Poppy looked away, falling easily into the act of blushing fiancée. “I fear you are too kind.”
“Every man should aspire to kindness where his future wife is concerned,” Richard said. “Shall we head off? I told your parents you’d be home for dinner, and a promise is a promise.”
With one last glance at the orphanage, Poppy let Richard lead her back to his car. She didn’t let herself think about what would happen if Richard learned about her unnatural power. Instead, she forced herself to focus on all the ways the future would be better.
Chapter Ten
A Brother for a Bride
The sun rose on the twenty-second day of Paranjay’s arrest. Dawn trickled in through the slats covering the window of the Devar Brothers office, bars of gold light striping the newspapers and spreadsheets and intel reports scattered on every surface.
Despite their earlier truce, Hasan and Zeyar continued to butt heads. They’d tried to come up with alternate solutions. But every road they explored took them back to the exact same fork: bribery or battle. To Hasan, attacking the precinct was the only viable option. Zeyar was just being stubborn.
“If we attack the precinct, then we have no room for failure,” Zeyar said. “If we don’t get Paranjay out, they’ll harm him in retribution.”
“I’ll rally my strongest men,” Hasan reasoned. “Plus, we have the element of surprise.”
“And they have military-grade rifles.” Zeyar paced the room, a tail of cigarette smoke following him. “Our daivyakhi is limited as it is. Making offerings to household idols can only get us so much power, and our handguns are no match for their weapons. Plus, they’re trained in combat. We don’t have that same advantage, nor do we have months to train. We need to get Paranjay out before this moves to the courts and they sentence him to a high-security prison.”
If they don’t sentence him to the gallows instead.The unspoken alternative hung heavy in the air between them.
“There must be a price,” Zeyar said, almost to himself.
“Oh my gods,” Hasan groaned. “Will you fuckingdropthe bribery idea?”
“No”?—Zeyar shook his head?—“not bribery. I mean there must be something that Montrose cares about, something that we can leverage to at least gain an audience with him.”
“Like blackmail?”
“Maybe.” Zeyar sat at the desk in front of Hasan, shuffling a stack of newspapers to the side. “What have your spies learned of him?”
Hasan sighed, flipping pages in his notebook. “Not much that we don’t already know,” he admitted. “He graduated from the police academy after a year’s worth of training and has been promoted thrice, most recently a few months ago, when he made captain and started to make our lives hell. His promotion is likely nepotism, given he’s from one of the original five colonizing families, but he’s clearly not an empty head.”
“What else? Family? Siblings?”
“He has a younger sister. But she married a man from a lesser family, and if the rumors are true, he’s been distant from her ever since.”
“Surely he hassomeonehe cares about.” Zeyar waved his cigarette in the air. “A close friend, a mistress. He must have a woman?—he’sMiss Marnapur’s most eligible bachelor, for gods’ sake.”
Hasan paused. “Since when do you readMiss Marnapur?”
“I don’t,” Zeyar said. “Harithi enjoys reading it. Says it’s funny.”
Hasan’s brow creased. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with it.”
Zeyar stiffened. “I must be mistaken,” he huffed, stabbing his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. “Maybe it was Samina. I don’t know. Fuck, I need a cup of chai. I saw Kishan opening his stall. Let’s go. A break will do us some good.”
Hasan didn’t want to get up until they’d found a solution, but they’d been awake all night, and a cup of chai sounded exactly like what he needed to take the edge off.
As the two of them stood waiting for their chai, a paperboy drew near, carrying a heavy bag of newspapers over his shoulder.
“Viryana Post!” he shouted. “Just five copper crowns!”
“Boy,” Hasan called, taking a silver crown out of his pocket. “I’ll take one.”
The boy scampered forward, collecting the coin eagerly and thrusting the paper into Hasan’s hand. Hasan blanched, too startled by the headline to ask the boy for change before he scurried off.
“There you go again with your charity,” Zeyar said. “How many urch?—”
