Whatever it was, Vaasa gave Lord Karev the most charming grin. He raised a brow at her, looking between her and the woman, and then Vaasa shrugged as if she were entirely unbothered.
She’d given him permission, he realized. Permission to go bed another woman.
Anger simmered in his body at the man’s sheer disrespect. At the marriage Vaasa would have been relegated to had she never met Reid. He wanted to reach across the table and swear to her that it would never be that way between them, that the idea of sharing his bed with anyone else made him sick to his stomach.
He kept his hands to himself.
They all chatted, Vaasa casually sipping on her wine and tipping her head back in laughter. Her red-stained lips put on quite the performance as she smiled and spoke, eyes only drifting to him for moments at a time. Reid tried not to stare at her. Instead, he stayed quiet and watched the room like a diligent guard.
“And how are you this evening?” Vaasa asked in Icrurian, keeping her voice low so as not to garner any attention at the use of the language. Each day they spent in this city, the more Reid despised it.
He met her gaze. “Impatient,” he admitted.
Lord Karev didn’t seem to care that they spoke, not as he leaned into the curly hair of a beautiful woman whose skin had been painted as if she were a statue.
“Murderous?” she asked, a pointed question that simmered in his gut.
“This establishment brings it out in me,” Reid confessed.
Vaasa furrowed her brow for a moment, and then said, “It was you? Not the pirate?”
Reid remembered it so clearly, though he hadn’t made a show of the killing. Hadn’t enacted any of the twisted things that had spun themselves out in his mind. He’d wanted to drag out the man’s suffering like the slow inching of daylight. But instead, it was like the pinching of a candle, the way Reid took that man’s life. Just like this moment, he hadn’t understood the Asteryan that slipped from Lord Vlacik’s lips, yet he knew it was a plea. It hadn’t brought about hesitation. From a young age, Reid had not taken apologies from people who could never earn forgiveness.
“He sealed his fate, just like that one.” He gestured with his head to Lord Karev.
Vaasa opened her mouth to retort, but Sachia interrupted in Icrurian, “Have you found a way for us to enter the prison?”
A subtle reminder that they could speak no further on a topic such as that. Not unless they were in private.
Vaasa carefully glanced at Lord Karev, but this line of questioning wouldn’t be unfounded. He knew well enough they intended to infiltrate the prison island.
“Do you know if the prisoner we seek is still there?” Koen asked in Icrurian. He wasn’t speaking about Sachia’s brother,that much was certain. Reid watched Vaasa’s expression drop to what he thought might be guilt.
“Yes. I have a plan to see her soon,” she said.
“You do?” Reid asked.
Vaasa nodded.
Reid frowned. How exactly would she do that? He was about to ask, but Lord Karev said something in Asteryan that made Vaasa and Sachia immediately switch back to the same language. After a moment of what looked like explanation from Sachia and Koen, Lord Karev relaxed.
Eventually, Sachia stood, two women beckoning her and Vaasa away from the table. Vaasa looked wistfully over her shoulder at Lord Karev, playing such a perfect submissive fiancée, and Reid thought she’d askedpermissionto go somewhere. The act made his hand twitch beneath the table. Lord Karev pursed his lips, then gave an amused smile like he would to a child who he no longer cared to supervise. He said something at the table in a haughty tone as the women dragged Vaasa away, and everyone laughed. Koen was rigid as he did so. The lord didn’t even bother glancing at where Vaasa walked.
Instead, his eyes trailed back to the curly-haired woman, the same one Reid had watched the man lust after the last time they’d been there. The moment Vaasa was gone, the woman whispered something in Lord Karev’s ear.
Reid lifted his goblet to his lips, this time taking a heady sip. The men around them laughed, and Reid wanted to pull the dagger from his boot and thrust it through Karev’s throat. But he had his opening when the lord stood from the table, nodding his farewell to the group and following the woman past the jasmine curtains and disappearing up a set of stairs opposite the set that Vaasa and Sachia had just ascended.
Reid waited with bated breath just long enough for Koen to strike up conversation with the people around them. He leaned in and muttered in Icrurian, “Third floor.”
Koen lifted his goblet in farewell to the men around them, standing and following Reid to the far side of the main room. Laughter and a raucous farewell filled the air, the men likely encouraging them to go and pay for their fill. They ascended the stairs to the second floor, which was a mezzanine that made a horseshoe over the main room. Most of the first floor was concealed by the jasmine that hung around them, but pockets could be seen. Sachia appeared at their side, her mouth turned downward. “A man came in and she ran.” Sachia pointed to a brown-haired man Reid didn’t recognize who hung along one of the walls. He had dark breeches on and donned a borrowed costume jacket and a mask shaped like a crow’s beak.
Sachia gestured to the opposite side of the mezzanine, which also contained a stairwell that would lead to the third, fourth, and fifth floors of the brothel. “We agreed to meet on the third floor, but she went further up.”
“I’ll find her,” Reid muttered.
“Be careful,” Sachia warned.
With his heart in his throat, he strode to the other side of the mezzanine and took the stairwell to the concealed floors above.
