“You should thank me. I may have just saved your life. Now come on, before she decides she’d rather not finish her cold tea.” He moved swiftly away from the yellow-painted door.

“Odd fella,” Perfidy noted to herself before following.

He led her to a structure in the direct center of the area, a raised circular platform protected from rain by a large, angled canopy set on five sturdy-looking wooden pilons with a final pillar standing tall and firm in the center. An odd feeling entered her just then. It wasn’t quite a shiver, but it was shiver-like, except she wasn’t cold. And yet her body seemed to be, there was no other word for it, quivering. The closer they drew to the structure, the stronger the sensation grew.

She caught up to him, and together they mounted the five steps to the top, each stride bringing them more and more into the shaded portion, the temperature dropping by several degrees. Now her entire body felt like it was being rattled about by some invisible force.

In the center of the space, something glowed, like there was a hidden fire that had burned down to its final embers. “You’ve really never seen godsblood?” Jereb asked. Perfidy wasn’t sure how to respond to that, especially when her whole body felt so odd, so she just shook her head. “Fascinating. I wonder how you consumed it then?”

“I never did,” she said.

“Then how did you call upon your magic?”

“I—I didn’t.” When he started to shake his head, she hurried on. “What I mean is I didn’t do it on purpose. It jest…happened.”

“Like an instinct?”

“Yup. I guess it was like an instinct.”

“Fascinat—”

“If ye say fascinatin’ one more godsdamned time, I swear to the Five that I’m gonna ruttin’ throw ye into whutever the void is glowin’ over there.”

Jereb chuckled and then made a motion like he was sealing his lips shut. Then he seemed to think better of it, pretended to unseal his mouth, and said, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t throw me into the godsblood.”

“An’ why is that?”

“Because, most likely, I’ll die.”

Perfidy forgot herself for a moment, shocked by the statement. “Really?”

“Yup,” he said, imitating the way she’d said it earlier. Which should’ve bothered her but didn’t for some reason. “There’s no one I know of who can survive being immersed in it, not even Sinna, though I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Ye mean, Miss Marin?”

He laughed again. “Oh gods, don’t let her hear you call her that. Everyone just calls her Sinna.”

“Does that mean I should call Lady Brenner by her first name too? Whut is it anyway?”

“No one knows. And gods, no. If you do, she might actually murder you with her stick.”