Chapter 23 · The Healer Goes on Trial

"You will confess now, or you will confess on your knees."

Su Liyue's voice cut through the hall like a scalpel through skin. I'd been awake maybe ten minutes, dragged straight from the granary wreckage into this marble nightmare of a court chamber, still smelling like smoke and Huo Yanzhan's blood. My scrubs—well, the silk robe they'd shoved me into three weeks ago—were stiff with ash and dried sweat.

The Imperial physicians formed a half-circle behind Su, all jade hairpins and embroidered sleeves, looking like they'd stepped out of a historical drama and into my autopsy.

"Confess to what?" I said. "Saving your warlord's life? Again?"

"To practicing demonic arts." Su stepped closer. Her perfume hit me, some floral thing that probably cost more than my student loans. "To poisoning the grain stores, then pretending to heal the victims to win Commander Huo's favor."

I laughed. Couldn't help it. The sound bounced off the lacquered pillars, wrong and sharp.

"You think I poisoned fifty people so I could play hero? Do you hear yourself?"

"I hear a foreign witch who refuses to explain her methods.