VALIK POV
He gave me a name.
It was a name I’d never heard before.
A man, he informed me. A rogue leader. Feared in the lowlands.
Maethys’s grandmother had stolen from them. He wanted revenge.
It slid too easily off his tongue.
A lie.
I knew it the moment he said it.
Not because I knew the name. Because he watched my face too closely afterward, searching for reaction, trying to see if it landed.
He was testing.
I kept my expression blank.
“What else,” I demanded.
The prisoner leaned forward, warming to it. “She was moving fast. We were to end it before…”
“Before what,” I snapped.
He paused. His eyes flicked away.
That was real.
He didn’t want to say the next part.
He swallowed and forced a smirk. “Before she became a problem.”
A problem for who.
He said it like the words
