Chapter 86

Vaya wiped the sweat from her brow, crouching in the darkness as she watched the entrance to the seers’ cave. Had she gone too far?

It had seemed like such a fine plan to her at the time, when she was fueled with anger at the den mother for the way she had treated Rolan. If she had only thought longer on it, if she had not allowed recklessness to guide her, she might have considered the consequences of her actions.

For all the anger and frustration in her heart, Vaya was not a murderer. The last time she had been sent to collect berries for the seers it had sickened her to keep a handful for herself, indulging in fantasies of how she might slip a lethal dose into Netya’s food.

After pushing aside the darkest of her thoughts, she had then planned to make the girl seem weak and sickly with the berries, but that idea was foolish. The seers knew poison when they saw it, and their suspicion would only have fallen back on her eventually.

The berries had sat in thei