“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t care.”
I nodded and we sat there in silence, each of us reliving our own traumas until at last I said, “You wouldn’t have killed me, you know. Only made yourself some very lethal enemies.”
“I can’t do nothing.”
I knew that feeling too, so desperate for revenge that it made me do irrational things, like take on a warborn, blindfolded.
“Do you care about Lucian?”
“He’s the brother of my brother’s murderer.”
True enough, but maybe there was a solution in all of this, if only a temporary one. There must be someone he wanted dead more than me.
“Don’t you want Azrael to pay for what he did to you and your brother?”
Stefan stared at me stonily. “Yes, but I’ll take what I can get.”
“That’s short-sighted.” He shrugged. “What if you let me live long enough to punish Azrael, and then, if you still feel this way, you can try and kill me then?”
He gave me a skeptical look. “You’ll tell Lucian or the brother you’re fucking. They won’t let me live.”
I wished he’d stop with the whole brother-fucking thing. He knew your name.
“If I wanted you dead, I could do it myself. Right here, right now.” We assessed each other in a quiet stand-off. Stefan, seeming to realize this was his best option, finally nodded.
“But I need something from you,” I said.
“I’m not fucking you. Or letting you bleed me.”
I ignored his assumptions. “I need you to be my spy.”
His head tilted and he seemed genuinely interested at the prospect. “Spy on who?”
“My mother. She’s not the most trustworthy person, and I believe she’d plot against me to take control of the other tribes. I’m waiting for her to prove her loyalty one way or another, but in the meantime, I need someone outside the family to keep an eye on her. It would mean embedding yourself in her palace somehow.”
“That’s easy,” Stefan said. “Her baths are luxurious.”
That was certainly true. And they were the demon equivalent of the water cooler. I doubted any of them would mind Stefan making regular appearances.
“Don’t tell Lucian about our arrangement. He’s devoted to our mother.”
“I can keep a secret.”
He’d proven that already. Stefan twisted his shoulders, indicating that I should free him. After that, I handed him back his knife, waiting to see if he’d move against me, but he only stuffed his blade back under his robe.
“I guess you can no longer say you’ve never lost a knife fight,” I said.
He pursed his lips and glowered at me. He was aggravatingly handsome even doing that. “I gutted that pillow,” he said without a trace of a smile.
I realized something then, that you’d been more than just drunk, you’d been drugged. “You gave the drug to Lucian and Henri as well, didn’t you?”
He looked at me coolly. “I didn’t want anyone to interfere.”
“If you hurt Henri, our deal is off, and I will come for you.”
“Same for Lucian,” he replied, revealing his true feelings at last.
