I tried to talk to Prince Oliver again, but he wasn’t having any of it. Every attempt led to the butt end of a spear coming through the bars to collide with some yet-unbruised part of my anatomy. I decided to cut my losses while there were still parts of my body that didn’t hurt. I doubted that I could convince Oliver of anything, not without some measure of proof. About the only bright spot was, despite being motivated by revenge, Oliver was intent on bringing me back before the Dermonica court to face justice. That would at least give me another opportunity to tell the truth, though I suspected things would probably go as well with his father the duke as it had with Oliver. It did mean two things. One was they weren’t going to kill me right now. The second was that they probably weren’t going to sacrifice me in some ritual to their dark gods. I had to take the good where I found it. • • • They camped the night through an ice storm.
