“Indeed we are. Though the rest of us are currently abed.”
Yvette didn’t speak, searching him over as if she might find the truth written amongst his features. Finally, she looked down into her ale for the first time, seeming more troubled than before.
Yvette knew something.
“One might wonder if you had any idea as to her whereabouts,” he said, technically not a question. Florian kept his tone light, though his heart was beginning to race.
“She was turned over to one of the southern cartels: the Highwinds,” Yvette said, still not meeting his eye. “From what I understand, there was a bounty.”
Florian’s mind blanked. Whatever he expected, well… His full weight sagged against the bar. If that was true, matters were worse than he had let himself imagine. Their business was often at odds with the Highwind’s dealings, and those corrupt moguls would undoubtedly pay to have any one of them in chains. If they had their hands on Keira, they’d bury her, that is if they chose to keep her alive at all.
Florian let out a heavy breath.
“I wanted to find you.” Yvette pressed. “I figured that if anyone could help me-”
“I need to wake the others. They should hear this as well,” he said suddenly. “Can you wait here?”
Her brown eyes went wide for a moment before she nodded.
Despite her assurances, Florian rushed up the stairs. After the festival ended, they had claimed a third room. Gareth hated sharing his sleeping space, and well, Florian and Knox enjoyed the privacy. However, Rhea and Lilith’s room was the first in the hall. He knocked on it insistently.
After a moment and some obscured grumbling, Rhea came to the door.
She scowled down at him. “I’ve made up my mind, Florian. If you want to stay-”
He shook his head. “It’s not that.”
Rhea straightened.
He opened his mouth to say,There’s someone down at the bar-but the words caught in his throat. Trying again,I met-That didn’t work either.
Meanwhile, Rhea was looking down at him with steadily mounting annoyance.
Instead, he tried a new approach. “I know where Keira is,” Florian said out loud finally. “You need to come downstairs.”
He repeated this process with Knox, who agreed wordlessly, having not been asleep anyhow, and Gareth, who’d cursed him and six lines of his descendants for waking him. All the while, his mind was working at dangerous speeds.
Yvette had ordered him not to tell anyone he’d seen her, and now he couldn’t physically form the words. Just as the innkeeper had given her a free room without hesitation when she’d asked. It was growing steadily clearer that there was more at work here than persuasion… but how? It seemed his fox carried more secrets than one.
Yvette
Florian smiled more than any honest person should. It was a mask, she knew. Victor wore masks too, typically one of casual indifference as he subjected everyone around him to his exacting assessments. Yvette had no doubt that Florian had been measuring her since she walked into the tavern. However, what he wanted was impossible to say. She certainly didn’t trust him. It didn’t help that he was so rakishly handsome, and clearly knew it. His sun kissed skin and artful, curved features. The way he wielded that crooked smile like a weapon was bordering unethical.
If it hadn’t been for the genuine concern on his face when she’d mentioned Keira’s predicament (the first genuine expression she’d seen him make) she never would have stayed after he’d disappeared upstairs. It was a choice Yvette was still reconsidering as she sat nervously at the bar. Her anxiety dueled between fears of Florian coming back down the stairs with his companions to rob her or Victor walking through the tavern doors in a cloud of wrath.
Florian’s reappearance shook her loose from her anxieties. Behind him, others followed, grumbling to one another until one by one they locked eyes on her.
“Is this who brought news of Keira?” the dark skinned woman asked.
“This is Yvette,” Florian said. He passed a round of introductions of his associates for her benefit. Rhea’s gaze on her was curious, but aloof. Lilith’s eyes were narrowed and calculating. Gareth, the large one, was looking down on her with a hardly discernible expression, but it was certainly not welcoming. Last of all, Knox… His unflinching stare nearly sent a shiver down her spine as their eyes met, looking as if he might actually bite.
“She came here to tell us that Keira was taken by the cartel,” Florian finished.
They exchanged uneasy looks.
“She came to find us tonight, to tell us that Keira was taken aweekago?” The small blonde woman, Lilith, asked skeptically.
“We are too far north for even their reach,” Gareth said, his brow low and solid over his eyes as he crossed his massive arms over his chest.
