Page 71 of Truth's Blade

Melodie lifted her head, looked at the princess, then gave a nod. She laid out a sheet of paper and opened her paint box again.

“Have the thread ready,” she said.

Vivi glanced over at Theo. “You have some loose threads in your coat.”

Theo looked down, saw she was right. It probably happened when he had tumbled into the trap near Marchant’s meeting place.

Vivi crouched at his feet, looking up at him. “Can I pull them loose?”

He nodded, a prickle of understanding spreading from the back of his neck, down his arms.

She was going to embroider something. Like her mother.

Her secret was going to come out.

She tugged at the ripped edges on the hem of his coat and pulled three or four long threads loose.

If he were to guess, she had just asked Melodie to paint her a needle, and sure enough, as soon as she had the long threads of dark gray in her hand, Melodie set a picture of a slim needle in front of her.

“Get Ric’s shirt off him as carefully as you can,” Vivi told Jon.

Jon frowned, wanting to ask why, but Theo glanced at the boy, gave a nod, and after a moment’s hesitation he helped Ric lift the shirt over his head.

“What’re you up to, Viv?” Ric coughed a little as he bent to get the shirt off, and Theo could see the dark bruising along his abdomen.

His fury rose up again, and he forced it down.

“I’m helping you.” The moment the needle appeared on top of the paper, she snatched it up, threaded it, and grabbed the shirt Jon held out for her.

She turned it inside out and began to sew, moving in quick, sure stitches.

Melodie was busy with a second needle, and it was ready to go almost exactly when the first one disappeared.

“It’s such a strange feeling,” Viviane said as she rubbed her forefinger and thumb together. Then she was threading the new needle, humming something as she did it, and the tingle Theo felt earlier rose up again.

This is what the queen did.

This was magic.

“Get it back on.” Vivi bit the thread off with her teeth and Theo just caught a glimpse of an image of some kind of plant before she turned it the right way around again. She handed it back to Ric. “Wear it right up against your skin.”

Jon helped him, and no one said anything as he pulled the shirt over his head with a wince. It was the kind of silence that was full of unspoken questions, but no one uttered a word.

Melodie finished packing up the paints, and this time, she didn’t bother wrapping them up and hiding them. She simply put them on the top of her things in her bag.

The significance of that wasn’t lost on him, and when she looked up, as if she sensed his gaze on her, their eyes met.

“What is your strategy?” he asked her. He wanted to ask her not to do it, not to give herself up, but he knew it was the one sure way to get the children to safety.

She set her bag carefully against the wall and then peered out into the growing dusk. “I’m hoping it gets a little later before we reach a deal, so it’s harder for him to see you in amongst the others in the dark,” she said.

“I’m not going with the others.” Theo spoke slowly. “He doesn’t know I’m here. I’ll stay behind. Everyone will leave who he knows about. You’ll step out. He won’t expect there to be another person still inside.”

She stepped out of the doorway, squinted at him in the growing darkness. “The others won’t know where all the traps are.”

“We’ll tell them. Right now.” Theo wasn’t going to bend on this.

He gestured all eight of them over. The children needed to understand the danger just as much as the adults. He told them about the trap on the path from the workshop to the forest, the pit near the clearing, the spider’s web over the road, told them how to avoid each one.

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