Page 178 of Loreblood

Kleora blinks wildly, trying to wrap her head around what I’m saying. Her wide eyes tell me she’s in a daze—a stupor, likely of impregnable rage. “You are trying to tell me . . .” she begins, squeezing her quill so hard I hear it begin to snap. “. . . Jinneth is completelyfabricated?”

“I told you I was the only woman to ever train in the Firehold, bloodsucker. You weren’t paying attention when I spoke of tutoring Jinneth in the ways of the dagger. Besides, who fucking talks like that?” I lift my voice again, snickering, “A tough nut to smack, yeah?”

“How?!” Kleora screeches. Behind her, Brigsetch flexes, evidently confused about what’s transpiring but noticing his mistress is on the verge of losing control.

“How long have you been playing at this farce?”

I bob my head left and right. “Lovely, spirited Jinneth has been part of my story for, oh . . . six hours now? How long have I been sitting here? Apologies, I’m a bit drunk.” I shake my head, my voice dimming. “Jinneth was the friend I wished I had, madame. She had levity and freedom in her life when I felt I had none. A girl half my size with twice the personality.”

I break into a smile, certain Madame Kleora is going to reach across the table and either throttle me or claw my throat out with her bare hands.

But she can’t. Because it’s not her job to drain me. It’s Overseer Verant’s—hermaster’s.

Kleora stares at me with impotent rage, so I keep talking to fill the void. “Isn’t it a funny coincidence how close her name is to her brother Jeffrith’s? Why, you just flip a few letters, give her a fairer but snarkier disposition, and boom, you have a sister.”

My head slants curiously. “Have you never had an overactive imagination, Madame Kleora? I was an only child in a basement with other screaming orphans. I’ve had plenty of practice. Ididgaze at the painting on the wall of the Chained Sisters quite often, though. Iron Sister Keffa gave that painting a name—Jinneth.A similar name to a former young bastard I knew. My first kill.”

Kleora puts a hand to her temples, rubbing and squeezing, assumedly to keep her mind in her skull. “What about Aelin’s murder during your first shadowgala at Manor Marquin?”

“Pardon?”

“TheactionsJinneth did in your story! Are those lies as well?”

“Oh. That. Well, you have yourself to blame for that. It’s a shame Olhav has forbidden the pursuit of knowledge, Kleo. You bloodsuckers with your superior intellect”—I shrug—“makes you easy marks. If you’d done your due diligence, madame, you’d know Demilord Tymon Aldion has a human concubine to this day, and already a grayskin whelped to her. That human is Aelin. No one ever killed her, ma’am.Shewas chosen at the shadowgala as broodstock, not Jinneth. True be damned, I justtoldyou about seeing Lord Aldion at the most recent gala with a tall, lanky woman in tow.”

“You never named her,” Kleora snarls.

I smile innocently. “An honest mistake, I’m sure.”

The chronicler jolts to her feet with such speed the chair topples over behind her. She leans forward, both palms splayed on the table, spittle flying from her lips, the mask of perfect beauty ruined by unbridled wrath. “Just how much more of this chronicle is utter nonsense, Sephania Lock?!”

“I suppose you’ll never know, since I’m dying soon. Overseer Verant doesn’t have to know your failure though, chronicler. Youcan keep this little secret between me, you, and Bregsitch over there.”

“Why did you invent her?”

My eyes flicker over to the window. Daylight is approaching—I can see the first hint of the sunlight over the mountains. Below the edge of the table where my hands are hidden, I dig into my wrist with my nails.

Though I never kept my nails long before, I didn’t have much of a choice spending the past few months in this hellhole.

When the skin of my wrist splits, I resist wincing at the prick of pain as blood begins to bead. “It’s all about timing, Madame Kleora. Or, rather, filling time.”

She straightens, scoffs. “Filling time for what?”

A muffled explosion rings out, seemingly far away—

And the foundation of Sutlis Spire rumbles and shakes. Kleora stumbles on unsteady feet, holding the edge of the table. I sway in my chair, the world going dizzy. Bregsitch doesn’t budge an inch due to his girth. He reaches out to stabilize his mistress by the arm.

The rumbling ceases like it never happened.

I give my jailer a wicked smirk. “That.”

Chapter 55

Boots pound on the staircase below, muffled, growing louder by the second.

Below the table, my blood trickles down my wrist—

And when it connects with the handcuffs encircling them . . . they begin tosizzle.