It’s a bluff. I don’t know the Chancellor’s intentions with them, but from where I’m standing right now, Taavi is my opponent and her fear is her vulnerability, flames I want to stoke.

A tear streams down her cheek. “Hasn’t my family been through enough?” she mutters under her breath.

“Agree, Taavi. You have no better option.”

Silence hangs there, and a part of me twists with guilt. I know what is to feel like the world is depending on you. Like you hold it up with your own two hands, and if you so much as take a breath wrong, the entire thing will come crashing down. But I glue my lips shut. If things go my way, they’ll be safe in the long run.

“Fine.” Her glare turns to steel. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Take me to her then. The witch.”

“Don’t call her that to her face. She’s not a witch. She’s a Seer, and she only takes payment in gold and blood.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

TAAVI CARRIES AN ORB in her hand and leads me down jagged stairs deeper into their lair. We are surrounded by lead walls, dotted with glowing glass balls, flames dancing within them. Her face glows orange in the light, and from time to time her eyes dart at my arms.

We shuffle down steep steps, and I squint for the next place to put my foot. I lean into the wall, trying to get better footing, but it’s slippery, so it doesn’t help. The sounds of the Macazi are a faint whisper in the distance. There’s no one down here, no one but the Seer.

My heart thuds in my chest, but the jingle of Taavi’s keys drown out the sound. A Seer that people refer to as a witch? I’d only known Seers to be myths, legend. In Totsi’s shop, there were stories of such, but I never assumed they were real. I slick the sweat from my brow as the stairs curve in a spiral.

“Watch your step here. There’s a loose one.”

I step over the wiggly landing. The stairwell ends at a door bolted with metal bars across it, chains, and a cluster of locks.

“Hold this,” she says, handing me the orb.

I take it, watching carefully as she fumbles through her keys. She passes the same ones several times, her hands jittery. I swallow. What am I walking into?

She stops on the right key and takes a deep breath before putting it in the first of several keyholes. “When she is finished… you can just bang on the door.”

“You’re not coming in with me?” I tap my watch, but it’s barely distinguishable in the darkness.