“I don’t understand.” Tears spilled toward his temples, dropped onto the pillow. “You weren’t... one of mine.”
Elloven leaned close. “I came to you, Sestinn. I fell to my knees and begged you, as someone I believed to be a man of honor and duty, to make your son stop. To help me. Do you recall what you said to me?”
Sestinn shook his head.
“‘Embrace your fortune, girl, for he tires of the others far quicker.’”
His crooked jaw snapped together. A bit of drool escaped the corner. “Eleanor. Baron Hawthorne’s girl.”
“Close enough,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “You know who I am, which means now you know why I’m here.”
“To kill me.”
Elloven nodded. “And then your son.”
“No.” He coughed, and more spittle bubbled up. “No, not my son.”
“His death, I’m afraid, will not be so merciful.”
“I can pay you. My banker... His name?—”
Elloven clamped her hand atop his wet mouth. His eyes, swimming with fear, quivered in their sockets. There was a wrongness she’d felt from the moment she’d sat next to him, but until she actually touched him, she hadn’t known where it had come from. She imagined her hands around his thin neck as he died, confused and crying, and it left her hollow. There’d be no joy or reclamation of power. He was pitiful and pathetic, but to die unable to fight back? He and his son took their pleasure from exploiting vulnerability, but if she killed Sestinn—any man who was this defenseless—all she’d leave with was an even deeper hole in her soul.
It wasn’t right, not for her. She’d missed her opportunity by about ten years.
“I don’t want your money. What I need can’t be bought.”
He gasped for air when she removed her hand. She couldn’t look at him another second, not even through the haze of tears. It was time to find Castien, who would fight back and then some.
But she couldn’t know what Sestinn was still capable of. If she slipped out and he screamed or managed to knock something over to get his guard’s attention, she’d be caught.
Elloven hurriedly searched the bottles, reading the labels for something that would be of use. She chose the one labeled “Henbane & Seed of Poppy,” grabbed a spoon, and returned to his side. He stared, indolent, as she slipped two spoonfuls into his chattering mouth. It didn’t take long. A few minutes later, he was asleep.
Elloven shook out her trembling hands. She held onto the table’s surface as she knelt, her head bowed, breathing through pursed lips. She closed her eyes with a pathetic whimper.
How could she have known he’d be so far gone as to not even remember? There was still Castien, and he would put up the fight she’d come for, but Sestinn had blunted her enthusiasm, made her vengeance feel small and misspent.
But she didn’t have time to overanalyze, and if she waited too long, she might not have the conviction either.
Elloven pulled herself up and together. In the mirror’s reflection, she wiped her tears and straightened her posture, then returned down the same steps she’d used to get there.
Gertrude wasn’t there, and she was glad for it, because she didn’t want to explain her failure. The flour-drawn map was still fresh in her mind as she started toward Castien’s office. She traveled down a servant’s passage, then into a long hall, where the office was supposed to be. She drew the blade as a precaution, but she wouldn’t use it unless she had to.
Elloven watched a guard walk the other way and waited for him to patrol far enough not to turn back. She had no trouble finding her way because the office stood out from the other entrances. The doors were exactly as Gertrude had described and yet didn’t quite do them justice. The smooth ebony was startlingly out of place, even there, and the carvings gave her pause: nude women, in various poses, their mouths and eyes gaped in pure terror. A monster’s tableau right there, for everyone walking by to see, day in, day out.
Any hesitation disintegrated with the violent, resolute chill that ripped through her from the blades of her shoulders to the tips of her toes.
Elloven shoved open the weighty doors, staggering into the room from the force of her entry.
Every gasp of breath left her lungs at the sight in front of her.
Castien was slumped over his desk, his face askew in an expanding pool of blood.
Behind him was Jesstin, his dagger still raised as he looked up and directly at her.
She went slack. Her knife clattered to the floor.
Jesstin wiped his face on his arm, leaving a diagonal slash of blood across his nose and cheek. He said nothing, a strain tightening his jaw, his stare fixed to her as though he’d seen a ghost.
