He stiffened beneath me. “Do you really want to talk about that right at this moment?”
I smiled. “I suppose not.”
His whole body sighed. “There is an open market close to her house where we can make some inquiries. Then I’m going to take you to bed and make sure you can’t walk for a week.”
~*~
I walked through the market, hair back in proper place, clothes back together. Gabriel was working the west side stallswhile I took the east. A crone selling trinkets in a ramshackle stall was trying to work her elderly wiles on him.
Finished with my inquiries, I touched a checkered scarf draped over the stall, eyes skimming his body as the crone handed him something, a wooden token dangling around her wrist. It seemed impossible that such an overwhelming man could move between different levels of society so easily.
He smiled.
I sighed. When a smile such as that existed, it was not hard to believe in the impossible.
It was hard not to want to be by his side for everything. A spell to soften my accent, to roughen or enhance my appearance, to blend in or stand out. I had the ability to do all of it now, with diligent practice and a place to do it.
And the shadows in his eyes, the expressions he sometimes tried to hide?I would figure out a way to breach—
A hand gripped my arm and yanked me behind the stall and into a shallow alley behind the colorful rows. Thorne Worley loomed over me, his brown eyes both earnest and unhinged.
I tore at the fingers around my wrist. He tugged me farther around the bend. “Wait, please. Listen.”
“Wait for what? Five women are dead.”
His eyes grew watery. “I know. Murdered. All of them. Except the most special one.”
“Who—”
“Need to help Lissa. I’ve been following the rules. Always so important. Lady Winstead and Lady Fomme and Lady—” A flock of ravens flew through the opening of the alley. Worley gripped me harder. “You must kill Noble before he kills you.”
Iced terror flowed through me. “What?”
“He will kill you. Just like he killed the others.”
“You’re mad.”
He pushed me against the wall, and I scrambled to break free. “My ladies. Gone. His fault. Hates them. Wants revenge. Can’t let him get Lissa. Head of them all.”
One part of me was screaming to run, the other unable to look away. He was like Octavia’s twisted journal, only in reverse, the victim pining for the master.
“Kill him first. It’s the only way. I tried. Too well protected from the outside. Must do it from within. You must. The only way. Must protect Lissa.”
“Who is Lissa?”
But Thorne Worley was gone. Slipped back into the stalls.
Gabriel stood in the same spot moments later, eyes dark. “Marietta?”
Something spiked within me. New fear. “Yes?”
“Why are you back here? It’s not safe.” He motioned toward the market and I followed him back into the crowd.
How to respond? With a question, with the truth?
“I just had to catch my breath,” I said. My mind had decided for me. Lied. “I didn’t discover anything.”
It’s not that I believed Worley, but his wordscircled, battering and coy. Lady Winstead. Lady Fomme.
