Please be realwas the last thought he had before sleep once again claimed him.
Chapter Nine
Dahlia
Her hands trembledas she stared at the slumlord, her right hand clenching the blade’s hilt.
Snow swirled on the old wooden floor as they stared at each other.
“Come inside and close the door, will you? You’re letting all the heat out,” the Giver crooned. It was a command disguised as a suggestion.
She didn’t want to close the door. It was her only means of escape. Plus, she’d be shutting Loshika out.
Adder shifted in the simple high-backed wooden chair near the hearth. He reached out a hand and petted her mum’s hair almost lovingly, his many rings catching in the firelight. “See how she rocks? The poor thing is freezing.”
Lia used her boot to kick the door closed, her anxiety ratchetting up a notch as it clicked shut. Her cloak dripped water on the floor as she stood near the exit.
The Giver gestured to the chair across from him. “Don’t be a stranger. Come sit down. We’re old friends, you and I, and we have much to speak about.”
She glanced at the darkened back bedroom. Could there be another thug back there? It was possible and probable. Lia needed to tread carefully. The Giver’s ego could easily be bruised. She needed to keep calm and try get herself and her mum out alive.
Straightening, she shook her cloak out before taking careful steps toward the empty chair. Lia rounded the simple seat and winced as she had to skirt around another puddle of silver blood. Bile burned the back of her throat as she stepped over Alden’s still body. She knelt, checking the healer’s pulse at his neck.
Nothing.
Grief welled up, but Lia shoved it down. She could mourn later. That’s if they survived.
Dahlia perched on the edge of the seat, noting how the Giver scoured her from head to toe, his black humanlike eyes pausing on the blade in her hand. He smiled so wide, she could see all of his teeth. Teeth that all had a slight point.
“It seems you have gained a bit more edge since your time in Loriia. Long gone is the flower who trembled every time she visited my office.”
She shrugged. “While you are terrifying, I have lived among the enemy. It’s taught me a great many things.”
Like how to kill.
“And yet, here you are. As soft for your family as ever. It’s really too bad your father abandoned you all.”
She hid her flinch when the Giver once again petted the top of her mum’s head. Why was he bringing up her father? He had died, not left them. Gibberish tumbled from her mum’s lips as she sat on the floor by Adder’s booted feet. Dahlia hadn’tallowed herself to really look over her mother. She couldn’t get distracted.
“I’m curious what you’ll bargain with this time for their lives.”
Theirlives? Dread skittered down her spine.
Keep calm.
Lia cut him a cool look. “Is that what we’re doing? Bargaining for lives?”
The Giver arched a black brow at her. “I believe we made a bargain once before, and you didn’t fulfill your side.”
“That’s not quite right, is it?” she murmured. “I paid back my debt to you, as well as followed through with our original bargain. It was you who sold me to the crown.”
He waved a hand at her, leaning back in his chair, the gawdy gold of his waistcoat flashing with the movement. “Old history. I speak of the kindness I offered to do for your brother.”
She remembered alright.
The Giver hadofferedto break Cosmos out of the queen’s dungeon, but it wasn’t out of the goodness of his black heart. No doubt he’d wanted her brother within his grasp, too, as a means to control Dahlia, but she’d struck first and made a bargain with Basil, the royals’ chamberlain.
“One I didn’t ask for but appreciate all the same,” she lied. The melted snow sank through her clothes, cold water seeping onto her skin.
