“You’re right—there is.”
My mistress doesn’t flinch, just slides off the mattress.
“May I roll up your sleeves?” she asks.
“What are you doing?”
“I was going to explain when you had fully recovered.”
I glare at her, but curiosity takes hold. When she bends over me, I smell cinnamon and ginger and the faintest hint of peach. Kassandra slides delicate nails under the fabric of the nightgown and rolls the sleeve up to my shoulder. I gawk at the unmarked skin of my biceps. To the other arm, she does the same.
So much untouched skin. All that remains are four rings from my wrist to my elbow on each arm, put back there by Dominik’s complaint. Just like before, my debt has been halved, and I only have eight rings. I stare at the skin, waiting for the tattoos to return like last time. They do not.
“I could only forgive some debt,” Kassandra says. “So I chosethe debt of the other Houses, as to not flag Dominik’s attention. I’m trying to keep these transactions low profile.”
I glance up at her, gratitude and vexation swirling in me. “How?”
She smiles. “Remember Hector’s mistress? The wife of Illusion’s advisor? I had her to tea.”
“How’d it go?”
“It was pleasant despite the blackmailing. Well, pleasant for me, at least. She agreed to my terms and helped shift the books, which means I now have my own account Dominik does not know of.”
“Has he been here?”
“Not in over three weeks. That’s why I’ve been able to practice.”
The last time I saw Dominik, he was in the Pith with Maxian, a strange black powder on the table between them.
“You know something,” Kassandra states. When I say nothing, she huffs. “Tell me everything you learned while there. In riddles. Maybe it’ll help us come up with a new plan.”
“The eagle calls to the wolf.”
“I know that.”
“They…play with a powder.”
She snorts. “Coke?”
All that comes to mind is the image of the black powder on the table, and so my tongue cannot get around the oath. So I shift to different images, as if she’s asking a different question: What color is Eli’s hair? What color does Death wear?
“Black,” I sputter.
“I don’t know it.” Kassandra makes a face. “What else?”
“I don’t know why, but the eagle wants to keep the…moth.”
“No.”
I wince. “But the eagle—”
“Not happening. Next secret.”
“The eagle mated with…” My face burns and I look away.
“Go on.”
“The eagle mated with a pink…eagle.”
