Page 37 of Harbinger

But he remains silent, which feels like answer enough.

EIGHT

“Who?” I repeat, my voice trembling, as Bishop unlocks the trunk.

He lifts the lid and then tosses me a pair of boots. “Put these on.”

I don’t ask him where we’re going this time. I pull the boots on, not bothering to fasten them. They’re too big anyway. I tug at the high collar of my borrowed dress. Vessica and I aren’t going to be best friends anytime soon, but I owe her for thinking of that.

Bishop waits by the open door. “After you.”

He sounds as put out as Broderic when he got stuck babysitting me when we were kids.

I don’t give Bishop the satisfaction of a passing glare as I stride out of his room.

He moves into step beside me in the corridor. “You aren’t going to ask what happened?”

“Do I want to know?” I snap even though my heart is pounding. “Would you even tell me?”

He huffs in response. How illuminating.

“Someone died?” I ask anyway. “Is that why people are screaming?”

“Yes.” He shoots an incredulous look at me. “The king has been assassinated.”

King. Assassinated. Each word is harder to process than the last. My steps slow until I come to a complete stop. “Someone killed the king?”

Harbinger.

I push the thought away.

“And cut out his heart,” he says grimly.

The ground seems to slip from under my feet. Miraculously, I stay upright.

“A heart collector,” I say breathlessly. The stuff of fairy stories our mother told us. Boogeymen meant to make us behave.

Or so I thought.

“Now who’s the superstitious one?” he asks.

There is something dismissive and slightly arrogant in his tone that thaws my shock, and I march forward. “Spoken like someone who let a killer walk straight into the palace and murder the king.”

Of course he’s above the old childhood fear written into every generation. He’s been forged into something meant to strike fear, not yield to it.

His gloved hands curl into fists, but his gaze remains straight ahead of us. “Remind me why I keep saving your life?”

His guess is as good as mine.

“How can someone just get inside the palace and do that?” I ask without thinking. A second later, it hits me, and I halt in my tracks again, my stomach pitching. “You think I had something to do with it.”

That’s why he asked me if I was a witch. I wish I could change shape, could slip into the night, could leave all of this behind.

“No, I don’t think that, because I had eyes on you all night,” he says in a low voice.

The reminder is a stab to the chest. The king is dead, and I am alive. For some reason, that feels backwards. Mostly because now I suspect the man who should have been protecting him was protecting me.

Uneasiness ripples through me in waves of fire and ice until I’m covered in a cold sweat.