Yeah, I knew the message, all right: Cross Arabesque Harrow, and pieces of you get distributed across continents.
At first, I was suspicious that she knew I was playing a role by sending me to Evermere with Austin’s heart while she booked a flight to Korea. Me, her trusted enforcer who she didn’t actually trust at all, heading straight to her enemies’ doorstep with a gory package? Perfect setup if she suspected me.
Then I thought about it a little bit and realized I would have done the same. If the heart ended up reaching my enemies, that would send a message. If it didn’t? No harm done. But collecting a multi-million-dollar bounty? Yeah, I’d want to do that personally, too.
Which was why I was currently driving in a huge circle on backcountry roads, sipping drive-thru rot gut coffee, as I gave Arabesque plenty of time to leave the farm. She was headed to see Ondine Filcher, and I knew the old hag would be dead by brunch. Arabesque had no use for loose ends, and Ondine had outlived her usefulness the moment Amabel and Eluned had executed their plan.
From there, Arabesque was going to fly out of Detroit for Seoul. Probably first class, sipping champagne while Austin’s head sat in a reinforced case in the cargo hold, a swarm of Dark wards fending off any human security risks.
I checked my phone, propped against the dashboard. On screen, the video feed from Koa Cimmerian’s little spy eyes showed the Bell homestead’s driveway, still and quiet in the early morning light. As soon as it showed she’d left the farm, I was going to turn around and find a spot to build me a big ol’ bonfire.
Cho had been trying to escape his family’s darkness, only to stumble into something worse. At least I could make sure Arabesque didn’t get to use his remains for whatever ritual she was planning next.
I wasn’t a good guy. Hadn’t been for a long time. But I could do this one thing right.
The coffee tasted like shit, bitter and burnt, but I drank it anyway, needing something to wash down the sour taste of self-loathing.
My phone pinged. Movement on the driveway. Arabesque’s sleek black car pulling out, her silhouette barely visible through tinted windows. I watched until she disappeared down the long driveway, then I made a U-turn on the empty road, heading back to the farm. Time to erase what was left of Austin Cho before he became another ingredient in Arabesque’s arsenal of horrors.
Figuring I had time to kill with her out of the picture for the next twenty-four hours, I decided to call my Cimmerian boys. The sun had climbed higher, painting the fields in that particular shade of morning gold that always seemed false to me, too pretty for a world this ugly. I wanted to see how Zane and Casimir were doing and give them a heads up on what was happening back at the Bell homestead. With Arabesque making moves, they needed to be ready.
I pulled over onto the gravel shoulder, dust billowing around my truck like pale ghosts. The cooler with Austin’s heart seemed to pulse with accusation. I turned it toward the passenger door, away from my line of sight.
I scrolled through contacts and called Koa, not sure if Zane or Cas were vertical yet, but it was Zane who answered, anyway, his laugh crackling through the phone speaker like bacon on a skillet.
“Fozzinator! How you been, man? Your girlfriend died cursing your name, by the way.”
“Hope she mentioned I never called back,” I grunted. “You good now, bro? Brain unscrambled?”
“Unscrambled enough.” His voice tightened. “Cas took the worst of it. Amabel came loaded with more tricks than her sister. Some kind of illusion web that convinced him we all died. That Seri—”
“Getting anything useful out of her?” I asked quickly because that was not a road I needed to go down any more than he did.
“Meh. She had some insights into Arabesque’s ways of doing business, but nothing we didn’t already suspect. The woman’s a mastermind of compartmentalization. The twins only knew what they needed to know for their specific assignments.”
“She didn’t trust them,” I scoffed. “Didn’t mourn either of them, either.”
“Sorry about offing your fuck buddy,” Zane taunted.
“Pfft. That’s all she was and was ever gonna be. Don’t lose sleep over it.Iwon’t.”
I found Eluned entertaining. She was so messy, so reckless, so unraveled, and I loved poking the bear. Yeah, the sex was hot, and I enjoyed it because it was all chaos and no strings, but there was zero tenderness or affection. It was just a good rough fuck. Period.
Shortly after I infiltrated Arabesque’s inner circle, Eluned had been bored, looking for someone to play with, and I’d been the shiny new toy. She’d sauntered up to me one night after Claudio Kane dismissed us, pressed herself against me, and whispered something filthy in my ear. I played along, partly to solidify my cover, partly because I wasn’t one to say no to a willing woman climbing me like a tree.
It had been like dancing with a tornado: Wild, destructive, and leaving everything in disarray. Sometimes she’d draw blood with her teeth or nails, laughing when I smacked her ass or bit her. Other times she’d sob afterward, rambling incoherently about her mother’s expectations, her sister’s superiority. I never comforted her because we weren’t that kind of thing, but I listened, filing away information that might be useful.
“I should be the one apologizing,” I told Zane now. “I steered her toward Evermere. Kept dropping hints about vulnerabilities, mentioning how you might be away on a hunt. I just figured, ‘Let the Cimmerians deal with this crazy ass bitch,’ but she was more dangerous than I thought.”
There’d been a dark satisfaction in manipulating Eluned, planting seeds that I knew would lead her right into the Cimmerians’ crosshairs, but I hadn’t anticipated the damage she and her sister would manage to inflict before going down.
“I underestimated her, Z.”
“It was gonna happen sooner or later, Fosteroni. Arabesque had been planning something long before this. You just helped us control the timeline. Now it’s done and outta the way.”
“Cas?” I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel.
“Recovering. Seri’s doting on him like he’s made of moon-damned glass.”
