Pulling her flask from her belt, Nes took a short swig before descending the hidden steps. The light from the lanterns lining the stairs bloomed bright and vibrant against the dirt-carved walls. At the bottom of the steps, they pushed through another door.
The space laid out before them was wide and cavernous. Unlike the kitchen above, the brawlhouse was nearly empty. The cleaners had mopped up the blood from the previous night’s fights, and the bartender had finished taking stock of the liquor. Only a few men stood in the center of the room. And in the center of the group stood Minot—Phineas’s second.
Keeping clear of the other men, she eyed Minot. Why Phineas had chosen this scrawny boy of barely sixteen to be his second, she would never understand.
Nes knew each and every one of the men lining up in front of Minot, all of them brawlers she’d found and brought here. Not one hassled Minot, their heads bowed as they stepped forward to accept a silver flask. A flask identical to the one currently at her hip.
She knew what waited inside each flask. Magic. Not the pure stuff scraped off tree bark like that in the hand of the dead boy outside the Valley, but diluted magic.
When mixed with seawater, magic became tame enough to ingest. To consume pure magic was to condemn yourself to death. But consuming diluted magic could give you a unique magical advantage. And the people of the Ditch yearned for any sort of advantage.
That was the truth of Gadore: Magic was the drug of choice. With Phineas as Gadore’s underlord, magic ran rampant in the belly of the city and infested the streets—slinking in shops, billowing within bars, and gushing out of gambling dens like the Siren’s Hair.
Underground brawlhouses were a common source of entertainment in the Ditch. But none compared to Phineas’s—where the fighters were anything but ordinary and the fights were unpredictable clashes of magic.
She watched one of the brawlers, his fingers clumsy as he unscrewed the top of his flask. She’d brought him in a year ago after discovering diluted magic gave him the ability to throw people across the room without laying a finger on them.
Minot approached her, one flask left in his hand. “Ah, Nes, so nice of you to join us.” His eyes latched on to Marnie, the girl still huddled close to the steps. He grinned, suddenly looking a lot less like a young boy and more like a true threat. “And it looks like you’ve brought Phineas another wayward soul to sink his claws into.”
She didn’t have a retort.I don’t have a choicesounded whiny. Even if it was true.
“He here?” She wanted to get this over with before the pits opened again.
One of Minot’s long fingers tapped the outside of the last flask, his nail clinking against the metal as he continued to stare at Marnie.
“Minot,” she said when he didn’t answer. There was an edge to her tone, one she normally tried to keep at bay when in the brawlhouse. But her manners were about as wrought as her patience.
“Nes.”
She gestured to the only other door in the underground. “Is he in there?”
“He’s not to be disturbed.”
She tried to sidestep Minot but was blocked. A laugh bubbled up her throat before she clamped down on it and shoved him out of her way.
Minot’s eyes widened. “Nes, you can’t. He’s not—”
“—to be disturbed.” She gripped the door handle and shot Minot a disparaging look over her shoulder. “You said that. But he and I, we’re overdue for a talk.”
She threw open the door and stepped inside. The light of the brawlhouse floor rushed the tiny office space, illuminating a square, fairly nicked desk with a single chair on either side. Both chairs sat unoccupied.
“Where—”
“Hello, hound.”
Nes flinched as if the dark itself had slapped her across the face.
She whirled, turning just as Phineas Wraw emerged from behind the door.
Phineas was slim in the same way a suit was sleek, his nose as sharp as his eyes. And though he was gloriously attractive, she prided herself on not falling for him. His beauty had always felt feigned to her, like it was something he’d collected over time rather than inherited.
His hair, kept long, was a deep red today and flowed down over one shoulder. He stroked it like a pet as he watched her out of eyes of brightest amber.
“What brings my prized hound home?” Phineas asked. His lips, nearly as deep a red as his hair, puckered softly as he spoke.
Hound. She hated that nickname.
In Gadore, Phineas held power like the clouds held rain. Only Phineas never let his fall.
