Vesper ground her teeth. “Was the last assignment yourversion of speeding things up?” She tried to keep calm, keep her composure, until Cedar shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “We are marked for fucking death, Cedar!” Vesper practically yelled at her. “You ruined our fucking lives. You’vebeenruining our lives! And for what? You’re no fucking closer to what you wanted. This was all a waste.”
“I’m done with this,” Bellamy declared, taking a step forward. Her magic crackled and sparked in her hands. Vesper tightened her hold on Bellamy’s arm. “Ves?” Bel whispered, looking up at Vesper. Vesper shook her head.
“She’s not worth it,” she whispered back before addressing Cedar again. “We can’t trust you. Nothing you’ve said has proven anything except that you’ve wanted us dead and that you’ve been ruining our lives. If you don’t let us leave now, we’ll kill you.”
Cedar’s jaw clenched. Vesper could tell there was a battle going on behind her eyes—something dangerous. Then, a glint of light reflected and caught Vesper’s eye. A dagger had appeared in Cedar’s hand. The blade dripped with poison, and Vesper immediately shoved Bellamy behind her. If Cedar wanted to get her sister, she wouldn’t be using Bel to do it.
Vesper’s magic sparked over her hands, up her arms, ready. She stepped forward. Then, Cedar turned and stabbed the man behind her directly in the heart, quickly yanking the blade out and stabbing the other man before anyone could process what had happened.
When she was finished, Cedar dropped the weapon and fell to her knees, her hand open and raised, defenseless.
Vesper and Bellamy stood frozen, watching as both men dropped hard. Blood poured from their eyes, nose, ears. Poison took over their bodies, worming its way through their veins and spreading up their necks at a significantly faster speed than when Bellamy had been poisoned. Their hearts pumped it through their bodies faster than they could react.
They’d stopped breathing in a matter of minutes.
“V,” Cedar whispered, shaking her head. “I don’t care aboutthis job or these groups or any of this shit.” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. “Please. I just want my sister back."
“How do we know this isn’t another illusion?” Vesper snapped, still holding Bel behind her.
“Seriously?” Cedar laughed incredulously, a tear slid down her cheek. “In all your fancy training they didn’t bother teaching you how to determine illusions from reality?”
Vesper was… 90 percent sure they hadn’t. Bel was silent, which meant she didn’t know either. This was a huge oversight on her part. She’d always taken illusions for granted. They were just something that happened. Bending reality, making things prettier and more appealing. She’d never seen it done maliciously until a few days ago.
“Just fucking prove it.”
Cedar rolled her eyes, sniffled, and waved her hand at the men on the ground. Blood pooled beneath them, hemorrhaging from every visible orifice. Their skin crawled with bulging black veins as poison penetrated every inch of them, suffocating them like twisting vines and dragging them under still.
“This,” Cedar began with the tone of someone who had much better things to be doing, “would all be much cleaner if it were an illusion. There would be a visible shimmer around it, a faint white mist of the magic manifesting. It’s difficult to see if you’re not paying attention. But most importantly, even the highest skilled illusionist cannot create scenes so… gruesome. Everything would be, well, cleaner. Think back to the business room, V. There was no blood, you knew something was wrong then, didn't you? So, how about now?”
None of that was really what Vesper would consider proof, but, reluctantly, she thought back to their prior assignment. She’d noticed the cleanliness of the kills, she’d even found it odd. Vesper remembered bragging to herself about how there wasn’t any blood, but also with that hint of a suspicion that it wasn’t quite right. Logically, she’d known the scene wouldn’t have looked like that, that the people wouldn’t have behaved the way they had.
She also thought about what she’d seen Mazz do in the Downstairs. What she’d seen Riya do on assignments. It was all subtle, small things. All of it was neat and tidy. Nothing really stood out as wrong with those. But annoyingly, and to Cedar’s point, everything was clean.
“Fine,” Vesper replied. She couldn’t deny that it made sense. The evidence was there. She believed Cedar. She believed Cedar was Cypress’ sister, but she still had that protective instinct to keep Cedar away. Mostly, Vesper was worried. What if Cedar wasn’t on her sister’s side?
Vesper looked back at Bellamy. They exchanged a glance. Bellamy shrugged—for once in her life, she didn’t have an argument. Cedar had effectively put them all on the same level when she killed the guards. There was no protection for any of them, and the chances Cedar would be blacklisted from her group when they found the bodies was high.
Cedar, like Vesper and Bellamy, now had nothing left to lose. All in the hopes it would get her reunited with her sister.
Bringing Cedar to Cypress might not be the safest option, especially if the Embunuh had found them and was watching, but it was looking more and more like their only option. Unless they were going to kill Cedar.
Vesper didn’t want to do that though. Not if Cedar really had been looking for Cypress this whole time. She couldn’t do that to the kid.
“I’m not saying I know anything,” Vesper began cautiously. “But, none of us are safe anymore. Not in the open like this. You’ve killed the illusionist who could’ve hid us.” Vesper glared, but Cedar didn’t show an ounce of remorse.
“Please, V. I’ll do anything.”
Bellamy’s touch on Vesper’s back made her pause. “I… I actually believe her, Ves,” Bellamy whispered. “And, well, we need to go somewhere that’s not here. If you’ve been hiding her sister for the last nine years, and they haven’t found her…” Bellamy trailed off, a pleading look in her eyes that almost hid the pain underneath.
Vesper knew what she was saying. It made sense. She also knew that she’d fucked up almost as massively as Bellamy had with keeping this secret.
“We need to make sure we’re not seen.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Vesper
“You hid her with the whores?” Cedar whisper-yelled as they approached the golden doors of the Downstairs. “She was achild!” Her voice was muffled behind the thick Ilusi veils they’d bought from a street vendor.
