We slip across rooftops, slide into alleys, cut through the night itself. One wrong step and we’re done. But I don’t misstep.Not here.
I move like the night. Iamthe night. The hunter again.
Tess’s boots step steady and sure across thatched roofs—she’s done this before. Gone is the meek child sold onto the Flesh Circuit to feed her brothers. No. This is a woman. A warrior. A daughter of the slums, just as I am.
“We’re close,” she whispers, ducking behind a choking chimney, and out of sight of the crawling guards that cover The Barrier District like ants on sweets.
From this vantage point I can see the blockade already set up before the bridge across The Black Stream. There’s no running. No escape. Only hiding now.
I fucking hate being prey.
“Where are we going?” I whisper, wearing the night like a second skin.
Without looking at me, she throws over her shoulder, “The Tainted Veil.”
Did she just say The Tainted fucking Veil?
“The whorehouse?” I ask, incredulous.
“Friends of the rebellion,” she answers. “And Madame Amarisse prefers to call it a pleasure parlor.”
I scoff.A pleasure parlor.
If it looks like a whorehouse, and smells like a whorehouse…
“I mean it. She’ll gut you like a pig for the spit if you call it a whorehouse,” Tess snips, reading my look of disdain.
The delicate woman has her hair pulled back in a tight knot at the nape of her neck, worn leathers—at least second-hand—fit her petite frame snugly, and her hazel eyes are hardened in thethick of the moment. Gellesk’s been training her.He’s recruited her.
“Fine,” I allow. I’ll call it a fucking pleasure parlor if it means refuge for me and my friends. I’ll call it a luxury establishment if I have to.
Tess nods curtly, and crouches low across the roofs, leaping over narrow alleyways. She’s tracking the movements of the guards, staying away from heavy foot traffic, and places frequented by nobles—they always sing like fucking canaries when it comes to lawbreakers if it means getting in Thalmyr’s good graces.
“Two more streets,” Tess grits out, and she checks the latch on her satchel is secured.
That’s when I realize?—
“You have the Shards.”
“Yes,” she breathes. “You need to steep them in boiling water for at least one hundred heartbeats. Drink a cup full, and the effects will be instant,” she pants, sprawling onto her belly as guards search the street directly below us.
We follow suit and drop to our bellies.
The guards still.
They heard us.
Therion is gripping the corner of the chimney, desperately clinging to it to keep him from sliding down the peaked roof.
But I can see him grimacing.
His arm is mangled from the beast’s bite—blood dark and slick. Even from here I can smell the iron. If he slips, if they see us, we’re done.
The guards below shift their torches higher, searching the roofs. And Tess—Stars save me—keeps crawling toward the glow of crimson lanterns in the distance.
But Therion’s strangled grunt cuts through my fragile hope?—
He’s sliding.
