“A perfect place to torture people. Nobody would hear them scream. Did the Shears find my fingers?”
Everard gave me an odd look.
“He cut them off,” I explained. “Both hands. Did they find them?”
“No,” Everard said slowly.
“So my body parts disappear after I die. Good to know.”
He looked slightly ill. Ramond vi Everard, a human being. That would be the day.
“You treat Death so lightly, Maggie. As if it were just a thing that happens to you instead of the fiend it is. Every time you die, I wonder if this time it will take.”
“Cheer up, Your Grace. The evening is lovely, we’re alive, and we still have three delicious pastries left. Matheo is still stuck in the Redeemer Tower, but the Butcher will not end his life.” I curled my hand into a fist and made a hammering motion with it. “Because he doesn’t have a face anymore.”
“Once you recover, I will teach you how to defend yourself with a dagger. You can’t keep bashing people to death in a blind panic.”
“It’s worked well for me so far.”
“True, but you might not always have a bludgeon handy.”
“I’ve never used a dagger before.”
He smiled. “Then you won’t have any bad habits I’ll have to correct.”
“Do you still have my lucky coin?”
He reached into his jacket and slid a den over the surface of the table. I took it. It felt familiar and comforting in my fingers.
“We won,” I said softly. It had cost me so much, but we had won. “I don’t care how resistant the future is, the Butcher is dead. Hreban will never be the Sun Margrave. It’s over.”
Solentine Dagarra swung himself over our parapet and landed on the wall, six feet away. His eyes were slightly sunken in, and the lines of his handsome face were sharper and more prominent. His usually perfectly combed hair stuck out from his head in a disheveled mess. He looked rough, as if he’d spent a couple of weeks fighting with a nasty flu and today was his first day upright.
How the hell did he get here so fast? The Demarr domain was all the way in the Trihorn. It should’ve taken him weeks to get back and forth.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” he said. “But they just found another butterflied body hanging off the Estret Bridge.”
PART IV
IN THENAME OF THEFATHER
CHAPTER29
Fucking shit! Of all the fucked-up, shitty, damn fucking assholes . . . Why?”
I stomped around my study.
“Was that not enough? Was the Butcher not enough?! Fuck you. Fuck you, Latour! I hope you die and rot in some ditch, you filthy motherfucker! Fuck Kair Toren, fuck Rellas, this whole damn world can go and jump in the fire for all I care!”
Solentine blinked and looked at Everard. “Who is Latour?”
“No clue,” the Sleepless Duke said.
I finally ran out of steam and collapsed into my chair.
The two men waited.
“Rough journey?” Everard asked.
