“And we can’t jeopardize this.” Maisie bent low in her chair, hands clasped between her spread knees. “We’ve been planning for months. We need to deal with the threat she poses, and the only way is to get her to Koravia. If that means you need to, you know, open your legs for Ivinscont—”

“Yuck!” Dale cheered.

“Then I agree with Leverett on the matter.”

Brella shook her head vigorously. “No, no. I can make her trust me without sleeping with her. There has to be a better . . .”

“No!” A voice slammed into Scratch’s back, making her teeth shake.

“I wouldn’t touch her with a . . .”

“Scratch! Wake up, please!”

“Besides, if I did plan to trick her, I could . . .”

“No, no! You need to wake up!”

The room began to fog at the edges, great clouds swallowing up the glowing, orange light, the people in their chairs. Hill and Dale grew faint, along with the threads, the spools, the colors melting into the fading warmth. Vel and Maisie evaporated into whiteness, then Mrs. Callin and Judah and Leverett until no one was left but Brella, sitting alone in her chair, ranting about how she would never, ever, as long as she lived, lay a hand on Scratch in anything other than violence.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

Scratch gasped into alertness. The night was still dark, the heavy moon hanging in a warm sky. Still she shivered. Her heart pounded in her chest and her ears rang. Her whole body was filled with freezing water, sharp chips of ice cutting into her bone.

“Scratch, please. Let me explain.” Brella crouched beside her, an animal at the ready. Her eyes were desperate, imploring in the dark. She shook terribly. Freckles stood dark in her ashen face, and her words sounded like choking, or drowning. “Please. It isn’t what it looks like.”

“It looks like you’re part of a plot to abduct me.” She was amazed by how level and emotionless she sounded. It made a sick sort of sense. She was beyond feeling, a hole of swallowing blankness opening up inside of her. “That you planned this whole thing. That you think I’m, what was it, a bloodthirsty imp?”

“No, Scratch. No.” Brella’s eyes widened even further. “That isn’t what I—”

“They wanted you to seduce me.” Her lips felt numb, her tongue a foreign thing. “Is that why you’ve been looking at me? Holding my hand?” The words sizzled on her lips like acid. “They convinced you?”

“No. I was never planning to do that. You and I, we . . .”

“What were you going to do with me?”

“Nothing, I—”

Scratch held up a hand. “Not like that. I mean, in Koravia. Why did you need me to go to Koravia?”

Brella swallowed, her throat clicking. “You’re too dangerous.”

“Dangerous.”