As though my body is giving permission that my mind hasn’t agreed to, I flip the dagger that I somehow pulled from Gartox’s back until the hilt is facing Scorpius and the blade is pointed toward me. Silently I offer him the weapon. He looks down at it confused, and then his head snaps up, the remorse in his eyes suddenly replaced with rage. He grabs the dagger from my hand, and I flinch when instead of using it on me, he throws it across the room.
“No one will be killing you,” he seethes at me, and for some reason, it lights a fire of indignation in me instead of cowing me like I think it’s supposed to.
“But Tilleo…” I start to argue, anger banking in my stare as a telltale tingling starts in my gums again.
Shit.
“Fuck Tilleo and anyone else who even thinks it,” Bones counters, but I have no idea what that means.
Annoyed, I try to push up to my feet, but it’s hard to do with Scorpius looming over me like he is. I shove him away from me with a glare, and surprisingly, instead of stabbing me for it, he gives me room to get to my feet.
“Fuck Tilleo?” I scornfully repeat. “Big words for someone notownedby him,” I snap.
I don’t bother mentioning anything about how I planned on hunting him down and killing him tonight. I didn’t miss Bones’s accounting of how Gartox’s murder could be seen from the outside. If that’s possible, then it meansIwas never here. The sanctum was never violated. None of this has to be the death sentence I thought it would be. One look at Scorpius stops that train of thought. The Order of Scorpions knows. How long before they tell the others?
“Tilleo doesn’townyou,” Skull starts to insert, but fury takes off with my tongue before he can get another word in.
“That’s odd,” I snark venomously. “I tried to tell him that very thing when he first brought me here. I spent at least three months being beaten almost to death, healed, and then beaten all over again. Whenthatdidn’t work, they starved me. Finally, to reallyprovejust how wrong I was about who Ibelongedto, Tilleo loaned me out to some lord. When that bastard was done with me, he let his guards take their turn before I was dropped back off to the ludere like a sack of garbage. So fuck you,” I snarl, my every edge feeling grated and raw.
“He what?” Skull barks furiously, stepping toward me like he wants to wrap me up, but that can’t be right.
What is wrong with me right now? Why am I seeing everything so backward?
“Oh, save it,” I interrupt, as though I’m not walking a tightrope over death. I know I’m not doing myself any favors by talking to the scariest Order of assassins known in all the realms this way, but I can’t find a fuck to give. “This isn’t your first Bidding; you know what happens here.Nois not in a slave’s vernacular. Isn’t that right?” I ask, pointedly staring down to Scorpius’s crotch. Or do these idiots really think fae are just falling all over themselves to clean their dicks?
My enraged glare bounces between the three skeletons, and even though the details are hard to make out under the thick magic hiding their features, I can tell they’re probably above average in the beauty department. Maybe they do have fae falling all over themselves to willingly wash every inch of them…among other things. What do I know?
“We didn’t know you’d end up here,” Bones defends.
It’s everything I can do not to leap at him, let my fangs drop into his throat, and then drink him dry.
Damn. Why is that thought enticing?
“Have you lost it?Youthought I’d end up somewhere worse!” I caustically remind him. “You figured I’d end up at the flesh markets. That’s why you so kindly offered to kill me, right?” I demand, my heated stare jumping from Bones to Skull and back again, because now that I can pick them apart in a group, I know who did what that night. I can fit their faces with that memory.
Scorpius slit Dorsin’s throat and got something from his vault. He was also the first one to climb out of the window while demanding that the others leave me to my fate. Bones was the first to notice me and take an interest, and Skull was the one ready to slit my throat if I just said the word.
“Enough,” Scorpius snaps, ever the leader. Eager to regain his chokehold of control on everything around him. “We can’t save everyone, no matter how hard we try, Auset.”
“But how hard did you try, really, Scorpius?” I counter, and I see the moment I’ve pushed too far. The moment when his face drops into a cold emotionless mask.
Is that what I look like when I shut down?
“We can debate this later. Right now, we need to leave before someone stumbles in here and the story we want the other Orders to come up with gets tainted by our presence. Right now, it looks as though Gartox got what was coming to him by messing with the wrong blade slave. We need to keep it that way.”
“Sennet and Taria screamed. They didn’t go quietly. If no one came to check on that, I doubt they’re just going to wander in here now,” I argue, unable to shut down the need to fight, to dig at them until I can see what’s happening underneath the cool skeletal veneer.
“The other Order rooms are warded,” Skull informs me. “I’d guarantee all of them have magic in place so no sound comes in or goes out.”
“But—” I start.
“Gartox removed his wards. He liked to let the screams out,” Skull continues, cutting off the start of a new argument. “Part of his perversion was challenging anyone to come and stop him. As you can see, no one did.”
“Until now,” Bones points out, once again staring at me with something that looks alarmingly close to admiration.
“I got lucky,” I dismiss, hoping to shut down whatever it is that’s happening with these three.
Scorpius snorts but doesn’t elaborate on what the hell that means, his eyes once again fixed on Gartox’s body. “I’ll go deal with Tilleo. You two get her back to the tent,” he orders. He looks up at me for a moment, his stare unreadable, and then he steps back into a pool of shadow and disappears.
