“The village of vice?” Elloven was intrigued he would even suggest it. She’d never been. No one respectable would ever admit they had either.
“Don’t listen to this deviant,” Taven retorted. “He’s just as corrupt as both of his fathers.”
Jesstin laughed. “More.” He clicked his tongue at Efrata, winked at Elloven, and rode off into the night.
“Don’t listen to him, about anything. Ever,” Taven said again, with more force in his command. His hold on her tightened as she followed Jesstin until he disappeared into the darkness and dust. “I mean it, Ellie. He made his wealth exploiting the virtue of others, and he’d have no qualms exploiting yours.”
That would make Jesstin no different than most of the men she’d encountered, except for one critical difference.
He’d given her a choice.
Elloven broke away and went to greet her mother for the first time in over seven years.
Chapter 3
Challenging the Flames
It had taken every last bit of Jesstin’s self-discipline to suppress his bewildering enthrallment with Lady Elloven. The entire awkward carriage ride, he’d acted as aloof as he could manage, while concealing, hopefully, a mortifyingly swollen groin.
At least he knew he could still get hard.
The story went that when the late Fabrien Quinlanden had visited the Reliquary with his father, he’d taken one look at Elloven and decided then and there he had to have her, societal expectations be damned. Jesstin had taken the story as embellishment, but maybe there’d been more to it after all. She was undeniably beautiful, but he was around beautiful women so often in his line of work, he was immune. It wasn’t that. It was something else. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.
He slipped through the back gate of the Hermitage to avoid his family. Rhiain would see the color in his cheeks and ply him with questions he had no interest in answering. Asterin’s stoic silence would be worse. The man was a translator of rare documents and languages by trade. There wasn’t much he didn’t know how to read.
There was nothing to say anyway. They’d have heard by now of what had happened in the village, but he’d only done as the baroness had asked, and he had no further duty to perform. Lady Elloven was safely tucked away at Nightwood with her mother. That snake Considine’s intentions were none of his business.
“You’re home early,” Sesto said from nowhere. Jesstin nearly leaped out of his already-anxious skin.
“Stop sneaking about like a fucking cat, for Guardians’ sake,” Jesstin murmured. He peeled off his jacket and vest and tossed them over the backs of the chairs in the small breakfast nook the family rarely used, since Rhiain and Asterin had grown their family. “Did everything go... as planned tonight? No trouble?”
“Mostly. Twelve down, four to go.”
Jesstin nodded. They never talked about their side endeavor in the house unless the messages were vague. He’d only roped Sesto into the effort because he couldn’t manage it alone. “All right. Four isn’t bad. We’ll get them.”
“There will always be more, Jess.”
“As long as that’s true, we’ll be there to clean up after them.”
Sesto sat at the table with a piece of wadded vellum he’d smoothed. He cast his worried gaze upward at Jesstin. “Have you seen this?”
Jesstin leaned in. At first glance, it looked like a propaganda leaflet, but it was printed using the lavish new ink machine the Reliquary had invented. Printing anything on the press cost a fortune. That alone made the leaflet interesting, but it wasn’t why Sesto had asked.
“The blood-soaked strumpet returns. No husband or son is safe from the murderous vixen’s unslaked reign of rage and harlotry,” Jesstin read aloud. He whistled with a sharp laugh. The rest was more of the same, part warning, part call to arms. “I didn’t know you liked poetry, Sesto.”
Sesto didn’t seem even slightly amused. “This had to have come from within the Reliquary, Jess.”
“I know nothing about it.” Jesstin massaged his thumb between his brows. He hadn’t felt so unbalanced in years. All he’d wanted was to get the night over with, so why was he fantasizing about Elloven’s golden-red hair, which had looked like she hadn’t put a comb to it in days? He dug his nails against his palm to kill the image of smoothing it with his own hands.
Sesto’s troubled face was lit by a candle nearly spent. “I know you escorted Lady Elloven home this evening.”
Of course he did. Sesto knew everything. The man had spent most of his life as both eunuch and abbot, invisible and unimportant. “And?”
“What does Gennady think?” Sesto was the only person in the world who knew what Jesstin had done, and why. The only one who ever would.
Gennady had been quiet ever since he’d stormed out of the office at the Azure. “He said I should do as Esmeray asked. So I did. Nightwood was quiet, and I sensed no danger to her daughter when I left.” Other than that twat Considine, he thought, but in the short time he’d spent with Elloven, he deduced it was Taven who should fear her.
Sesto’s knuckles rapped the paper. “You believe with incendiary words like this, it will stay so for long?”
