“Something is off and we’re here to find out why that is,” Scorpius starts, keeping things casual and friendly as he folds his hands in his lap and studies the master.
“Off?” Tilleo questions, his uneasy gaze once again skipping around the room, landing quickly on me and then Bones again before darting away.
He looks entirely too much like the short-haired, long-bodiedcelairatsthat I used to hunt for food when I was a boy. Those beady-eyed little bastards were afraid of their own shadows.
“Mmmm,” Scorpius hums, refusing to offer any more information than that.
Typical Scorpius. He’s always ten moves ahead of everybody before they even realize they’re playing against him. I know this mystery around Auset has been gnawing him alive, and he’s as keen as we are to finally make sense of it all. We’re here to confirm what she told us, but who knows what the slaver will cough up to get back into our good graces.
“I don’t—” Tilleo starts, but I cut him off.
“Before you finish what is sure to be a denial reeking of fetidcoroshit,” I start, leaning nonchalantly against a cabinet that probably houses priceless stolen items, “I want you to think long and hard about our tolerance for nonsense. We wouldn’t be here digging at the roots ofnothing,” I point out, already tasting the lies in the air that Tilleo has yet to speak.
He pulls in a sharp breath like he’s readying himself to argue, and then he slowly deflates and runs a tired hand down his face. “What do you know?” he asks, his tone worn and his body language all at once submissive.
Well, that didn’t take long at all.
“The sands whisper that the sanctum is about to expire,” Scorpius cryptically informs him, and each of us studies Tilleo carefully for his response.
He tenses, as though the words are a physical blow, and then his fists clench and his skin flushes with anger. “Fucking Crit,” he snarls, slamming a fist down on the padded arm of his chair. “If I ever see that good-for-nothing guard again, he’s dead,” Tilleo announces, and I realize that he thinks the guard who Auset killed in the wine cellar has sold him out and somehow managed to disappear.
“Shed some light on the situation, and we’ll handle him for you,” Scorpius offers, not missing a beat.
Tilleo glares at him and then seems to recall exactly who he’s glaring at, and promptly blanks his face. “I know this probably doesn’t look good from where you’re sitting, but I promise it has nothing to do with the Order of Scorpions,” Tilleo attempts to reassure.
All that earns him is a scowl from all three of us.
“Violating the sanctum of this event most definitely has something to do with us, or have you forgotten who pays you?” Bones questions, and Tilleo jerks his head in surprise in my brother’s direction as though he’d forgotten the assassin was there.
Jumpy little celairat.
“It’s not as though you three don’t benefit from what goes on here,” Tilleo argues and then immediately looks as though he regrets it.
The hard look in Scorpius’s black eyes confirms that the master is walking a very tight and perilous line. Tilleo huffs and collects himself. We all know there’s only one way he’s walking out of this room alive, and that’s if he tells us everything. Even then, if he’s put our Order at risk, what comes next for him will be very painful and very drawn out. Our arrangement with Tilleo has been fruitful, but we won’t hesitate to cut ties or throats if it’s warranted.
“My niece was a chambermaid in Lord Craxon’s house,” Tilleo starts, and it’s as though he ages ten years right before my eyes. Like some kind of magic spell, the words spilling out of his mouth seem to drain him, syllable by syllable, of every ounce of vitality he possesses. “Craxon had a wagering habit that made him a good source for information when he was down on his luck. But it seems he got himself caught up with a collector that had run out of patience for the lord’sspeculativeways.”
Tilleo leans back in his chair and sighs, his listless stare once again fixed on the fire as though he’s locked in some haunting memory.
“If the assassins that were tasked to deal with Lord Craxon had stopped there, the sanctum would be as solid as it ever was, but they didn’t.”
Realization moves over me like frost over leaves before dawn. All at once, Tilleo’s rage suddenly makes sense.
“It wasn’t enough to punish the lord for his covetous ways, they fell on the house like they were to blame too. It would have been better if they had cut my niece’s head from her body like they did Craxon’s, but no, instead they left her with a baby growing in her belly and a mind too broken to even know it,” Tilleo laments, and I drop my head, the weight of his pain heavy on my shoulders.
“Bruins?” Scorpius asks without even having to. We all know which Order lacks the honor to do something like this to innocent fae.
“Who else,” Tilleo confirms hollowly, fury banking in his brown eyes. “He has to die,” he whispers vehemently, and the seething wrath in his tone makes goose bumps crawl up my arms.
“And exactly how are you going to make that happen?” Scorpius demands, further covering Auset’s confession to make it look as though the dead guard is our informant and not her. “Gartox is a brute, but he’s skilled and cunning. His Order isn’t going to take the murder of their leader lying down.”
“No,” Tilleo concedes. “The remaining Bruins will get their justice. Gartox’sneedswill set him up all on their own, and he’ll just so happen to pick the wrong slave to play with. No one else will be implicated. And the loose ends will tie themselves up,” he explains with a proud smile, like he’s a school-aged boy awaiting high marks in strategy for the brilliantly thought-out plan.
“What does that mean, that the loose ends will tiethemselvesup?” I demand, biting back the snarl that starts to wind up my throat.
This hypocrite wants to kill Gartox the Bruin for attacking his niece, and yet he’s more than happy to throw a blade slave to the mercy of first Gartox and then the remaining members of the Order of Bruins, damning her to an even worse fate than just death. I stare at the master completely disgusted. Here he is, pained and furious over what’s been done to his family, withnothought to what happens under this very roof or the fact that he himself trades in flesh, only caring about the highest bidder and nothing more.
“I have a girl who’s up for the task,” the master reassures us, tension sloughing off of him as though that thought is all the reassurance he needs.
