The voices faded as the two young men disappeared around a corner. Tiri groaned inwardly. I’m going to kill Coll and Benin when I see them. She didn't know what they'd done, but she knew one thing. Sleep would have to wait. She had a captured oaf to locate.
As she reached for the handle, the bedroom door swung inwards. She gasped and stepped backward to avoid getting hit.
A woman stood in the doorway.
Her hair was a mess of brown curls so disheveled it could easily have been home to several mice and maybe a small bird or two. A pair of painfully bloodshot eyes glared out from beneath the tangled mass. They burned with hostility, as fierce as a basilisk’s gaze.
The woman took a step into the room. Tiri was suddenly very aware that this woman was much larger than her. And she was standing between Tiri and the exit.
Who is she? And what in the stacks is she doing here, now?
"Who the hell are you, girl? And what in the twelve hells are you doing in my room?"
The woman's eyes flicked to the bedside cabinet. The drawers were still wide open, exactly as Tiri had found them.
But she'd forgotten to replace the secret compartment.
Scowling, the curly-haired woman—Lila's roommate, evidently—strode across the room to the drawers.
"But I checked," she muttered. "I checked! How—"
Tiri didn't wait to hear her next words. She bolted for the open door, desperately seeking the relative safety of the hallway, now slowly filling up with rangers in varying states of dress on their way to breakfast.
Almost there…
"Argh!"
She was yanked back into the bedroom doorway. Shoulder aching, collarbone throbbing like it was just kicked by a horse, Tiri fought for purchase on the leather strap that now felt as though it were crushing her chest. The woman had somehow moved quickly enough to cross the room and grab Tiri by the satchel. Now she held her fast.
"You were going through my roommate's things. Why?" Her breath was hot against Tiri's ear.
Mind racing, Tiri stared at the doorway, her freedom so near yet so far. She could probably make it; a quick twist and duck and she'd be free of the satchel and running. But that would mean leaving behind Lila's journal, not to mention all her own research notes from the last few weeks.
"Tiriani Moon," hissed the woman. "I recognize your description from your file. Where are the others? What happened to Lila?"
"I don't know where they are!" gasped Tiri. "But Lila's dead. I made my report—"
"Lies, all of it," she growled through gritted teeth. "What really happened down there? Tell me the truth before I beat it from you!"
The fist to her kidney felt like a rock from a catapult. Tiri would have doubled over from the pain had the woman's grip on her not been so strong.
"Gahhh... help... help!"
She gasped the words on instinct, and instantly regretted it. She was an impostor who'd just been caught breaking into a ranger's private quarters. Why was she trying to attract the attention of even more rangers? They'd just throw her in the cells with Coll and turn her in to the Guildmaster—if they didn't beat her black and blue first for daring to violate the rooms of one of their own.
Oddly, her assailant also seemed to think calling for help was a bad idea. She clapped a hand over Tiri's mouth and hissed, "Hush!"
But it was too late. Two figures appeared in the doorway. Both young women looked sleep-tousled, and one of them kept glancing back down the hallway, from where the faint smell of bacon and toasted bread was now starting to waft.
"What in the name of Talamis is going on here?" one asked, yawning.
"Are you all right?" the other said to Tiri.
She stared at them both, eyes wide and disbelieving over the hand that was currently gagging the lower half of her face. Thankfully they seemed to get the message that actually, no, she most certainly was not all right.
The first woman stepped into the room, pulling her white-blond hair back into a tail as she did.
"You going to let that poor kid go, or are we going to take this to the captain?"
The sleepiness in her voice was gone, replaced by outright hostility. That hostility was mirrored in the second woman's glare as she too stepped forward.
"You're on your final warning, right?" she said. "One more strike and you're out on your ass."
Tiri's curly-haired captor slumped, and her grip on Tiri slackened. But she did not let go.
"I found this little snake in my room. She was going through Lila's things!" The big woman's voice was almost pleading. "You know there's something strange going on. Varnell is trying to cover it up, but this girl knows—"
"Put a stocking in it, Sinica," interrupted the first woman angrily. "Your roommate died in the field. A shame, but it happens. Get the hell over it."
"Yeah, and quit it with the crazy conspiracies. No one wants to hear them."
"And no one wants you drawing negative attention to the rangers. In fact, no one wants you here at all."
The woman finally released her hold on Tiri and took a step back. The other two rangers nodded, eyes narrowed.
"That's right. Not another peep out of you, or we'll take matters into our own hands."
"You'd best keep sleeping with one eye open, crazy."
Shocked at the sinister direction the conversation had taken, it was a moment before Tiri realized the two women had left. Seizing her opportunity before Sinica could resume her interrogation, Tiri darted for the door and hurried down the corridor without looking back.
Her lower back throbbed from the punch to her kidney, and the vulnerable space between her shoulder blades was tingling. She felt as though the ranger’s bloodshot eyes were following her. Heart still pounding from her near-miss, Tiri turned a corner and broke into a run. She couldn't get away from that room fast enough, even though she was most likely running straight into even more danger—particularly if she
