Trent and Vivian murmured a few words, their heads almost touching, and then he took the amulet. Lucy’s cooing rang out, and then Trent disentangled her little fingers from the amulet, whispering to her in what sounded like another language. The crowd liked that, and I wondered if he’d done it intentionally. Trent gathered himself, and when he looked pointedly at me, I sat down, my chair scraping. That same guy brought a third chair out, placing it between me and the podium.

“If I may continue,” Trent said, not sitting, and Pierce touched my knee, stilling my bobbing foot. “Should Rachel Morgan be held accountable for her actions when she was manipulated by outside forces into a place where to survive she had to learn a dark skill? Forced to learn and utilize black magic at the whim of another? I don’t know. My intent would have been twofold. First, to see if my security systems could stand against the worst a witch can produce, which I think we can all agree is the magic done by a black witch. And second, a minor question of mine, curiosity, really. I wanted to know if a good witch could use black magic and not be…wicked.”

The crowd buzzed, and I wasn’t pleased. That little silver bell wasn’t ringing. Had Trent taken advantage of the situation to find out if I was trustworthy? Son of a bastard…

“Is this to be a morality trial?” Oliver asked, and I swallowed hard. With the room out for my blood, there was no way I could win, and telling them of our beginnings would make things doubly worse. Damn, damn, and double damn.

“Perhaps,” Trent said, his soft, melodic voice spilling out to fill the room with confidence. “What would have started out as an experiment in security has left me racked with guilt. This is my fault,” he said, and people started to listen. “I was blind to how seriously the witch community would respond to black magic. If I’d known, I would certainly have chosen another method for testing my security.”

Why in the hell wasn’t that bell ringing? I asked myself, unless Trent was confident that his wording put everything into the theoretical. I couldn’t have gotten away with it, but I wasn’t a bloody politician.

“I feel remorse for having manipulated such an honest person into a bad place,” Trent was saying, his words hitting me hard. “I want to make reparations. Rachel doesn’t deserve imprisonment for the things she has done.” He turned to the coven’s table, holding Lucy’s hand away from his face. “There was an arrangement, Oliver. It went too far. She should be pardoned, and you know it.”

Vertigo was dancing about my brain, and I was glad I was sitting. Trent was referring to the deal we’d agreed to in the FIB interrogation room, and with sudden clarity, I realized I was lost. If Oliver called my bluff, I was lost. My gaze found Ivy and my mother, both dealing with the stress in their separate ways. I couldn’t turn society upside down by telling them where witches had come from—and Oliver knew it.