratitude and fear.
Malcolm’s father looked ready to rip someone apart. And I didn’t think it’d be me this time.
Malcolm got up to sit on the bench behind the other scions without acknowledging his father. He met my eyes for just a second, with the slightest tip of his head as if to say, I owed you.
It probably wasn’t enough. The judge hadn’t sounded convinced. But it might make a difference—and it mattered more than I could say that he’d even tried.
And it seemed his show of courage had affected more than just me. As the judge shifted in her seat as if to call an end to the hearing, Cressida shot to her feet.
“I have something else to say,” she blurted out, ignoring Sinclair’s gape of bewilderment beside her. “I know that Rory didn’t kill Imogen.”
The judge’s eyebrows leapt to the fringe of her bangs. “And you didn’t think to include this information earlier?”
“I… I’m including it now,” Cressida said, her hands clenching at her sides.
“Well, come up here and let’s hear it, then.”
There was a stirring among the blacksuits as Cressida recrossed the room. Her face was nearly as pale as her hair, but she walked steadily enough.
“This is what I know,” she said after she sat down. “The day Imogen died, I left the end-of-term party early because I was tired and wanted to head home. I just needed to get a few things from my room. When I tried to go up the stairs to the fifth floor, a strong emotion came over me that I needed to be somewhere else. As I backtracked, I realized it had to be a spell compelling me away.”
She paused and then soldiered on. “I was suspicious. I—I actually wondered if Rory had something to do with it, because the three of us had been hassling her quite a bit, and maybe she was taking some kind of revenge. I went into the dorm room under ours and cast a spell to bring out any sounds from above to try to hear what was going on up there.”
The whole room was dead silent when she stopped to gather herself. “I assume you did hear something,” the judge said, with an unexpected softness.
“I did,” Cressida said, quietly but clearly. “At first there wasn’t anything I could really make out, but then I heard a sort of scuffing noise like shoes on the floor. All of a sudden, someone cried out, and there was a heavy thump. It startled me so much I flinched and hit the coffee table behind me. That made me nervous that whatever was going on upstairs, the person or people responsible might realize I’d heard. So I hurried out of the building as quickly as I could… and I passed Rory after I came out on the first floor. There’s no way she could have been the one who did it. She wasn’t anywhere near our room when it actually happened.”
Her voice had turned strained with the finale of her confession. The judge peered down at her. “Would you allow me to verify your statement using insight?”
“Yes,” Cressida said, even more quietly. That had been part of our deal—that she had to offer direct proof of her statement for it to count. “I’m ready.”
I fought the urge to squirm in my seat as the judge delved into Cressida’s mind. While my dormmate had spoken, Lillian had disappeared from the gathering of blacksuits. Interestingly, Baron Nightwood was gone as well. Had they slunk off somewhere to brainstorm urgent damage control?
If they had, they didn’t make it back in time. The judge straightened up and dismissed Cressida back to her bench. She turned to me with the first glimmer of sympathy I’d seen from her.
“I apologize for everything you’ve been through, Miss Bloodstone,” she said.
The realization that this horror show was actually finished swept through me so suddenly tears sprang to my eyes even as I smiled.
The judge turned toward the rest of the room. “I’ve now been faced with overwhelming evidence that Miss Bloodstone had no part in Imogen Wakeburn’s murder. Which means I do hope the blacksuits will quickly apply themselves to discovering who not only killed one of our own but attempted to damage the reputation of a soon-to-be baron at the same time. Rory Bloodstone is innocent. This hearing is over.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Malcolm
Watching the blacksuits detach the silver cuffs from Rory’s wrists gave me a sense of elation that overwhelmed even the dread expanding in my stomach. I held on to that feeling as they escorted her, with due deference this time, to the exit, but the moment she passed through the doorway, my relief had already started to fade. The other scions were heading over to follow her. I got up too, but more slowly.
My friends glanced back at me, obviously assuming I’d join them. That subtle show of solidarity nearly broke my resolve, but I gave them a brief shake of my head. Though Declan looked a little concerned and Connar hesitated a beat longer, they went on without me when I didn’t move toward them.
The dread rose up to fill my chest as well. I’d done what I could for Rory here, however much difference it’d made. Now I’d face the consequences. I’d rather not face even a fraction of them in front of her, especially when that might make both our situations worse.
Dad had left his seat at the back of the room at some point during the final testimony. I wasn’t sure where he’d gone, though no doubt he’d find me the moment he wanted me. He had to be fuming about this outcome. Maybe he’d stalked off to take his first round of hostility out on his blacksuit co-conspirators?
One battle for Rory’s freedom was won, but the war was hardly over. It’d be useful to know which of the blacksuits or other leading fearmancers the barons had far enough in their pocket to involve them in the highest level of treason.
