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Chapter 71

Nora

“They’ve caught Isengrim.”

Her grandmother delivered the news on Nora’s third morning of imprisonment with the casualness of reporting the weather. Nora paused for only a moment in the doorway to the Blue Salon, a thousand thoughts racing through her mind at once.

“Did they?” Nora forced the same casual tone in return.

They were the first words Nora had spoken since the night she had won her ring. She knew the silent treatment was petty and childish. And that it was costing her more than it was Mercy. But everyone she would actually care to talk to was gone anyway.

Nora was alone.

She had been alone before the trials too.

But then there had been August.

And Lotte.

And Theo.

And now…being alone again was far worse than the first time. Like being pushed back out into the cold after enjoying a warm hearth. Lotte had been tidied away. The family’s disgrace swept into obscurity. The Herald published a fake story that she had retreated to the countryside to dedicate herself to the convent in which she was raised. Nora wanted to believe that Lotte was still alive. But she couldn’t be certain with her grandmother.

Nora’s code had been printed in the Bullhorn the day after the dance hall, so at the very least she knew that August had made it to the paper alive to deliver the missive. But she had no way to know if the Grims had received the message. If Theo had been able to trade the ring for Alaric’s life.

And August—

Last night, Nora had stood on one of the house’s balconies and screamed. Screamed at the top of her lungs. Hoping that someone might tell a newspaper. That somehow that would be enough for him to deduce that she hadn’t kissed him then abandoned him.

But all the papers were printing was that Honora Holtzfall was finally taking the heirship seriously. Now that she had a ring, she was forgoing her frivolous ways. Secluding herself in her duty. Determined to win.

That, at least, was true. And one way or another, it would be decided tomorrow. When she and Modesty entered the woods for the final trial.

“Isengrim was turned in by a tip from a neighbor,” Mercy informed her, sliding the newspaper across as she sank into her seat. The same one she had sat in the morning of the Veritaz Ceremony, when she had bound her magic to Honor Holtzfall’s ax. “For all they pretend to stand unified,” Mercy Holtzfall said, “it didn’t take them long to turn on their own.”

“Well, starving people out does tend to work in a siege.” Nora pushed the paper away.

New governor Hugo Arndt had promised measures after the night of the Grims’ attacks, and he had delivered on them.

Checkpoints and blockades had gone up throughout the city. Lower circles were refused entry to the upper circles, even those who had jobs in the 1st-circle houses and hotels. Those who were depending on their paychecks to feed themselves and their children. Supplies from outside the city were redirected to the 1st circle only. Rewards were offered for anyone who would turn a Grim in. The largest one, of course, was promised to anyone who could unmask Isengrim.

The new governor was truly 1st circle, through and through.

“Don’t be dramatic, Honora.” Mercy Holtzfall sighed. “Be ready to leave by six.”

“Leave?” That drew Nora up straight. The charmed manacles hadn’t even allowed her to set foot outside the house since she had entered it. Now her grandmother was talking about her being allowed to leave like it was nothing. Like she wasn’t a prisoner in her own ancestral home

“The governor will be giving a speech. We are expected to attend.”

It didn’t seem to matter to Hugo Arndt that his house had been turned into wreckage by the maze trial, he simply moved into the governor’s mansion. Where the previous governor had gone, Nora had no idea.

He had set up the steps of the grand house to look like a stage.

Hugo Arndt stepped up with a grin to applause and cheers from the crowd. His voice boomed through the zungvox as he made his speech. Nora barely heard any of it. Blah blah blah, return our city to safety. Blah blah blah, end of the plague of the Grims.

Instead, her eyes were scanning the crowd. She had spent the day waiting for her chance. Pacing, preparing. Changing clothes three times. The Bullhorn must have sent someone. Not August, maybe, but someone . Someone to whom she could slip the note that she had scrawled on a ripped-out page of a book from the Holtzfall library, in the hopes it might make it to August.

The rest of the crowd had eyes firmly trained on the stage. They were all waiting for the same thing, a glimpse of the man himself. Of the legendary Isengrim. And finally, Governor Arndt got to it. “Here, to stand trial for his crimes,” he said, announcing him like the newest attraction at the circus—and Nora couldn’t help it, even her eyes were drawn forward—“is the man who calls himself Isengrim.”

A shackled man was pulled onto the stage. The assembled crowd burst into a cacophony of hisses and boos.

He was just a middle-aged man. Sun-hardened skin around a scar over his face that had taken an eye with it. Muddy-brown hair going gray at the temples. He shuffled along the stage, shoulders slumped.

And with a cold wash of certainty, Nora knew.

This wasn’t the man who had spoken at the rally on the day of the second trial.

She wanted to be rational. It was impossible to compare the man in the mask speaking to his disciples to a shackled prisoner. A wolf in the wild wasn’t the same as a wolf in a trap. But this man, she was sure, wasn’t Isengrim.

And then a shot went off.

A knight grabbed Nora and pulled her down as the man onstage crumpled like a rag doll, blood spreading over the front of his shirt. All Nora could think was, Who had a gun? Those had been illegal in this country since they were invented.

“Murderer!” The cry carried over the crowd. “Murderer!”

Franklin Otto. Nora recognized him. His son had been among those killed by the Grims at the Clandestine Court.

Franklin handed the gun over without a fight, cameras capturing the scene as Governor Arndt stepped back up to speak. “Well, we were going to go through a trial,” Governor Arndt spoke over the cacophony that followed as Franklin Otto was pulled away. “But this was where things were inevitably headed.” A chuckle ran through the crowd, and Nora felt that old burning anger rise. “I suppose I should thank Mr.Otto for his expediency.”

And just like that, it was over.

Isengrim was dead.

No.

An impostor was dead.

It was possible that it was a misunderstanding. That someone had turned this false Isengrim over just to collect the reward. But something scratching at Nora’s brain told her that wasn’t it. There was something else happening here, another reason the Grims wanted the city to believe they had lost their leader.

“Grandmother.” Modesty closed in on them in a whirlwind of an ugly yellow dress. “I think this calls for a celebration. We are all going to gather on Angelika’s barge for a little river cruise. Nora must come!”

Nora knew exactly what was happening.

She was a prisoner in the Holtzfall mansion, but to Modesty, Nora’s invitation to live with her grandmother looked like favoritism. Modesty wanted Nora out of the mansion for the night. Away from their grandmother. Usually, Nora would rather have been anywhere but with Modesty. But since her alternative was to be locked in a mansion, for once, she and Modesty wanted the same thing. She just couldn’t let her grandmother know that.

“Must I?” Nora didn’t quite dare roll her eyes. Mercy Holtzfall would never grant her permission to do this if she looked like she wanted to. But she couldn’t oversell her disdain either. Her grandmother would see right through that.

“Yes, you must.” Nora felt a sting of satisfaction that turned to disgust as she realized how much her grandmother had trained her to think like she did. “But you will be home by midnight.” Mercy gestured absently to the charms on Nora’s wrists. “Or you will be brought home.”

Midnight. That would have to be enough freedom. Because tomorrow she entered the woods. And she would either come out the Heiress, or she wouldn’t come out at all.