After a brief hesitation, Malachi did as instructed. To his relief, Rosa had merely ripped a jagged oblong of material from the front of her dress. Roughly halfway between hip and ribs, he glimpsed a thin, puckered scar the width of a sword blade. Dangerous, probably. Agonising, for certain. But it was also from a wound long in the past.

“So it’s a scar. You’re a soldier. You have scars.”

“I took this wound last night. One of Aske’s hearthguards.”

He stared at the scar for a long moment and shook his head. “Impossible.”

She shot him a pitying look. “Then why does it match the tear in the dress?”

She held the flap of fabric back in place. The match sent doubt shivering along Malachi’s spine.

“Let me see.”

Rosa stepped closer. “Be my guest. But watch your hands. I dread to imagine what Lilyana would say.”

Malachi supposed he should have welcomed the flippancy in Rosa’s speech. Growing unease made that impossible. Up close, there could be no doubt that the wounds to flesh and fabric were a pair. Unless Rosa had cut the latter to match the former. Even in her current madness that seemed unlikely.

Especially if she weren’t mad at all.

He traced his fingers along the scar. Her skin was warm to the touch, though perhaps not as warm as it should have been. And now he examined all the closer, he realised that the hairline at the scar’s heart was not pinkish-red, but black.

“Does it hurt?”

“No. There should be a matching one on my back. But I can’t reach there.”

Malachi shook his head. This wasn’t possible, was it? If Rosa had taken a wound like that mere hours ago she shouldn’t even be standing. She’d be dying. She was sucking him into her grief-born madness. And he, so heartsick at the prospect of losing another friend, was letting her do so.

“You’re not well, Rosa. You’re imagining things.”

She flicked at the flap of cloth, put one hand on her hip and held out the other. “Give me your dagger.”

“I’m not carrying a dagger. I’m a councilman visiting a prisoner.”

“Then give me your paper knife. You never go anywhere without it.”

Malachi slipped the thin, blunted blade from his pocket and reversed it. Rosa snatched it up and brought it down on her left forearm.

“Rosa!” Malachi leapt to his feet. His shout swallowed up the wet, tearing sound.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the corridor. A fist hammered on the door. “Everything all right in there, my lord?”