“The change didn’t take.”
“Understood.”
“Don’t talk about my personal business like I’m not in the room,” she snaps.
“Don’t keep things from me,” says Lys, “and I won’t have to.”
“That’s not part of ourarrangement.” She spits out the word like it’s acid. Mangling it on purpose, so it comes out ugly. Itisugly, this thing between them. The hunger. The secrecy. The way she likes how he looks with her blood on his teeth. If she was smart, she’d end it now.
“That was an oversight,” says Lys, nonchalant. “We’ll add in a clause during negotiations.”
He hasn’t looked away from her. Not once. Not even to blink. Black overtakes the whites of his eyes, spilling into his stare like ink. Beneath her skin, the first hint of malaise skitters down her bones. They’re crashing, both of them, her sense of self-preservation crawling back into her as the humanity crawls out of him.
And then—just when looking at him begins to hurt—he smiles. “What a unique situation we’ve found ourselves in.”
The room feels like a powder keg. Like a single lit match will detonate the whole of Mercy Ridge, and them with it.
“Thorley needs to find his sister,” muses Lys, “which is a service only I can provide. I need Keeling dead—a service that Thorleyclaimsonly he can provide. And Shea—” His jaw ticks. “Shea Parker needs a cure for what ails her mother.”
Asher gives immediate voice to the doubt inside her head. “Thereisno cure.”
“Thereis,” says Lys. “And as luck would have it, that’s a service I can provide.”
Hope, feeble and floundering, finds purchase inside Shea’s chest. “You’re not lying?”
“Cross my heart,” says Lys. “I can get it for you.”
“For a price, I’m sure.”
She’d meant to sound derisive. Instead, her voice is brittle as glass. A cure. Acure. She thinks of her mother, the sun in her eyes and her braid coming loose, her head thrown back in a laugh. Shea has nearly forgotten the sound of it. Her father’s disappearance was quick. He’d gone overnight, slipping away without a word, and before anyone could do anything about it. Her mother is disappearing slowly. Shea will do whatever it takes to make it stop.
“What do I have to do?”
“It’s simple.” Lys is watching her too closely again, with a look that slices clean through her. “Paris Keeling is hosting a party at the end of the month. He’s insisting that I be there. Personally, I’d rather gouge my eyes out, but I’ll admit it gives Thorley the perfect window to get close to Keeling undetected.”
“The hunter’s revel,” says Asher. “I’ve heard of it. It’s an annual bloodbath.”
“And I avoid it annually. What a nice surprise it will be for everyone to see me there.”
“What does the hunter’s revel have to do with me?” asks Shea.
Lys looks scandalized. “I’d never show up to a party without a date.”
Her stomach hooks, though it shouldn’t. Cyrus’s warning runs through her in a loop:He doesn’t like you. He doesn’t like you.This is a negotiation. A new game, with a new set of rules. This is a chance to save her mother. That’s it. Nothing else.
Across the hotel, several doors slam shut as the sun breaks over the mountaintop. Mercy Boys, hunkering down someplace dark. Curling themselves away in the shadows like bats. The first fans of sunlight widen along the floor. Stray beams catch in the chandeliers, throwing errant diamonds against the wall.
“Say yes,” urges Lys.
She swallows around her heartbeat, gathering her mettle. “All I have to do is go to this party with you, and you’ll get me a cure?”
“It’s that easy.” He moves, and the shadows move with him, as though he effuses the darkest depths of hell. “Although, it’s a very exclusive party. Keeling is particular about who he lets in.”
His voice is weighted with implication. Sleep-deprived and still aching from the feed, it takes her too long to piece it together. Not Asher. He gets there right away.
“Don’t do it, Parker. It’ssick, what he’s suggesting.”
Lys doesn’t spare him a glance. “She can make up her own mind, Sunshine.”