Rory and the others had disappeared by the time I came out into the hall. A few blacksuits lingered near the office doors farther down the brightly lit space with its khaki-green walls, but my father wasn’t among them. I strolled over as if I had every right to be nosing around the blacksuit headquarters.
“I don’t suppose any of you know where my father wandered off to?” I asked in a blasé tone.
One of the women motioned toward the other end of the hallway. “I think I saw Baron Nightwood going into Ravenguard’s office.”
I bobbed my head in thanks and ambled on. Blacksuits were trained to pick up on suspicious body language or any other sign of ill intentions. I didn’t want them to see anything besides a scion looking for his dad.
“…was quite a mess,” one of the other blacksuits muttered behind me as they went back to their conversation. “Can you believe— Someone should have found that witness before the hearing.”
Yeah, I’d bet this catastrophe would haunt the blacksuits who actually cared about justice for quite a while. Now they had to sit with the fact that they’d wrongly accused and almost wrongly sanctioned a baron-to-be. Was it too much to hope that a few sanctions be laid out on some employees around here?
I found the office labeled with a Lillian Ravenguard’s name just around the corner. The murmurs of the other blacksuits had faded away—this stretch of hallway was empty and silent. No sound filtered through the closed door either, unsurprisingly. If blacksuits couldn’t handle their own security, what the hell was the point of them?
None of them could quite match a Nightwood’s power, though. We were a ruling family for a reason.
I glanced around, weighing my options. If someone
came by, which was totally possible, they’d catch me eavesdropping in an instant. Maybe I should take a page out of Cressida’s playbook. Making use of available nearby space had worked for her, even if what she’d heard hadn’t been what she’d have wanted to.
I moved to the office next to Ravenguard’s and sent a quick querying spell inside to confirm it was empty. Then I tested the lock with a casting. The physical mechanism had a complicated winding of magical strands reinforcing it, but not quite as treacherous as the wards I’d disabled on my father’s home office. I could handle this one as long as no one interrupted me.
I bowed my head next to the door and murmured one casting word after another, gradually unwinding the spell. At the sound of footsteps in the distance, I froze and edged to the side so I could pretend I’d just been standing here waiting, but the person stopped before they reached the bend. With a thankful exhalation, I returned to my work.
God willing, my father and the blacksuit and whoever else might have joined their meeting wouldn’t already be done talking by the time I made my way inside.
Finally, the lock clicked over with the twist of my fingers. I ducked into the dark room, leaving the light off in case it’d be visible from beneath the door. A thin illumination seeped through the closed blinds on the tiny window at the far end.
I moved to the wall between this office and Ravenguard’s and came to a halt beside the shelving unit against it. Training my gaze on the bare stretch of wall, I cast my way through the plaster.
Ravenguard had a silencing spell embedded in the boundaries of her room. My awareness nudged against it cautiously. I didn’t want to break it, because she’d definitely notice that, but if I could just scrape a little gap in it…
I worked at it as slowly as I had the patience for, my skin prickling in recognition of the minutes slipping away from me. It took at least ten before I’d worn the silencing spell thin enough that the amplifying cone I conjured in the air brought faint voices to my ears.
The first one I heard I easily identified as my father’s. “…taken due precautions.”
A woman’s voice answered. “We’ve been over this. It was a delicate balance. The more variables you control, the more likely your control will be noticed.”
“That’s simply not good enough.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do, baron? I can hardly arrest her all over again for a crime it’s been proven she didn’t commit.”
“Perhaps you should have had a more extensive back-up plan.”
“There wasn’t any sign we needed one until the last minute.”
Any last lingering hope I’d had that Rory and Declan’s insinuations were wrong, that my father hadn’t crossed the line into overt treason and murdering random mages after all, crumbled away. The murder and the false arrest had been his plan, clearly. And the blacksuit he was talking to was one of those who’d helped him carry it out.
“What about the other avenue you said you were investigating that might solve our problems?” Dad asked, and I perked up again, shoving down the admittedly rather feeble flicker of disappointment. I didn’t hear any indication of others in the room, just him and this Ravenguard woman. Was she his main contact here, then?
“I’m continuing to pursue it,” she said. “I don’t have definite information yet, but we’re getting closer. I’d rather not raise expectations until I know for sure what we’re dealing with.”
“I’d better be the first to hear all the details.”
“Of course, baron. I’ll actually be taking the next step shortly.”
Her tone indicated that she had nothing else to say on the matter. The conversation was winding down. I’d better get going before they came out and potentially noticed the nearby intrusion.
I slipped out of the office and engaged the physical lock with a jerk of magic. There wasn’t time to reconstruct the rest, but I could hope the caster’s comings and goings had become so automatic that they wouldn’t notice if their dispelling casting had nothing to catch onto. I strode off down the hall, slowing at the click of the other door behind me.
Dad’s voice carried to me, managing to contain an edge with just two syllables. “Malcolm?”
