My focus on Relos Var meant I didn’t notice the other person in the room, at first. The other person was kneeling at Relos Var’s feet, head bowed and on all fours. They were covered by a hooded cloak, so I couldn’t see details.

“Had any luck with the questioning?” the duke asked Var as he stepped forward. He showed no fear at all, no hint he stood before someone dangerous.

Someone whom Thaena herself had said she couldn’t stop.

“Oh yes, very much so,” Relos Var answered, but he barely glanced at Duke Xun. His eyes slid right past him and settled on me. “Janel Danorak. How my heart sings at your presence. I never doubted you’d survive.”

“Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” The duke clapped his hands together. “I met her out in the hall. She’s just as worried as we are about the witches, Var. I thought she might appreciate seeing all the work you’ve done to ferret out their coven.”

“I’m sure she’s thinking of nothing else,” Relos Var agreed. He put a hand on the man kneeling next to him and met my stare.

His idorrá hadn’t lessened in the slightest since the day I’d met him in Mereina. I still found myself tempted to flinch, to look away, to bow. And the look in his eyes …

I find it difficult to explain. The smile on his face shone through in his eyes too, but it was a secret smile: Relos Var sharing a fine joke whose punch line Duke Xun would never be able to interpret.

In that instant, I knew. Relos Var knew I knew. He understood that I had come there to point the finger at him. That smile acknowledged the truth between us. We both recognized our true nature: enemies.

It pleased him.

“Duke, whatever he has told you—”

“Janel? Janel, is that you?” A querulous voice rose up, reedy and broken. The man kneeling on the floor looked at me. The hood fell back from his gold laevos.

Tamin.

His cheekbones sported multiple bruises, purple and swollen. Both his eyes had been blackened. He was missing teeth. A sudden and immediate sense of wrongness washed over me.

He should have been able to heal himself. He hadn’t.

“Tell the duke about the witches, Tamin. There’s a good boy.” Relos Var’s hand stroked Tamin’s laevos as though petting a hound.

Tamin started to say something, then a visible shudder moved over him. “There was a whole coven of them. They made me … they made me do things. Had me under their spells.”

“And their leader? Who was she?” Relos Var asked with softest malice, while his eyes never left mine.

I felt like time stood still and pregnant even as Tamin spoke, even as I knew the duke and his mother, his soldiers, hung on every word.