My heart thumps against my ribcage. Dis?TheDis? Usurper and throne stealer and Hex’s mortal enemy? The shadow king that Wraith was going to bring me to?
Oh no. Oh fucking no. This can’t be good. Can’t be good at all.
“Hex,” intones Dis solemnly.
Hex grins. “How lovely to see you.”
Those cold blue eyes move over Hex with the calculating attention of someone taking inventory.
“I intended to challenge you,” Dis says. Conversational. As if they are discussing weather. “I was going to settle this.”
“And?” says Hex.
“And you were occupied.” Dis clasps his hands behind his back in a gesture that is so precisely formal it borders on the theatrical. “It would have been dishonourable to attack during another fight. And it would be dishonourable to challenge you now, when you have spent power in a realm that extracts a cost.” A pause, precise and weighted. “I do not wish to win that way.”
The alley is very quiet.
“How do you wish to win?” Hex asks.
“When you are at full strength,” says Dis. “When you have had time to recover and the challenge is fair. When no one can whisper that my victory is undeserved.” Something moves in his expression, too controlled to name. “I have waited this long. I can afford patience.”
I look at him. He is, I realise, extraordinary in a way that is completely different from Hex, different from Night and Dark, completely different from Fiend. There is nothing warm in him, nothing that is performing or holding back. He is simply himself, entirely, and what he is is the most controlled and deliberate person I have ever encountered.
He glances at me again. That same brief, assessing look. And then something very small happens in his face, something I almost miss. Not warmth. Not quite. Something more like the very early edge of curiosity.
“Your human,” he says to Hex, not unkindly. “The bonded.” A pause. “Unexpected.”
“Yes,” says Hex.
Dis looks at me for one more moment. I look back. I don’t know what he sees. Whatever it is, his expression gives nothing away.
Then he inclines his head to Hex. Precisely. Formally. The gesture of someone who has a code and keeps it even when keeping it costs them something.
“Until next time,” he says.
And then he is gone, the way he appeared, without drama, without shadow theatrics. Just gone, the alley ordinary again in an instant, as if the last minute never happened.
Hex and I stand in the November cold and look at the empty alley entrance.
“That was Dis,” I say.
“Yes.”
“He’s all… honourable.”
“Yes.”
I think about that. I think about the cold blue eyes and the formal posture and that tiny flicker of something when he looked at me. I think about Fiend, passed along as a political asset to that man, that precise and ancient and deeply unreadable man.
“Hex,” I say.
“Adam.”
“When this is over. When you go back and do what you have to do.” I stop. Start again. “Is… is everything going to be okay?”
Hex is quiet for a long moment. “That,” he says carefully, “is a very complicated question.”
I look at the alley entrance one more time.
