Will wet his lips before delivering his ask. “We need passage into Kakos.”
His words settled into the silence that followed. It was pointed, and heavy, but Will let it stretch on until Dauphine finally said, “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to kill the Dark Saint. Are you truly that desperate to clear your name?”
“Surely you don’t believe idle gossip, Dauphine,” Will remarked.
“Gossip, no. But I do believe the accounts coming from Sitya. An entire group of prisoners annihilated, not even the children spared.”
Will bit back his defense of Aya. It did not matter what Dauphine thought his motives were. If her crew could get him into Kakos, he didn’t care if she thought him motivated by selfish gain.
Perhaps, in some ways, he was.
Dauphine took a step closer to him, her gaze calculating as it roved across his face.
“Oh, this is rich,” she said softly, her eyes widening in recognition. “You’re not out to kill her. You’re trying tosaveher.”
Seven hells, desperation had rendered him far too easy to read. He’d had a lifetime of hiding his love for Aya, but now…
Now it was written in every hopeless bargain he struck.
“What makes her so special, Enforcer?”
“What do you care about our motivations?” Will asked instead. “It’s never been a prerequisite.” His patience, already worn thin, had vanished. They needed her commitment, or they needed to leave before she became a further liability.
There was, however, one final card to play.
Will knew Dauphine to be many things: greedy, headstrong, slippery. She changed allegiances with the tide,placed her faith not in a country or god, but in herself. She was loyal to no cause, no country, noone.
Except…
“You owe me, Dauphine,” Will reminded her quietly.
Pointedly.
Dauphine went utterly still. He wondered if she was recalling the way the blood had poured from the gash in his cheek; the way Suja had tried to heal him on the floor of that fighting ring, too afraid to move him, lest he die when she tried.
The mercenary cleared her throat.
“Coinisthe greatest motivator of them all,” she finally remarked, her bravado forced in a way it hadn’t been before. “Fine. I will arrange a team. But it will take some time.”
They didn’thavetime. But Will forced himself to breathe—to wait.
“There’s a safe house on the outskirts of the city. If you can get yourselves there without attracting the attention of the Midland guards who aremorethan eager to enact their vengeance on the kingdom that betrayed them…well, then you can leave the rest to me.”
Aidon shook his head. “How can we trust you won’t tip off the guards yourself?”
Dauphine shrugged. “You can’t.”
16
Josie had spent her lifetime in Rinnia, and yet the city still held its surprises. She’d never seen the unassuming home that Natali led her to. It was situated between two worn-down bungalows, its stone facade a gray outlier in a faded but colorful street. They were far from the city center—further still from Old Town and the palace.
Natali used their knife to pick the lock of the worn wooden door before urging Josie inside.
“Whose home is this?” Josie asked as she took in the small cramped living room. A discarded cup of tea sat on the wooden table before the hearth, a blanket pooled carelessly in the seat of a scratched leather armchair.
“A former friend’s,” Natali answered as they peered out of the closed blinds. “She was associated with the Bellare.” They frowned as they looked at Josie. “Put that sword down.”
She did no such thing.
