“Of course.”
He sighs. “You always want everything, right away.”
“I don’t want everything.”
“You’ve been like this since you were a child.”
“I’m not one anymore.”
“I noticed.”
There is nothing remarkable about the way that Will says this, but Sam feels it as surely as a touch, as if his words have caressed her skin. Goose bumps rise along her arms.
“What do you notice, then?” she says, feeling bold.
He turns them. When they settle into their dance again, he runs his fingers lightly across the base of her spine, back and forth, sending a ripple of shivers through her. His face is closer to hers now, and the look in his eyes is an examination of her. She wavers under the sear of it, her breaths turning shallow.
He leans close, and for a heart-stopping second, she thinks he’s going to kiss her. But he turns his head slightly instead, so that his lips are beside her ear. “I notice your assignment,” he murmurs.
Sam stirs herself from the spell of dancing with Will, embarrassed by his rebuke that she has a job to do. She lets Will guide her in a circle until she sees her target.
It is the young woman in the yellow dress.
“Dominique St. Clair,” Will tells her.
Cleopatra.She swallows and collects her wits. He must have noticed Ari too, of course, and with a tightness in her chest, she realizes that Ari has likely spotted them as well.
The spell of their dance wanes, and Sam’s hands tingle with the dread of what she’s come here to do. Dominique St. Clair is laughing now at something her companion said. The sound is bright and clear. The glittering Harry Winston bracelet on Sam’s wrist clinks as she moves with Will, the stones winking under the light. Sam suddenly feels foolish over all the excitement and glamour of their shopping excursion from yesterday. So stupid. Had she forgotten why they were really here?
“Go,” Will says. His breath is warm in her ear, making her tingle. “Keep it quiet and quick. When you’re done, leave and find your driver. He’ll take you back to Londinium. I’ll see you there tomorrow morning.”
The song ends, then, and Will steps away from her. Sam takes a deep breath at the sudden coolness of his departure. They join the rest of the crowd in scattered applause, and as they do, Sam’s eyes linger on the back of Dominique. She thinks of Hanover, and her mind clears a little.
Dominique excuses herself a few minutes later. As she crosses the space and enters one of the halls, Sam breaks away from Will and trails her. No one looks their way. Still, Sam makes sure to keep a reasonable distance from Dominique, waiting until the young woman has moved on before following along, always keeping her yellow dress just barely in sight.
They move to somewhere quiet now, a narrow pathway on the other side of the hall that is lit by a lone lantern. Somehow, Sam expects Ari to make an appearance, and on instinct she searches the street and the roofs of nearby buildings, the darkness of the windows. But there is no foot traffic here, no prying eyes. The rest of the party is back in the main quad.
Alone, Dominique takes a breath and pulls out her phone, sends a few messages. Sam waits behind the doorway leading out to the path, covered in shadows. She looks on as the woman makes a call, then murmurs in a voice low enough that Sam can’t hear. In the distance, she hears scattered applause from the party.
Dominique finishes her call and puts her phone away. As she does, Sam makes her way out of the shadows and onto the path. She moves automatically now, as if in a dream. And perhaps it is the sand, perhaps it is her nature, but her steps are so quiet that Dominique doesn’t look up as she approaches. Sam might as well not be here at all.
Sam recalls Sebastian’s advice to her, his reminder to move fast, out of mercy. So she focuses on the woman’s back. She wonders if this woman has children, a partner, loved ones. She remembers how Ari had leaned down to her, how easily he’d laughed, how he had touched her shoulder affectionately.
As she draws near, the woman looks over her shoulder for the first time, her gaze still uninterested. And Sam hears Sebastian’s voice in her ear this time, urgent and gleeful.
Death is a perfection all its own.
She gives Sam a questioning smile. “Yes?” she says.
Sam brushes the edge of the wall and calls on her soul. She pulls a long knife straight out of the stone.
To Dominique’s credit, she reacts quickly. As Sam lunges at her with the knife, she darts backward with a startled sound, then ducks low to run her hand against the path. A metal shield shoots up from the ground. She throws it up across her chest right as Sam’s blade hits, and the clang echoes against the walls.
A properly trained alchemist, Sam thinks bitterly. But not a polemist.Sam is too fast—the instant her blade hits the shield, she lays her other hand flat on the disc and shatters it into a million pieces of glass. Dominique flinches back, blinking against the rain of fragments, and blindly holds her hand out to transmute the shards.
“You can’t—!” she starts to utter.
But Sam has already created another knife. She lashes out at Dominique again as the woman tries to recover from the rain of glass. Dominique only has time to hold her arms out in defense before Sam plunges the second knife deep into her chest.
