Page 69

It was the sixth day on Grace’s family’s first field, and there was still over half of the twenty-five acres to go. The diminished numbers were a huge hit to progress. It was putting the crop at risk.

To say nothing of the increase in taxes. Even if the Rogue was caught and executed, the mayor wouldn’t decrease taxes. He’d never lowered them once they were in place; he liked the excess funds too much. The people simply couldn’t sustain such costs.

At this point, farmers and crafts folk were starting to mutter about leaving Fidara. There was a great risk at least one family would abandon the town before the end of the harvest so they could retain as much of their wealth as possible for establishing a life elsewhere.

Grace only spared enough thought for Zerudorn gold to make sure they remembered to bring the butterfly, flattened between two pieces of ice, to the hidden compartment in the wall of the major oak. The mayor would destroy Fidara long before the mystic metal consumed even a single tree.

Willa was cursing the mayor’s name through the entire day’s harvest. Even when Grace’s faster pace had her a good fives rows ahead, Willa’s raging was audible.

Though she wanted her friend’s anger to fuel her own, Grace felt only the chill of impending doom.

Her misgivings deepened when Frank Tucker, dirty and tired from a day in the town square, regaled the harvesters with descriptions of racecourses and targets.

A tournament. That imbecile of a mayor was holding mandatory competitions. For what pernicious reason? What did it gain him?

Grace found herself muttering in anger like Willa, though at a far quieter volume. She couldn’t help herself when the questions and anger consumed her thoughts for most of the day.

When she managed to relegate such thoughts to the recesses of her mind, anxiety about her meeting tonight with the Rogue was there to take their place.

Would she find the man she’d spent a week bantering with in the forest, or the angry man who showed no qualms about vandalism?

But when Grace went to find him, first in the maple grove and then in the abandoned shed they’d gone to after their escape from patrolmen, the Rogue was nowhere to be found.

On the floor of the shed she found a note.

Can’t come. Tomorrow.

Chapter 17

He cursed the mayor. A Day of Morale? Ridiculous.

The mayor had called together trusted gentry to speak. Though he hadn’t been invited, he couldn’t pass the opportunity to listen in.

And it was a good thing he did, even though he’d had to miss his meeting with Grace.

At first consideration, showing up to compete as the Rogue would be an opportunity to win over the people and defend his honor. But it seemed an obvious trap.

He’d escaped the patrolmen the day before, but just barely. It wasn’t likely he could manage it again in an enclosed, crowded town square where the mayor had time to position his men.

But it was worse than that.

His life had always been at risk. He’d known that before Grace had tried to convince him of the fact. It was the other consequences he hadn’t let himself consider.

Could he allow the mayor to go through with it?

His life, or others’.

What would he do?

Chapter 18

When the light of the sunrise woke Grace the next morning, she groaned and reached for the glass of water beside her bed, wishing she could stay there all day. Instead, she dressed, ate her small breakfast, and then headed to town with her parents and brother for the mayor’s planned competition.

Russell was hopping about, excited.

“A festival during harvest! Will there be food? Or a reward. There must be a reward! I’m gonna win it.”

Grace sighed. Even after their conversation, Russell didn’t understand the reality of the danger they all faced. He begged the rest of his family to hurry. None of them complied.