“Anyway, I don’t have long.”
I found myself sitting up, agitated, and grabbed her hand. And just as quickly released it, when a feeling like a cascading shower of sparks began to burn my fingers.“Ah!” It felt like I’d thrust my hand into a pile of embers, and I knew I had to pull it back out, fast, before she burned me to the bone. Her silver-gray eyes flew to mine as I cried out. I wasn’t sure what she saw in my face.
Hers only revealed guilt, or perhaps pity. “Wow, I must have given you more than… anyway.”
“More?” I managed to gasp.
“More candellia.” She patted my arm, obviously unaffected by the sensation of burning, though her fingers felt like pokers hitting my flesh. Oddly, the pain faded when she stopped, and traveled along my limbs to my cock, becoming a completely different kind of heat. What had caused that fire to race?
Fire.Could it be the Lord of Fire, punishing me somehow?
I forced myself to be still, if only because I was afraid she might touch me again, and then I’d cry, or scream, and possibly come at the same time. “What do you mean, you don’t have long? What’s happened?”
“I’m being banished. Vilkurn decreed it. I’ve earned a consequence?—”
“For killing Lukenza at the ball last night? General Vilkurn must know he was a danger to all women, and girls.” He’d been the next on my list to dispose of, except she’d beaten me to it.
She waved a hand. “Eh. It’s not just that. He thinks I killed a bunch of others, too. Don’t get me wrong. I like that when lots of men suddenly start dying, people think it’s me. Good for the reputation, right?” She drew the plain knife from her belt again, then began to flip it under and over her fingers in a lightning-fast pattern as she spoke.
“Where is he sending you?” Panic flooded me. She couldn’t ride off to some country without me knowing where she was going, how to find her. I fought the urge to grab her arm again, no matter if it hurt. She wasmine, damn it.
I caught myself before I said it aloud, wondering why I’d even thought it. She was not mine. She belonged to the order. And the pain that I felt when I touched her made it clear, she belonged to someone else.
And he was a jealous god.
“Like I’d tell you that, Pict.” Ratter tossed her long, straight hair away from her face.
“Well, you can’t go,” I said. “You haven’t paid my price.”
“What did you say?” She leaned over the bed, the scent of scorched mint flooding my nostrils. Suddenly, one of those knives was at my throat, and I thought another might be pricking my erection, though it could have been her hand, with those painful sparks. I didn’t look down to see, since doing so would have meant slitting my own throat on the first knife. “What’s your price then, Pict?”
I thought for a moment. “You can keep the diamond. My price is the dagger. And a kiss.”
I really shouldn’t have pressed my luck. I should just have been grateful she didn’t stab my cock.
RATTER
My mother Haven was a soft-curved, soft-spoken woman, who I knew loved me as much as any of her brood. But the tone she used when she addressed me the next evening, as I slid into my chair a few minutes late for our weekly family dinner, was one usually reserved for her schoolroom, when a student had been particularly naughty. “Ratter? Meet me in the training yard immediately after dinner.”
“Ah, sure,” I said, noting how the others at the table—except for the very youngest children—all kept their eyes on their plates.Plates that were mostly licked clean, except for dessert. Maybe I wasn’t just a little late. But I didn’t think that was what had her so upset. I grabbed a bowl still half-full of greens and took a large helping, eating fast. “Any particular reason…?”
Papa Niko snapped out, “Not around the littles.” Robert and Trevor, though they’d both moved out after they took their apprenticeships, were back for the night, and both shot me mocking looks of disapproval.
“What’s been going on in the schoolroom, Mama Haven?” I asked, hoping I could distract her by talking about the classes she and my dads taught to about two dozen children from merchant families who’d fallen on hard times. “Any newstudents? How are the supplies holding up? I could get you some more story books from the castle, even tonight if I nip back up right now?—”
“Don’t even think about it,” Haven hissed, trying to look stern. It was a little like having a kitten hiss at me, especially after facing Vilkurn’s wrath earlier. But when I blinked at her with wide eyes, she glared at my bodice. “The sweet and innocent act works better without the bloodstains.” Haven knew my crew and I all protected the queen’s brood, and that I was training as Vilkurn’s apprentice spy, but she liked to pretend not to know about the bloodier aspects of the job.
I peered down and mumbled, “Shit, how’d I miss that?” I licked a finger and rubbed at the spatter of blood that was almost hidden in the fancy embroidery there.
“Shizz,” Eliza repeated from her highchair at the end of the table, where Papa Rand was feeding her small, cut-up pieces of a cinnamon roll.
He stuffed a piece into her open mouth before she could repeat the word, but it was too late. Toby, our three-year-old brother, was already singing the word to his favorite tune. “Shit shit shit your shit, shitty down the shiiii?—”
“Language, Toby,” Papa Graham said calmly. “Just because a grown lady uses a word doesn’t mean you can.”
All the kids at the table burst into laughter. “Grown lady? Who’s grown?” Peony giggled.
“Who’s a lady?” Baby added with a mouth full of pastry.
