A really bad joke…“Okay, he wasn’t a friend. More like a mortal enemy.” Now, anyway.

“Did you kill him?” Kaci asked without missing a beat, and it was my turn to frown.

“Of course not!” Though, apparently I was alone in believing I was right to let him live. “But he’s gonna be in a lot of pain for a very long time.”

“Good.” Kaci glanced around at the crowd of thunderbirds watching us closely. Listening. Waiting. “Can we go home now?” she whispered.

“Come this way,” called a screechy voice, uneven with age, drawing our attention to the far end of the room, where I’d last addressed a smaller crowd of birds.

“In just a minute,” I whispered to Kaci, and waved Lance forward. He came slowly, still standing tall, but staring at me as if I were his one shot at salvation. The irony truly stung. How could he look at me like I was supposed to save him when I was the one turning him in?

Maybe I should have just knocked him out.

“Who’s that?” Kaci stared at him openly.

“This is Lance Pierce,” I said, and he met and held Kaci’s gaze, as if his curiosity could not be denied. Maybe he wanted to know who I was trading his life for. Or maybe, like most toms, he couldn’t turn away from the sight of a young tabby, the very treasure enforcers—and indeed all toms—were taught from infancy to protect.

Kaci’s eyes widened and she edged closer to me as the circle of birds grew tighter around us, herding us to the end of the room. “Parker’s brother?”

“Yeah.” The floor of the great room was packed with birds now, and hardly a glimpse of empty floor showed, but for the five-foot circle surrounding us, putting us at the center of their unnerving attention. “He killed Finn.” A single glance up confirmed my suspicion: the perches and ledges had been abandoned. Everyone wanted to participate.

“What’s going to happen to him?”

I swallowed, then stood straighter, trying to emotionally distance myself—and Kaci—from whatever would happen next. Hopefully after we left. “That’s not up to us.”

“Faythe Sanders?” a voice called from behind us this time, and I whirled, but was too late to pinpoint the speaker. And so it begins…

“Yeah?”

“Present your evidence to the satisfaction of the Flight, and you and your kitten may go.” I saw the speaker that time, a mostly human man with only the suggestion of a beak in the protrusion of his nose.

“Sure. No problem.” I swallowed thickly and pulled Kaci closer. It sounded too easy. How exactly did they define satisfaction?

“This is Lance Pierce.” I gestured toward him with one hand, but he didn’t even glance at me, having evidently decided that I was the enemy, after all. We all were. But he had nowhere to go. I inhaled deeply and stared straight forward, avoiding looking at any particular bird, since I was speaking to all of them at once. And because I was far from comfortable with my decision. With what I had to do to walk out of there alive, with Kaci in tow.