My stomach dropped as if someone had ripped out the bottom. Turning slowly, I stared towards my friend.
Paige’s eyes were wide as she snapped her gaze between me and Chancellor Quill.
“You betrayed us?” Callan growled from my other side.
“What? No!” Paige protested, but she took a step back.
Pain stabbed into my chest. Had I been wrong about her? Had I been so desperate for one real connection with someone that I had unwittingly let a traitor infiltrate us? Callan had questioned whether she could be trusted or not, and I had resolutely declared that I trusted her with my life. Because I did. It was Paige. The one person who had always had my back and who had helped me escape Eldar in the first place. She would never betray me. There had to be some kind of mistake.
“Since you’re here, I assume that the other constables did their job,” Godric Quill continued as if my heart wasn’t fracturing in my chest. “Did you never find it odd that everyone who went to battle you kept screaming about how Lance’s friends were heading to the Enhancer? We wanted you to go there.”
We had of course considered that, but we had decided that it was worth the risk. If they truly knew the location, we had to get the Enhancer before them, so we had to come here regardless. And if they didn’t know the location and were trying to get us to show them where it was, it still wouldn’t work because they would never be able to track us. Or they shouldn’t have been able to, at least.
“That still doesn’t explain how you’ve managed to find your way here,” I said.
“I’ve already told you. Paige led us here.”
“No, I didn’t!” she screamed at him, desperation lacing her voice. “Your men grabbed me and brought me to that inn and then beat me up while trying to get me to show you where Audrey lives. But I escaped!”
Godric chuckled. “No, you didn’t escape. They allowed you to escape. We knew that you would run right to Audrey since you really have nowhere else to go, and then all we had to do was follow you.”
“Except we slaughtered all the constables who followed Paige,” I countered.
“Yes, you did. And those brave volunteers also told you that Lance’s friends were going after the Enhancer, didn’t they? All to make sure that you would race there, and bring Paige with you. Then all Jessica and the others had to do was to follow you and take the Enhancer from you once you had gotten it, while we focused on taking your real prize in the hills.” He nodded towards the kneeling students before us. “Though I see that that particular part of the plan didn’t turn out so well.”
Callan scoffed. “Neither did the rest of your plan. Seeing as your real prize wasn’t even in the hills.”
A sharp smile stretched Quill’s lips. “Oh but it was.”
“I did not lead you here!” Paige interrupted. Desperation flooded her face as she looked between me and Callan and Henry. “You have to believe me. I didn’t lead them here.”
“I believe you,” I said. Even though Paige and I had barely seen each other in six years, there was no way that she would have changed so much that she would suddenly decide to side with someone like Godric Quill. I turned towards the Chancellor. “Which means that you somehow managed to track her here without her knowing. As if…”
Understanding clicked into place.
“You got a tracker mage to mark her, didn’t you?” I said as I stared at him.
He just gave me a nonchalant shrug that all but confirmed it.
“Where the hell did you even find a tracker mage in Eldar? There hasn’t been one at the academy since…” I trailed off as another realization dawned. “You went to Malgrave and paid a dark mage to put the tracker on her.”
Godric shrugged again and then waved a hand in front of his face. “Sometimes we have to do things we don’t like in order to save the people we care about.”
A cold laugh tore from Callan’s throat. “So the ends justify the means, but only when they’re your ends?”
“Yes, because our ends don’t include a world filled with slaughter and slavery where only the powerful live a good life.”
“But if you put a tracker on me,” Paige interrupted before Callan could retort. Guilt and shame and panic still shone on her face. “Then it should have worn off long ago. The longest ones only last for ten days, which means that it should’ve worn off five days ago. And all eighty of you couldn’t have been following us the whole time, or we would’ve noticed.”
“Indeed.” Quill smiled at her. “We had some business to take care off before we could follow you. And you’re right, the tracker mark did wear off several days ago. But thankfully, we found Jessica, Leoni, and Darren’s horses in the stables over there, which meant that you were still here.”
Something kept pulling at my mind. Something that bothered me. Something that Quill had said.
Suspicion surged inside me as I finally remembered. Narrowing my eyes, I turned back to the Chancellor.
“What did you mean when you said that you went after our real prize?” I jerked my chin towards Lance. “If you didn’t mean your precious Binder?”
“Ah, that.” Another smug smile spread across Godric’s lips. “Yes, I suppose it is time that we got down to business. But I haven’t really conversed much with dark mages before, and I wanted to see how you would conduct yourselves when confronted with the fact that you have been thoroughly outsmarted. So far, I have to say that you’re behaving far less violently than I had expected.”
“You wanna see violence?” Callan pushed his knife so hard against Lance’s neck that the Binder flinched and sucked in a sharp breath. “I can give you violence.”
Fury flared up in Quill’s eyes. “Oh I really wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” Raising a hand, he snapped his fingers. “Because you see, we have something of yours too.”
The ranks of constables behind him shifted.
A moment later, two people dragged a third one out in front of the Chancellor of Eldar.
Fear exploded in my chest as I stared into Sam Foster’s blue eyes.
