“Ask him.” Markam glanced sideways, where Jaxon stood just outside the saloon doors. His eyes narrowed, when he saw Sonara pressed against Markam on the porch.
Sonara stepped away. “It’s not what it looks like.”
Markam chuckled and smoothed out his shirt. “Isn’t it, though?”
“No,” Sonara said. “It most definitely is not. Jaxon, fetch the sword from where you’ve stashed it. We’re to sell it immediately and give Markam his cut. Pay off our debt and walk free of this mess. I want no part in this deal with the princess.”
Markam clicked his teeth as if scolding a child. “Oh, Sunny. How precious little your comrade has shared with you after all.”
Jaxon’s body went rigid. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his dark hair. “I… I was going to tell you, Sonara, but…”
She turned to him, slowly, as the truth began to dawn on her. “You said the sword was safe. Stashed here in Sandbank.”
Jaxon held up his hands in pre-apology. “It’s… safe… yes. That much is true. But I don’t precisely knowwhere.”
“And why, exactly,” Sonara asked softly, “is that?”
“Because…” Jaxon took a step back, his shoulders scraping against the saloon doors. “I gave it to Markam as an up-front payment for helping me free you.”
Goddesses be damned.
Sonara placed her hand on the pommel of Lazaris, suddenly wondering what it would feel like to skewer both brothers at once. Why, after all the years she’d known them both, was shealwaysgetting caught up between the two? It was like being passed between two dance partners who couldn’t tell their left foot from their right.
“I was desperate, Sonara,” Jaxon explained.
She could sense that desperation on his aura now, as her curse peeked its head out of the cage.Like spun sugar on a stick.His voice even tremored as he turned to face her, eye to eye.
Her anger tried to win over. But Jaxon was so damnloveablewith his honesty. She saw him, for a moment, as she once had,ten years ago, standing before her with all the care in the world as he lifted her head from the sand and pressed a waterskin to her cracked lips.
I’ve got you,Jaxon had said then.It’s alright.
Once he chose to let a person into his life, he let them in for good. Even if they were as rotten to the core as Markam. He sighed now, as if trying to explain his actions once and for all. “You were almost to Deadwood by the time I got to you. If I’d ridden Duran, I wouldn’t have made it on time. And Markam wouldn’t agree to help without payment. You know I had to, right?”
Sonara glanced to Markam, who was clearly flexing his arms while checking out the curve of his muscles beneath his jacket.
“What’s she paying you?” Sonara asked. “Why are you so intent on getting us to join you and her? She’s our enemy, by birthright and by blood.”
“Because,” he said, his voice missing that mocking tone for the first time, “someday, as long as she survives, she’s to take her father’s place. She’s to becomequeen.And in a Deadlands ruled by her, Sonara, we’ll befree.Better than free, we’ll be on her court for doing this. We only need to help her do one little thing…”
Sonara laughed in his face. “You want us to become some sort of pieced together, ragtagcourt?Help her waltz into Stonegrave and steal her father’s throne out from under him? By the looks of her she’s been his prisoner for years. She can’t become queen.”
“She can,” Markam said. “It’s her birthright. Shadowblood or not, prisoner to him or not, she’s entitled to his crown. This is our chance to align with her. And we’ll be richer than rich, if we do this job. I know her, Sonara. Perhaps better than anyone does.”His eyes took on the sheen of a man thinking of the past. “We can trust her.”
“Why?” Sonara asked. “Tell me why you think you can trust her.”
He glanced away, his jaw rigid. “Because we were lovers.”
“Oh, Markam,” Sonara said. “Don’t tell me…her?”
Because suddenly she pieced it all together.Thiswas the other woman. The one who’d stolen Markam’s heart… and broke it. A few years ago, he’d disappeared for six months, fully out of touch, only to return one night, tears in his eyes as he came to Sonara.
I don’t want to talk,he’d said.I just want the pain to go away.
Sonara had taken his hand and led him into the dark. There, they’d traded their pain: kisses to cover up the lies they were telling themselves, tangled breaths to take the place of heartless words. What followed was a whirlwind romance, one that would never last, for they were too broken to love each other truly.
The double doors next to them opened suddenly, brightness and laughter spilling out as two drunken patrons stumbled into the sands.
“This is the job of a lifetime,” Markam said. “She needs us to do one thing, Sonara. One little job, and we’ll be cleared. Names wiped from the scrolls, life ready to go on in blissful oblivion, and someday, when she takes his place… Don’t you want to be a princess, Sonara? She could make you one.”
