“Han and Dancer won’t be fooled,” she said. “You won’t outlive me for very long, either.”

Nightwalker laughed. “You are more slow-witted than I thought. Hunts Alone wrote the note that called you into this trap, didn’t he? He will cut your throat and paint his mark on your body with your blood. And this time, you won’t be here to save him.”

Would it work? Maybe. Han had enemies who would be glad to pin her murder on him. And Nightwalker had gotten away with murder so far.

“You should have accepted my handfast gift,” Nightwalker said. “We would have established a dynasty of clan royalty to replace the usurpers who have ruled for thousands of years. We could have driven the gifted from the mountain home. Now I will have to do it on my own.”

Raisa said nothing, too stunned to conjure speech.

“I had such high hopes for you,” Nightwalker continued. “You carried Averill’s blood, and you thrived in the upland camps like a true clan princess.

“And then it all fell apart. Your mother was a fool—seduced by Lord Bayar’s honeyed words. Bayar cuckolded your father even while he schemed to reestablish jinxflinger rule. It dishonored Lord Averill, a Demonai. It could not be tolerated.”

Raisa sucked in a breath. What had he just said?

Nightwalker continued, as if compelled to explain himself. “With Marianna gone, I hoped you would be the upland queen we had longed for—the first clan queen since the Invasion. I was wrong. You were clan on the surface—but a flatlander inside.” He spat the word flatlander like an epithet.

“You murdered my mother,” Raisa said, resting her head against the brick wall. She felt hollow, scalded inside, emptied of a thousand assumptions and beliefs.

“I did not intend to,” Nightwalker said. “When I learned that she meant to change the succession, I went to see her, to persuade her to change her mind.”

“Oh, no,” Raisa said. “You went to kill her, Nightwalker. You did not come through the front door like a man. You came over the roof, or slipped in through a window so the guards in the hallway wouldn’t see you.” That wouldn’t have been difficult for a Demonai.

“I wanted to speak with her, only,” Nightwalker insisted. “But she ordered me out. She said it wasn’t my place to question her decisions. I became angry. We struggled, and she fell.”

Nightwalker’s inability—or unwillingness—to control his temper was well known.

“My mother grabbed your Demonai talisman, didn’t she?” Raisa said. “The chain broke.” Raisa recalled the meeting at Marisa Pines—Bird unwrapping the wizard amulet the murderer had supposedly left behind. Raisa remembered Bird’s odd demeanor at the time. “And Night Bird covered for you. She lied. She pretended she’d found that amulet in the garden.”