Page 157 of A Tongue so Sweet and Deadly

When he offered her a crooked smile, a dry sob lodged in her throat. “Oh, Ard. Are you all right? Is anything broken?”

He shook his head. “They dragged me here so quickly Ilost my footing. I think I twisted my foot. The other stuff is just pretty decorations, don’t you think?”

She could have slapped him for trying to be funny right now.

But instead, she wrapped her fingers around the bars, trying to keep her voice level. “What happened?”

The smile fell from his face, hard lines taking over, and he squared his jaw as he glared behind her.

She followed his gaze, locking eyes with Frayson.

There was nothing kind in the old man’s eyes as he stared at her. “He’s a traitor, Lessia. We overheard him and Venko conspiring about another attack. And you better not have known about this or you will join him in that cell.”

“She didn’t know!” Ardow limped to the bars. “I worked alone. I didn’t tell Lessia or Amalise. Please just let them go.”

Her head whipped between the cell and Frayson.

There was no way.

Not Ardow.

What would he have to win by attacking nominees?

But when she met his eyes and guilt filled the brown, her stomach dropped.

“Why?” she whispered.

Ardow just shook his head, his shoulders dropping.

Staring at his matted hair, the bruises blooming across his face, she thought back to their conversations the past weeks.

Ardow urging her to stay away from Loche.

His conviction that he was a bad man.

The first attack, when the soldier backed away from her upon realizing who she was.

Venko knowing of her gift.

A stifled cry tore from her throat.

Ardow had challenged her to use her magic on him.

Not once in the past five years had he everworried she’d use it on him. Not even when they’d had heated arguments about how to manage the children or the businesses.

But he had when he learned she was joining the election…

A warm hand slipped into hers, and her eyes flew to the side.

Loche’s face was full of sympathy, and she couldn’t help another whimper from escaping as she tried to comprehend what was happening.

When his gray eyes flickered with pain, she sucked in a breath.

“You knew,” she hissed.

That’s why he’d been so strange this morning.

Why he’d barely been able to meet her eyes all day.

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