Cass found the problem with Fen's theory before we'd made it a mile from Thornridge.
"The reveal doesn't work on something that doesn't have a conscience," she said. She wasn't being cruel about it. Just precise, the way she was about everything that mattered. "What Lira did to Aldric, showing him the cost of his choices, that works on a person. Someone with enough self left to be broken by what they see." She glanced at Fen. "You're assuming this thing has that. Something it can reckon with.
"Fen didn't answer immediately.
That scared me more than if he'd argued.
"We don't know what it is," I said.
"No," Cass said. "We know what it does. There's a difference." She pulled her coat tighter. The bruising around her eye had gone purple and yellow, the colors spreading toward her cheekbon
