“I’m called Sage,” the woman said.
I could make out her face a little in the moonlight. She was slender, almost gaunt; dark-skinned, with thick, spirally curls that had leaves caught in them. Her dark eyes stared into mine without fear.
“How do you know my name?”
She coughed, probably because my knee was still pressed into her sternum, but she didn’t try to fight me again. She even smiled at me. “I’m with the Crims. I’ve been following you for days, looking for the right time to speak to you.”
My pulse beat dully in my ears. “The Crims?”
She nodded and started to try to get up. I lessened the pressure of my knee slightly, and she smiled wider.
“I’ve heard a lot about you—” she began, but I slammed my knee into her sternum again, knocking her back down.
“The hell?” Sage growled.
“What did you do to my dog?”
“Tranquilizer,” Sage said. “The dog will be fine in a few hours. I carry them in case I’m attacked by wild animals.”
Dog would be fine. The relief made me tremble.
“If you merely wanted to speak with me, why skulk behind me for days?” I asked. “I’ve been alone in the forest for a long time. You’ve had ample opportunity to approach me. Yet, you didn’t. It doesn’t add up.”
Sage coughed again. I may have knocked the wind from her lungs. She wasn’t smiling anymore.
“You were spying on me,” I guessed. “Why? Do the Crims want to make sure I get home safe, or is there something more sinister afoot?”
“Sinister?” Sage said, but her voice lacked conviction.
Sweat prickled my palms as my thoughts spun through the possibilities. Was this about Kassian? Did they know what I knew? Did they want me to die so his secret remained safe?
But no—almost no one knew who Kassian was. He was an agent on one of the deepest levels of the organization.
Still—
“Would you please let me up?” Sage asked. “There’s a rock digging into my spine, and we’re vulnerable here. The Sworn might be patrolling the area, since…”
She trailed off. Our gazes tangled. I held my breath, waiting for her to finish her sentence.
If she’d been spying, she knew as well as I that Kassian was here. And she knew I’d gone to see him, too.
I didn’t say anything. I let the silence stretch, a trick I’d learned. Too many people rushed to fill silence. She might tell me what she knew without my having to ask, and reveal what I was thinking.
“The Silver Wolf is here,” Sage said through her teeth after another pause.
Clearly, she’d wanted me to acknowledge the fact first. Why? So she could pretend she hadn’t known? Or so she could take it as some admission of guilt on my part?
I didn’t remove my knee from her chest. “You haven’t answered any of my questions yet. Why are you spying on me, Sage?”
She grumbled something under her breath and put a hand on my knee as if she wanted to try to shove me off. When I didn’t yield, she said, “Yes, I was following you to keep an eye on you.”
“Why?” The silver necklace had come free from where I usually kept it tucked out of sight, and the chain and charm dangled in the air between us. Sage looked at it as she answered.
“We know you were married to the Silver Wolf. A clever bit of work, that. We know how you escaped as well. You’re a slippery one, aren’t you? I bet you’re absolutely covered in silver from head to toe. This necklace is just the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it? You’re resourceful. We could use someone like that in our ranks.”
“You still haven’t answered the question,” I growled.
Sage wriggled on the dirt beneath me as if trying to get more comfortable. “The Crimson Heart wants to know if you’ve been tainted by feelings for the Silver Wolf.” She said the word feelings as if even the concept was poisonous.
The Crimson Heart. The leader of the Order of the Crimson. The one who could give the order for Kassian to be freed from his oath.
If only I knew who they were, and where to find them.
Perhaps if I was a loyal Crim, I might be trusted with the information.
The lie came so easily. “Why on earth would I have feelings for a monster? The Sworn killed my father, mother, and best friend. They robbed me of everything. I’m disgusted by your assumptions.”
Sage arched a dark brow. “Then why did you sneak into the village to visit him?”
My heart thudded sickly against my ribs. How much did she know? Had she followed me into the town? Had she heard what I’d said to the Sworn? My claim that I could give them information about the Crims?
“Well?” Sage asked.
Sometimes, enough truth could convince someone that the rest of your untruths were true, too.
“Yes, I knew Vixor Rae was here. And yes, I sneaked into the village to confront him,” I said. More lies now, and I spun them like a spider’s web. “The man is cruel beyond words. I wanted him to know that I am going to destroy him.”
“A bold decision,” Sage said. “You would walk into an enemy’s lair and tell them that you’ll kill them? Why didn’t he have you executed on the spot, pray tell? Your silver necklace is useless against him. He isn’t poisoned by silver, and I’m sure you know that, since you were his mate.”
Her eyes stared into mine, daring me to lie as she waited for my answer.
I was walking a tightrope here. If I said the wrong thing, would she tell the Crims that Kassian was compromised? He’d fallen in love with me, something he wasn’t supposed to do.
I had to protect him.
“Because I know things about him that he doesn’t want the others to know,” I said. “I’ve been privy to some of his kinks, some of his fantasies. He isn’t quite as disciplined as one might think. He drinks to excess, and he didn’t want to marry and pass on his lineage because the idea of raising children disgusts him.”
Sage tilted her head against the dirt as she listened. This was new information to her, I could tell, and none of it hinted in the slightest that I might know Kassian was a spy planted by the Crimson Heart.
“But why go in the first place?” she asked finally. “You say you could expose his faults, so he had to let you go. But what was your purpose in putting yourself into his hands?”
“I want to see him humiliated,” I said. Another lie.
“And what did you do?”
“I lied,” I said. “I told him false information.”
Sage’s eyebrows quirked. “And what false information did you give him?”
I thought of the scrap of paper that Kassian had pressed into my hand.
I could tell him, warn him. I could keep him from being under any suspicions if I played this right, and I could shake the Crims’ suspicions off my back at the same time.
“I told him that he’d find an outpost of Crims straight east of here, one days’ walk,” I said.
Sage’s lips parted. “The place with the abandoned village? It’s swarming with treecrawlers.”
I forced myself to smile. “Of course. And the treecrawlers are all inside the village ruins—with any luck, Vixor Rae won’t know they’re there until he and his Sworn are surrounded.”