“I’m serious, Mila.” Fingers biting, the captain claimed my wrist and made me look. “Don’t give Hastings another reason. Don’t make eye contact,” he murmured, and pinned me with the full weight of that inky, unblinking stare. “Give him exactly what he wants to see. No more. No less.”
Broken. Obedient.
The very picture of a Caledonian slave.
I swallowed, throat clogged and growing thick with the weight of such an ask. And then, inspecting the lewd hem of my silken scraps, I nodded. Just once. Just enough to acknowledge the part I’d play in this artful, obscene dance, without having to voice what felt like betrayal.
“One day at a time, pet,” he added, and sent his thumb over the gold gleaming at my wrist. Sending a ribbon of power through my skin, letting me sip—and through that tiny taste, I caught the unmistakable flavor of anxiety and knew I wasn’t the only one dreading the funeral.
“Oh,good!” Marco snapped from the front seat. “We’re making deals with the Lady of Death and Corruption now, are we? Brilliant choice, mate. Seriously”—his knuckles went white and the leather of the steering wheel groaned in protest of clenched fists—“your best plan yet. Tell me, and this is an unrelated question, but has your brain begun to rot in your advanced years, or—”
“You about finished?” the captain snapped, and the window into his mood clapped shut between us before any hint of that blackness might spread and infect.
“Oh,” Marco hummed, “I’ve got alotmore to say. You’re just too cunt-drunk to hear it.”
“And what, exactly, would you have me fuckin’ do about it? I can’t—”
“Sounds like Hastings is making an offer you shouldn’t refuse,” Marco returned, and dark brown eyes flicked up to scowl at me in the mirror. “Instead, you’re making deals to keep her just the way she is. As if there’s nothing wrong with that little terrorist. As if she didn’t slip inside me like an ill-fitting coat barbed in razorblades—”
“Right, and which one of your brilliant plans did you want me to go with?” Asher snapped, and his grip on my wrist grew tight enough to bruise as he scowled at the back of Marco’s head. “The one that absolutely gets me killed, or that’ll probably get us all killed?”
Marco slammed both palms on the steering wheel hard enough to make the whole cabin tremble. “You’re not the one who has to deal with it!”
Asher laughed, low and full of spite, brittle where it tested the seams barely holding together. “Is that what you think I’ve been doing for the last nine days?Notdealing with it?”
“She didn’t crawl insideyourmind,” Marco hissed. “She didn’t useyoulike a whore and leave you soaked to the eyebrows in the blood and brains of a man you fought three campaigns beside. And the next time it happens,” he said, and met my eyes with those that were full of hatred and accusation, “it won’t be you who has to choose which monster might be worse.” He threw the vehicle into park with a jerk that almost sent me sprawling to the floor. “So, yeah,” he sneered, “if you’re asking me which of my brilliant plans I’d rather go with, it’s the one that doesn’t end with me being forced to putyoudown, you complete fuckin’ knob.”
I blinked. Shocked as a memory surfaced. Marco standing on the podium, cloaked in dust and ash as a riot surged out of control. A thousand different moving targets, but his weapon—spitting green flames and deadly, grim determination—had been fixed directly to the captain’s heart.
A breath leaked from my lungs, and with it, clarity.
I wasn’t the only one who knew Asher’s secret. That a berserker lurked beneath that thin veneer of Caledonian civility.
Because it was a beast Marco had been ordered to kill on sight.
18
The Tilcot manse.
Sweeping and regal, it had once been an opulent estate of Elora’s wealthiest patrons. But now? Every inch had been transformed by swathes of black fabric rimmed in gold. Stamped with the Tilcot coat of arms where it was draped over the three story building, Caledonia’s colors fluttered in the breeze. A somber monument to its late occupant.
Wrapped in fine dark silks, Carina materialized at the captain’s elbow as if he hadn’t abandoned her in the park at the earliest convenience without a backward glance. A somber smile fixed firmly in place. It was a perfected expression just wide enough to be seen without appearing garish.
Mournful enough to be mixed with a few sniffling sighs.
Without missing a beat, she looped her arm through the captain’s and fell into step. Unruffled by yesterday’s insults, she chose to soak herself in the attention, the adoration and condolences afforded to his intended bride. Artful tears sparkled at her waterline, though her kerchief remained suspiciously dry, despite her dainty hiccups and trembling fingers.
The long driveway was lined with a hundred soldiers dressed in their formal attire, and I watched from beneath lowered lashes as we walked at the head of the funeral procession. Five short paces behind the late general’s wife and newborn son. A woman whose name I couldn’t recall, whose face was shrouded in a black veil as she wept noisily before the throngs of onlookers. The infant clutched to her breast was swaddled in black, gossamer silks, fast asleep. Oblivious to his mother’s display of grief.
Blissfully unaware of the monsters all around him.
I followed. Eyes downcast. Skin gleaming with power I couldn’t taste, itching with the weight of hundreds of eyes as I trailed along in the captain’s shadow. On display for the first time in eight days, I maintained my end of the bargain and gave them my best impression of a broken thing.
Contrite.
Obedient.
Absent any whisper of spirit that might need to be crushed beneath a storm of black, Caledonian boots.
