Before he could start toward the stairwell, however, he suddenly heard a third male voice.
Kane’s blood turned to ice, prickling along his veins. He knew that voice as well as he knew himself. It featured in all his nightmares, both waking and sleeping. Snapping around to look at Fletcher, he saw his own acute horror reflected in his friend’s gaze.
Ward?Fletcher mouthed, the question mark implied, and Kane nodded slowly. It didn’t make sense that the kingpin was here, and yet the light tenor was unmistakable.
Ordidit make sense? After all, Ward had told Kane to cut ties with Zaria, and he’d refused. Ward had turned Price against them. He’d been meddling in Kane’s plans from the very start. Why shouldn’t he know that Zaria had been the one to end up with the necklace? Why wouldn’t he have come to see things through himself?
Kane’s horror multiplied tenfold as a woman answered, barely audible. By now he was intimately familiar with Zaria’s voice as well. His fury with her was bordering on mutinous, but it washis. Not Ward’s. The kingpin did not get to kill her. Not if Kane had anything to say about it.
“Stay here,” he told Fletcher on a quiet exhale. “If Jules comes down, grab him.”
“But Ward—”
“Won’t hurt me.Stay here.Promise me, Fletch.”
There was a long pause, but then his friend dipped his head.
Kane was around the corner and down the corridor in a half-dozen steps that echoed ominously in the narrow space. The door at the end was open, and he barreled through it without stopping to think.
The world turned on its head.
He saw Ward, the necklace in one hand, a dark market revolver in the other. He saw Zaria, bent at the waist as if midway through rising. Time seemed to stretch taut, then unraveled as she met Kane’s eyes. Hers were full of true, genuine fear.
Now he understood. Ward had read Zaria in a way Kane had failed to do. If the kingpin was good at anything, it was understanding people. He predicted their steps and guessed at their desires with shocking accuracy. He’d assumed Zaria was going to betray Kane, hadn’t he? That was why he’d referenced Itzal Mendoza’s penchant for deception.Thatwas why he’d wanted her dead.
Kane barely glanced at Ward, though. His focus was on Zaria.
If Ward had backed her into a corner, then Kane was the one who held her there. The mere sight of her sent his rage surging to near-apoplectic levels. She stared defiantly back at him, willful and tight-lipped. It was the very expression he’d become so familiar with. But where she’d always been unflinching in his presence, this time she recoiled from what he said next.
“Didn’t make it very far, did we, Mendoza?”
Kane heard the deadly, absolute calm in his own voice, and understood her reaction. He sounded softly condescending. Utterly unfeeling.
He sounded like Ward.
Zaria looked past him to the door, seeking an escape where they both knew there was none. Meanwhile, Ward watched them with mild interest, eyes glittering in the dim.
“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have betrayed me first,” Zaria said, almost too quietly to discern. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have if you’d gotten the chance.”
Kane took a step forward. His brain felt disconnected from the rest of his body. Like somebody else was coordinating the movement and he was merely along for the ride.
“I thought about it,” he said, deciding honesty would cut deepest. “But in the end, I couldn’t do it. Not to you.”
He couldn’t tell whether Zaria believed him. Something like pain sparked behind her eyes, though it was gone before he could be sure he’d seen it at all.
“I had no choice,” she said. “Kane, the necklace, it’s—”
“Powerful.” This from Ward, staring at them from behind the trinket. He held it in front of his face, which was set in a hungry expression. The stone glinted in the candlelight as it swung back and forth, back and forth. “Yes,” he continued, perhaps in response to Kane’s bewilderment. “Verypowerful, in fact. You see, it’s a primateria source.”
It all made sense then. Revelation after revelation struck Kane like physical blows. Why Ward had been so desperate for the necklace and why the stakes seemed so high. Why Zaria had agreed to help him and why she stuck around despite her apparent desire to be anywhere else. Kane had thought himself in control when this whole time he’d been at the center of a game he hadn’t fully understood. He feltsick. Sick right down to his very core, until anger bloomed to replace it once more.
That was when he finally relaxed. Anger was a feeling with which he was familiar. Anger he could trust.
“Anyone who knows what the necklace truly is would understandwhy I wanted it,” Ward said, a response to Kane’s unspoken question. “So I couldn’t very well steal it myself, could I?”
It struck Kane as a foolish thing to say. Ward didn’t do anything himself regardless.
“You’re not even an alchemologist,” Zaria spat. “What use is it to you?”
