So I was wrong about her after all. “Why didn’t you beg your employer to save you from me when she found us in the alley? Not that I’m complaining.”
“I promised to come quietly in exchange for a chance to prove my innocence, didn’t I? Besides, as soon as you flashed that coin, I knew she was lost to me.”
I dip the cloth back in the ewer and wring out rust-colored water. When I bring it back to her elbow, I ask, “What do you mean she was lost to you?”
She releases a sigh. “It’s because of my magic.”
I consider what she could mean by that. Based on what she’s told me about how her magic works, I can imagine one explanation. “Did you form a poor first impression when you first met her? Because of…your mood?”
“Well, no, but even if I do form a positive impression, there often comes a time when someone’s best mirrored qualities evoke negative feelings from the other person. It doesn’t always happen, but where envy is involved, things can go badly. Madame Desire has always been good to me, but I can tell her opinion of me is starting to change. She suspects me of possessing the worst aspects of her best qualities.”
I ponder that for a moment. Astrid’s magic is strange indeed, a kind I haven’t encountered before. I still can’t fathom why I see her the way I do. Why I so badly want to protect this aggravating stranger.
“Why did you bring us here, anyway?” she asks.
“I needed a place for us to stay.” I almost leave it at that, but there’s a truth I can’t help but confess. “The ogre attack was no accident. Someone lured me into that garden. Someone broke into my room and stole my Chariot.”
She looks over at me with a furrowed brow. “What’s a Chariot?”
“A device that allows for instantaneous travel. Whoever stole it knew I had it. How else could the thief have found it? It isn’t some mammoth contraption. It’s small. Unimportant to the common onlooker. Anyone who didn’t know exactly what to look for would think it a cosmetics compact or a snuff box. The thief had to have known I possessed it and understood how it worked in order to guess where I’d left it.”
“That’s the object you were so determined to get back after we left your room?”
“Yes, and I wasn’t willing to take us back to my suite tonight. The fact that the ogre went after you as well told me we might not be safe in your room either.”
“Does that mean you think some other person was working with the ogre?”
I nod. “Murtis couldn’t have gotten to my room so soon after the fight at Wrath. To the garden, yes, but nowhere else. Based on the scent trail the thief left behind, they’d been inside my room during the duel and left just before it ended. They purposefully cloaked their scent in a floral aroma and led me to the garden where my senses would be too overwhelmed to smell the ogre.”
Astrid shifts anxiously on the bed, and it isn’t from me cleaning her wound this time. “If the thief is still out there, what makes you think we’re any safer here?”
I finish cleaning her elbow and run the cloth over the rest of her arm. The gash seems to have stopped bleeding now, so I gently rotate her wrist in search of other injuries. “I can’t be certain. The fact that the attack was set up at night, long after the hotel’s patrons ceased to linger outdoors, suggests our hidden assailant wanted everything taken care of covertly. This room at least offers some semblance of protection. I assume Madame Desire doesn’t let just anyone into her brothel.”
“No. Certainly not this late. I’m assuming the only reason she allowed you to purchase an overnight visit was because you gave her permission to charge the Alpha Council. Overnight stays are very expensive.”
I grunt a response and finish examining her arm. When I’m certain the limb has been properly tended to, I wring out the cloth again. Rising to my feet, I hand her the rag. She meets my eyes with a questioning look before taking it. “I…I can’t see if there are wounds on your face, so you should clean them yourself.”
She snatches the cloth from me. “I could have done all of that myself, thank you very much.”
I scoff. “I didn’t see you doing a very good job while you were whimpering at the sight of blood.”
She has no argument for that and reluctantly brings the cloth to her cheek. I find myself staring, wishing I could make out more than just a hazy impression of her face. Even as I watch her scrub furiously at her skin, my eyes refuse to take in anything tangible. I know she’s frowning, but her lips are devoid of color. I know she’s scowling but her eyes have no distinct shape. Her hair is just a dark blur. Does everyone see her this way? Am I only perplexed by what I see because I know to look? I suppose any unsuspecting spectator would simply lose interest in such a hazy perception and move on.
Astrid finishes cleaning her face and brings the cloth to her other arm. “So…” She draws the word out slowly. “Someone lured you from your room into the garden where we were attacked by an ogre. That same someone knew where to find you, understood your weaknesses, and stole a strange device that I’m guessing very few people know you have.”
“Yes, and I’m going to find out who it was.”
She finishes cleaning her arm and returns the cloth to the ewer. Her shoulders sink, and her scent profile takes a dive, clouded with something like grief. “I already know who it was. It’s the same person whoreallykilled my father.”
I’m torn between shock, curiosity, and suspicion that she could be baiting me. My first two instincts overpower the third. “Who?”
She meets my eyes. “Queen Tris.”
10
ASTRID
The Huntsman blinks back at me for several moments, expression blank. After a while, his stony mask slowly begins to crack. First with a narrowing of his eyes. Then a stretch of his lips. Finally, he throws back his head…and laughs.
