“I doubt you show sympathy for anyone, Bramwell, and least of all for me.”
St. Silas did not respond, waiting patiently for a reply.
When there was no immediate answer forthcoming, the Al-Sayer boy’s voice cracked in the air. “You know about Leena’s…ability?”
The boy pressed the sword more firmly into Hargreaves’s exposed neck, almost drawing blood and wounding him with the same poison that now coursed through St. Silas’s veins.
“Mr. Al-Sayer, I would strongly suggest you drop the sword. Your father’s life depends on the choices you make now,” Hargreaves said.
The Al-Sayer boy stilled. “What do you know about my father?”
Hargreaves was struggling to think past the tip of the poisoned blade tight against his neck. “Lift your blade if you desire an answer.”
After a pause, the sword was edged slightly away.
“He is a prisoner.” Hargreaves’s reply was curt. “Under the explicit watch of my guards.”
Taking hold of the conversation once more, before the Al-Sayer boy did anything reckless, Hargreaves spoke directly to Bramwell, finally reaching the heart of the matter. “You cannot kill me, Bramwell—if not for the antidote, then for the very real fact that, in the entirety of the human world, it is onlyIwho knows how to break your demon contract.”
St. Silas still seemed unimpressed. “In which case, there are many ways to drag secrets out of a body that do not amount to killing him.”
“Torture?” Hargreaves asked, once more assaulted by recollections of Percy, who also would have sunk to any form of depravity to keep hold of Weavingshaw.
St. Silas brushed the snow off his jacket in an unbothered gesture, but the other hand still holding the pistol was white-knuckled and tense. “Being left to the demons,my lord,makes you demon-like yourself.”
“But forcing answers from me in such a manner will still take time. Especially”—Hargreaves spoke easily, belying the threat beneath his words—“as Miss Al-Sayer is back at Weavingshaw with no one but Kilworth to offer…protection.”
St. Silas stilled, an arrested expression on his face.
“What did you say?” he whispered softly.
There, the crack in the formidable armor.Hargreaves’s eyes blazed in triumph.
Hargreaves had observed—with rapidly growing interest—the interactions between St. Silas and the Al-Sayer girl. At the best of times St. Silas was difficult to read, but there were moments—asshe was leaving the room, as she smiled up at him—when his eyes could not hide themselves, watching her in unmistakable fascination.
“Indeed, Kilworth could not stop speaking of her. I have grown weary of hearing him obsessively describe the color of her lips, the long, slender neck that had him…well…”
St. Silas crossed the space between them in two long strides, pulling Hargreaves out of Rami’s hold by the collar and brutally smashing his forehead into Hargreaves’s nose, before shoving the muzzle of his pistol against his temple, all but cracking the bone with its force.
The pain was instantaneous and shocking.
Hargreaves had never felt anything like it. The ridges of his nose shifted, fire burning through the rest of his face with agony.
“If you lay one finger on her, I will make certain your decaying flesh will be a feast for the wolves.” St. Silas’s words were a snarl. “Kilworth I will personally gut.”
Hargreaves spat blood on the snow. “I have no doubt you are true to your threats. However, I urge you to exercise restraint. I have sent for the assistance of several Black Coats; they will be here imminently—perhaps within the hour.”
Ignoring him, St. Silas roughly patted Hargreaves’s jacket until he found both hidden guns, pulling them out and throwing them toward the feet of the Al-Sayer boy.
“Ready the carriage,” St. Silas barked toward Rami. “Now.Your sister is left alone with that reptile.”
Then, rearing back, St. Silas brought the barrel of his pistol down hard against Hargreaves’s skull.
Another strike of pain erupted across Hargreaves’s head like an earthquake, and he collapsed onto the ground with his cheek pressing painfully against the ice.
“Do not think,” St. Silas said softly, “that I have been complacent or forgetful in those years I’ve been the Saint of Silence. I was always going to return for you.”
In spite of the blood flowing through his teeth, Hargreaves smiled, the ghost of memories soothing the throb behind his eyelids.