I turned and gave him a mild smile. “There you are. I wasn’t sure where you’d gone off to.”
He was alone—Ravenguard had stayed in her office. Which might have been worse for me, because there were no witnesses as the baron stalked along the hall to meet me. I drew myself up a little straighter, bracing myself.
I could have run back to the school and waited him out. I could have bought myself some time. But over the years I’d decided that when the axe was going to fall, it was better to get it over with as quickly as possible rather than wallow in the dread.
I came up with a quick excuse for why I’d been looking for him, but apparently Dad had too much on his mind to care about those technicalities. He gripped my elbow for one painful moment to spin me around and push me forward.
“I think you’d better come back to the house with me. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
His voice was flat and sharp as a razor. I kept pace with him, keeping up my oblivious front. “I drove here from school. My car—”
“You’ll ride with me. We can have someone deal with your car later.”
I shrugged. “All right, if you think that’s really necessary.”
Perhaps the shrug was a little too much. The tendons in Dad’s jaw flexed. He marched me out into the cool, gasoline-tainted air of the parking lot just a hair’s breadth from looking as though he were taking me into custody. Although in a way he was.
“In,” he said when we reached the car.
I dropped into the passenger seat, he got in behind the wheel, and the doors slammed closed. His knuckles stood out against his skin as he grasped the wheel. But my father was nothing if not conscious of appearances. He didn’t lay into me until we’d left the blacksuit headquarters behind.
“What the hell was that display during the hearing about?” he snapped. “Why would you get up there and speak for that girl?”
I gave him my best puzzled look. Having a plausible story wouldn’t prevent retribution, but it would make the difference between him seeing me as inept rather than an active opponent.
“From what I saw and heard around campus and my own experiences with her, it was obvious she couldn’t be responsible. Obviously we wouldn’t want one of the barons handicapped unnecessarily. You want to be able to bring her around so you can use her power, not have it suppressed.”
Because I wasn’t supposed to know that he’d intended from the start to use the unjustified sanctions to get her under control. That he might actually prefer her weak and out of the way after the defiance she’d already shown. He hadn’t trusted me enough to fill me in on his real plans, and he could hardly blame me for not reading his mind.
He couldn’t even tell me now exactly why he was so furious. “You couldn’t have known for sure,” he bit out, taking a turn just a tad too abruptly. The engine roared as we sped onto the freeway. “If you’d been wrong and your testimony had swayed the judge—”
“But I wasn’t wrong,” I said matter-of-factly. “It’s a good thing I showed solidarity.”
I shouldn’t have rubbed it in. Dad’s eyes flashed with an anger that crackled through the car.
“Your job is to focus on solidarity with your own family first. I shouldn’t have been finding out that you meant to step in when it happened in the middle of the hearing.”
All right, valid point. Even if he hadn’t been a traitor, he’d have a right to be upset about me surprising him like that. Of course, I hadn’t known I was going to burst in there until seconds beforehand.
I hadn’t known if I’d need to. I’d come just to watch, to see how the hearing would play out from the observation room. But it’d been obvious that the other guys hadn’t convinced the judge, and Rory must have known Cressida was keeping something vital to herself, because she’d lo
oked so hopeless in the moment after the other girl left the witness chair…
There’d been a small chance my words would tip the balance, would make the difference between Rory continuing to grow into her power as the magnificent mage she was already becoming and seeing her greatness cut off at the knees, and in that moment it hadn’t really been a choice at all. I knew which woman, which baron, I wanted to stand beside when it was my turn at the table of the pentacle.
And having that woman would be worth whatever Dad intended to do to burn my regret over my “mistake” into my memory. I owed Rory, didn’t I, after all the unnecessary pain I’d caused her?
“I’m sorry,” I said to Dad, not meaning it at all. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Clearly. I’m going to make sure that next time you will.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rory
Professor Burnbuck raised his eyebrows when he answered his office door and found me standing outside.
“Miss Bloodstone,” he said, flicking his scruffy hair farther out of his eyes. “It’s good to see you unencumbered.” His gaze dipped to my now bare wrists and back to my face. “Is there something I can help you with?”
I resisted the urge to rub the unencumbered skin, to revel in my new freedom as I had a whole bunch of times since yesterday’s release. As I drew in my breath, my nerves jittered.
There’d been a Burnbuck in Professor Banefield’s notes, but she was his aunt, not even part of his immediate family. If the Illusion professor had been conspiring with the barons, surely my mentor would have known?
In any case, I’d have Jude examine the spell I was about to ask for before I trusted it completely.
“I’ve decided on my prize for the summer project,” I said. “At least, I think I have, if it’s possible. And I’d like you to cast it.”
“Something to do with illusions, hmm?” His eyes lit with eager interest. “I don’t usually get asked since the winners tend to be looking for permanent effects. Come in and tell me what you’re thinking.”