Page 153 of Brimstone

“Elroy believes you’re innocent. He defends you whenever he hears anyone speak ill of you.”

Well,thatwas a relief. Of course the old man knew the truth. Him better than anyone. But the others? Many of them had trusted me. Many of them had traded with me, counted on me, and now they thought that I had been informing on them to the guardians?

It was a clever play. Discredit someone the people of the Third thought they could trust. Make them questionanyonewho claimed to stand against Madra. Make them cease their incendiary activities, for fear of who might whispertheirnames into the queen’s ear.

“He’s black and blue.” Hayden’s harsh tone cut through my racing thoughts. “Elroy. Every time he stands up for you, someone throws a punch at him. He’s had a lifetime’s worth of split lips and black eyes lately, and he’s not as tough as he thinks he is anymore.”

My head snapped up, something troubling suddenly clicking into place in my head.Elroy believes you’re innocent.That’s what Hayden had said.Elroybelieves and notwe know.

There wasn’t a single mark on my brother. No cuts, no scrapes, no bruises.

No one had thrown a punch athimlately.

It occurred to me all at once that since I’d entered the room, he hadn’t smiled at me. He hadn’t fucking hugged me. Hadn’t even seemed all that relieved to see me.

Numb to my core, I took a wobbly step back from him, angling my head to one side in the vain hope that I might be able to get a better read on what it was that he was thinking. “You think I did it, don’t you?” I whispered.

Hayden clenched his jaw, looking away.

“You think I betrayed my friends.Youthink I actually worked for her!”

“I didn’tsaythat,” he snapped.

“But you’re not denying it! Gods and sinners, you actually think I worked for her,don’tyou?”

“I don’t know!” he exploded. “How the hell am I supposed to know? You never included me in any of the things you were working on. You never let me go anywhere with you after reckoning. You were always off to one secret meeting or another. You’d never breathe a word of where you were going, would you?”

“So that must mean I was in league with the guardians, then? Isthatit?”

“Maybe.” He set his jaw, looking imperiously down his nose at me. “You shut me out. Kept me a million miles away from anything that was important. I don’t know anything, Saeris, and that’s because ofyou. And we alwaysdidseem to have more water and more food than everyone el—”

He didn’t finish that thought. He couldn’t, with my fist slamming into his jaw. Hayden’s head whipped around so fast that I worried for a moment I’d hit him too hard and broken something, but then the rage his comment had elicited flared full force, and I hoped that Ihadbroken something. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and shoved him away.

Fuckyou, Hayden. More food?” I shoved him again. “More water?” Again. Harder. Tears blurred my vision. I stabbed my finger in his face, trying to speak, but only a sound of pure fury came out of me. I had to start again. “If we hadanything, if you didn’t starve and die in the fucking sand, it was because Ibledto keep you alive. I had to crawl on my stomach through sewer lines to reach the royal reserves. Once a week, I had to do that for you. Do you have any idea howdisgustingthat was? And did youeverhear me complain?” I shoved him hard enough that he fell down this time, but just like always, Hayden Fane was given a soft fucking landing. The tufted chair caught him, saving him from the indignity of landing ass-first on the rug.

My mouth was all bile and copper. Heat rose up my throat from somewhere deep within the basement of my soul. “I didn’t tell you what I was doing every day because I had to go into tense situations, in fucking horrible places, and do unpleasant things,” I spat. “I didn’t bring you with me to those places, because I didn’t want life to be hard for you like it was for me. But I see now that I’ve done you a disservice. You have this . . . this fuckingillusionthat life should be easy, that itowesyou something, and that’s on me.” I thumped my own chest, clenching my jaw to the point of pain. “I broke myself to look after you. I slipped into every other ward in Zilvaren, and I robbed, and I stole, and I bartered and traded, just to make sure that you were comfortable and your belly was full. And then you have theaudacityto turn around and accuse me of the most heinous thing I can possibly think of, because I made life too fucking easy for you while everyone around us had to suffer.”

“Saeris—”

“Shut up, Hayden. Just shut thefuckup.”

“No. Your hand,” he whispered. “There’s something wrong with yourhand.”

Another rune on fire.

This time, the rune for brimstone.

It swept artfully around the solid quicksilver rune, intertwined with it, connected and yet separate. If possible, it hurt twice as much as the quicksilver rune had, and the lines of fire trailing up my arm reached all the way to my elbow. For an hour, I just held my arm, breathing, trying to meditate my way through the pain. The gods only knew whether the breathing and meditating worked, but eventually the smoldering embers the rune cut into my flesh went out and the symbol glowed a soft red instead.

It was then that I had run to Fisher’s bedroom; the place that had been a prison to me once was now the place I felt safest in all Cahlish. Surrounded by my mate’s scent, I sat on the rug, back resting against the side of the bed, and I took out the book at last.

Not the tome Algat had given me.

Edina’sbook.

Dear child, I know you might not be feeling very trusting of me right now. I misled you with my request to keep this book secret from my son, and I apologize for any ill feelings that may have caused. I am not a woman given to participating in cruel games, and it brings me no pleasure to trick you. I can only hope that you will forgive me for the subterfuge and one day understand why it had to be done.

I am afraid, with that trickery still fresh in your memory, that I must ask you for a solemn promise. I am breaking all the laws of the universe with this gambit, but for it to work, you cannot skip ahead in this book. You will read things that will prevent you from facing the challenges in front of you for fear of the ones ahead, to the ruin of us all.