“A blade slave?” Scorpius asks, his tone relaying none of the agitation I see tightening his body.
Tilleo snorts. “Don’t let your righteous indignation get away from you,” he gibes. “This oneneedsto be put down.Ishould have killed her when I found her in Dorsin’s office,” he confesses with a shake of his head. “I let my curiosity get the best of me. She was a waif of a thing. I found her with knives in her hands and Dorsin’s cold body lying at her feet. She slit his throat and killed two orcs while she was at it. I wanted to know how she got the jump on him, so I dropped her in the ludere and watched her. It didn’t take long to see she was made for this,” he tells us, gesturing to the moonlit ludere outside of his wide windows. “She’s not fit for an Order, too headstrong and combative. I was going to wash her from the program. I have buyers who need a more robust kind of pet, but then Gartox happened, and I realized this was the purpose she could serve.”
Fucking Crowns and stars.
I’m once again struck by the illogicality of Tilleo’s double standard, but I stomp the embers of my outrage until they’re nothing. We’re here to get to the bottom of Auset’s claims, not to fix the world, no matter how much it needs it.
“Is this the blade slave that the masters seem to be targeting?” Scorpius inquires, his body language once again relaxed even though I know he’s itching to shove a dagger in Tilleo’s eye right now, just like I am.
“Like I said, don’t waste your time even observing her,” the slaver counters.
“This isn’t about her, it’s about protecting our investment here,” Scorpius snaps, and Tilleo’s arrogance immediately deflates. “We’ll help you with Gartox but not untilafterthe Bidding. We’ll make sure there’s no connection or threads that lead back here,” Scorpius announces and pushes up from his chair, done with the conversation and ready to leave.
Tilleo rises with him as though he’s going to see us out as opposed to watching us trace back through the shadows. “That’s generous of you but not necessary,” he states confidently, and I freeze from where I was backing into the dark corner behind me.
“That wasn’t an offer up for debate,” Scorpius informs him, his voice dropping to a dangerous level that leads to very bad things. He looks at Tilleo in a way that would flay his skin from his body if only he had the thura for it.
Panic seeps into Tilleo’s face, and he winds his hands in front of him suddenly very obviously distressed. “I would never argue with you, Scorpius, you know that. It’s just that it’s a done deal already.”
“Make sense quickly, slave master, I’m out of patience,” Scorpius warns, stepping forebodingly closer.
“I…I sent Auset off to deal with Gartox not too long ago. By now, either she’s dead or he is.”
Tilleo’s words ring in my mind like the loud bells of a clock tower sounding an alarm. My eyes snap to Scorpius’s enraged onyx gaze, and I immediately disappear into the darkness at my back. We were just with her, she was injured and passed out in the healing chambers.
There’s no way she’s gone already.
I step into a black, cloaked corner in the healing room. Healers scramble about, cleaning up after something that was obviously eventful. A blade slave lies on a cot, her stare empty and soulless. A healer is wiping up pools of blood on the floor and on the cot from several wounds torn into the female’s dark skin. She’s dead—and the only fae in here aside from the healers.
Fear and anger wage a war in my chest as I frantically look around to confirm what I already know.
Auset is nowhere to be found.
While we were off trying to figure out who she was and what that meant for us, she was sent off to her death.
ChapterSixteen
AUSET
“Set her down here! She’s lost a lot of blood. Pack the wounds as best you can. Farren, grab every bottle ofhemocwe have, and tell Zinny to start making more immediately!” a commanding voice orders, and I’m pulled awake by the frenzy of healers and servants that frantically pour into the healing chamber.
What was a quiet solitary room is now a hive of hectic activity. I’m confused at first as to what’s going on, and then to my left where all the commotion is coming from, two healers step away from each other, and I get a clear view of dark silken skin and agonized bright brown eyes.
“Taria?” I whisper as I take in the blood dripping from her chest. All too quickly it stains the cot beneath her and joins the growing red pool on the floor.
Alarm and worry explodes in my chest, but all I can do is watch as the healers scurry around the small blade slave, trying to help her.
“Are these bite marks?” someone asks, but I don’t know which of the healers voices the question. “Kings’ justice, what did they do to her?”
No one answers what they suspect the trauma to the little fae’s body might be from.
“Stay with us,” one of the healers by Taria’s head coaxes urgently, and I watch, utterly helpless, as the pained gleam in her eyes suddenly dulls and then, like someone extinguishing a flicker of fairy light, it goes out entirely.
Shouts and curses fill the room, and someone steps into my line of sight, blocking me from the girl I’ve fought beside and against during my time here at the ludere. I watch dazed. I’ve listened to the whispered dreams she confided late at night when it soothed us more to dream awake than asleep. I can still see the spark of pride that would ignite in her beautiful gaze when she did well in front of the masters. She was sold to Tilleo by her mother. Taria said there were too many mouths to feed in her house and not enough of anything to feed them with. Like many of us, she’d always boast of her plans to pay off her debt and then take care of them. Now, she never would.
The noise in the healing chamber grows somber and heavy. I can almost, for a moment, convince myself that the healers actually care about losing one of us, that they feel the absence of the light that twinkled in tiny Taria no matter what she was up against. But then I catch a few worried whispers about Tilleo and what he’s going to do when he finds out about his lost investment. There’s no mourning going on here; they’re scared, and she’s nothing more than a thing they’ve been tasked with protecting and failed.
Empty brown eyes stare at me, and I can’t help but stare back and wonder if this is what I’ll look like soon. Will my face relax and my body sag as the blood slowly stops falling from my wounds to dapple the floor? Will death kiss me quickly and steal all my pain away, or will it be drawn out until I’m begging for the sweet release of nothing?
