Chapter 25 Scarlett
CHAPTER 25
SCARLETT
T he moon was bright as the girls prowled through the night, skirting down alleys and side streets. They were following a lead about their missing orphans, and it had led to the docks where they were now heading. They crouched behind some cargo pallets and watched as a ship was being unloaded.
“Do you think they are taking them off the continent?” Juliette whispered from between Nuri and Scarlett.
“It seems the most plausible, if they’re taking them to the docks,” Nuri replied.
“But why?” Scarlett asked.
“And why only children from our Syndicate?” Juliette added.
“Shh,” Nuri hissed as a lone figure emerged from the ship. He carried no luggage or bag, and he was dressed elegantly for someone who had just spent weeks at sea. “Oh gods,” Nuri hissed, practically gagging. “The reek.”
They possessed excellent senses. In fact, they all seemed to have extraordinary senses even for assassins. The girls all pulled their masks up over their noses, tears pooling in their eyes from the stench.
“That cannot be from him,” Juliette whispered. “Look at how well he is dressed.”
The man stepped onto the docks from the unloading plank and looked around, almost like he was expecting someone to be waiting for him. A worker made to move past him to continue unloading the ship, and the man gripped his arm, asking a question. The worker shook his head, pointing to a street that led into the heart of the capital.
The man began a leisurely stroll, and the girls set into motion. Nuri scurried up a drain pipe to the top of a cargo building to monitor from above. Juliette and Scarlett moved in the shadows below. As the man walked, he pulled something from his cloak and took a drink, shuddering.
“Must be strong stuff,” Juliette commented. She cast a glance at Scarlett. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine as long as we’re home by sunrise,” Scarlett whispered back. “I have a vial with me.”
Juliette nodded in approval. “The smell seems to be lessening. It must have been something on the ship.”
The man turned down a forgotten side street and stilled as a figure dropped into his path, seemingly from the night. Nuri. Scarlett and Juliette split up, each taking a different side of the street to monitor.
“Well, hello stranger,” Nuri purred. The man’s body somehow went fluid and rigid all at once. Nuri always seemed to have that effect on people. The man looked her up and down. “Don’t mind the steel,” she continued, her voice sultry. “A girl’s got to protect herself.”
“Something tells me you do not need a blade to protect yourself.” The man’s voice was cultured and smooth.
“You’re right. I don’t,” Nuri replied, stepping towards him. “But I do need something else tonight.” She ran her hand along his chest as she came to stop in front of him.
“And what would a Daughter of the Night want from me?” the man purred in response.
Nuri seemed to tense, and she took a step back from him. “What did you say?”
Something was wrong. Nothing ever riled Nuri.
Scarlett glanced across the street to where Juliette was hidden. She couldn’t see her though. The shadows were too thick. She crept closer. There was an alley just ahead that veered off the quiet side street they were currently on. That was where Nuri had been planning to lure him, but it seemed they might end up hauling him there instead.
“Tell me,” the man was saying, “where do you feed here?” Nuri stepped back again. “Going so soon? I assure you, I can help in whatever way you are needing.” He took a step towards Nuri, but Juliette appeared at her side.
Her sword was drawn as she said with lethal calm, “Back the fuck up.”
The man paused, cocking his head to the side. “A Daughter of the Night and an apothecary’s daughter together? What a curious thing.”
“We saw you get off that ship,” Juliette said. “Where are you arriving from?”
“I am visiting some of my kin who reside here,” the man replied. “How did you two get here?”
“We live here,” Nuri snapped back, pulling her scimitars from her weapons belt.
“But you are not from here.”
“Who are the family that you are visiting?” Juliette asked.
“I do not know their names here,” he said. In the moonlight, Scarlett could make out the half smile that filled his face as he said it.
“Then how will you find them?” Nuri asked.
“Blood magic I suppose. That is what brought me here in the first place.”
The words snagged in Scarlett’s memory. Blood magic. Dracon, the assassin who had murdered her mother, claimed such a thing as well.
“What does that mean?” Juliette snapped.
“Do you reside among the humans?” the man asked instead, again with a tilt of his head.
“Where we reside is none of your concern,” Nuri said through gritted teeth. Scarlett had never seen someone get under her skin so easily. “What is your business here? With your family?”
“I have been wanting to come visit them for a long, long while,” the man said. Then he took a step towards them.
“Do not come any closer,” Juliette snarled, leveling her sword at his chest.
The man seemed to sniff at her. “How interesting your own family is.”
“I will only ask you this one more time,” Juliette growled. “What is your business here?”
“And should I decline to answer?” the man asked, looking alarmingly unfazed.
“Then you shall meet my sister.”
Faster than any of them could detect, the man had Nuri in his arms. At her throat was a blade blacker than Scarlett had ever seen. It seemed to devour the dark around it. “A Daughter of the Night does not frighten me,” he sneered, his voice going cold, “and it has been quite some time since I have tasted one myself.” He bent his head down and then licked up the column of her neck.
“You’re a lunatic,” Nuri breathed.
“She is not the sister I was referring to,” Juliette replied coolly.
Scarlett had been inching forward as she had watched everything unfold. From the shadows, she hurled a knife striking true, directly into his thigh. Before he could react, Juliette had moved and knocked his dagger from his hand, pulling Nuri away from him. Scarlett could see the fury in Nuri’s eyes, but it was nothing compared to the rage on the man’s face. His black eyes glittered with ire as Scarlett stepped from the shadows to stand before him. He was clutching his leg. In the moonlight, his blood looked black as it soaked into his pants.
“You shall pay for laying a hand on my sister,” Scarlett purred, casually strolling towards him.
“I shall make you scream.” His cool, cultured voice was replaced with a hiss as he pulled the knife from his leg and threw it to the ground. His nostrils flared, and he straightened, taking her in. “The rumors are true. You are here.”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Scarlett said. “There are a lot of rumors about me.”
The man glanced between the three of them. “You are not sisters bonded by blood,” he hissed again.
“You’re right. Our bond is stronger than that,” Scarlett retorted.
Fog was creeping in. Fog so thick it was like shadows themselves. The man smiled at them, a vile, wicked thing, as Nuri and Juliette began to circle him. “A Daughter of the Night, an apothecary’s daughter and a daughter of fire and water and more it seems,” he mused. “I was warned there were guardians in this city. I did not believe their claims.”
“You have five seconds to tell me what the hell you are talking about, or I will start removing fingers,” Scarlett said with icy calm. She let more and more of the darkness out of its cage within her soul, the man’s eyes fixed on her.
“Too bad my brother has already laid claim to you. I can see why,” he said, and Scarlett could see the lust lingering in his gaze. This man was a lunatic.
He suddenly sprawled to the ground at her feet as Nuri landed a clean kick to his back. The man hissed, pushing himself to his knees. Scarlett crouched before him, and Juliette slammed a boot onto his hand. The man smirked at Scarlett, and she smirked right back as she brought a dagger down atop his left middle finger.
The man screeched in pain as the finger was severed from the rest of his hand. The fog was getting thicker and fast. Too fast. Too unnaturally fast. “What is your business here?” Scarlett demanded.
“You,” he seethed. “You are my business here.”
“You mean the orphans? The orphans in our Syndicate?” Scarlett demanded.
“No,” he gasped around the pain. She placed her blade against his pointer finger. “They are not my responsibility. They are someone else’s.”
“Whose responsibility are they?” Scarlett pressed down on her dagger, cutting into flesh.
“I do not know his name here,” the man hissed, “and even if I did I would not tell you.”
In two heartbeats, Scarlett had another dagger drawn and shoved into the man’s shoulder. “Bitch,” he gasped out.
“That’s one of the more pleasant names I’ve been called,” Scarlett purred. “Who is taking our children and for what purpose?”
“To restore my king’s throne,” he answered with a sneer.
“Who is your king?” Scarlett demanded.
“Who is yours?” the man replied with a smile through the pain. Then, again before any of them could sense his movements, the man lunged at Scarlett, knocking her to the ground. He straddled her, his hands wrapping around her throat. The fog was so dense and thick now that Scarlett could hardly see him above her, but she felt him as he leaned down next to her ear and whispered, “What sweet darkness dwells in you, Princess. I can see why he claimed you. I can see what calls to him. Shadows always return to the darkness.”
Then Scarlett was gagging as blood sprayed from the sword being plunged through the man’s throat. He was kicked off of her, and Nuri was dragging her to her feet.
“What in every burning pit of hell was that?” Nuri spat as the three girls stood around the man, now dead, before them. Juliette crouched and dug through his cloak and pockets.
“Nothing. He has absolutely nothing on him other than his flask,” Juliette said, standing and chucking the flask to the curb.
“Did you really need to kill him? He had information,” Nuri snapped.
“That he was never going to divulge,” Scarlett said pointedly.
“You had hardly started on him,” Nuri retorted. “We could have dragged him down an alley somewhere—”
“No. I’ve seen that look in men’s eyes before. He wasn’t going to give us any information. He was just going to lead us in circles with his random bullshit,” Scarlett replied, stooping to pull her dagger from his shoulder. She wiped the blade on the man’s pants, cleaning the blood from it.
“Then maybe you’re growing soft,” Nuri sneered.
“Shut up. Both of you,” Juliette interjected. “He had both of you in compromising positions tonight. I wasn’t risking it happening again.” She used her sleeve to wipe her own blade clean. “Let’s take care of him and go home. I need a bath. His blood smells like piss and vomit.”
“You’re telling me. It’s in my mouth,” Scarlett said, spitting on to the stones of the street.
“What did he say to you?” Juliette asked as they reached down to grab the man.
“Nothing noteworthy. More nonsense.”
“Where do you think he came from?” Nuri asked.
“The depths of hell?” Scarlett offered.
Her sisters laughed in the night as they dragged the corpse to a secluded area of the docks to dump him in the sea.
Scarlett shot up in bed.
And immediately regretted it as the room spun slightly.
She closed her eyes, drawing her knees up and resting her forehead against them. “Easy, Seastar. I’m here,” a familiar voice soothed. She felt Cassius’s hand on her back making soft, calming strokes. After a moment and a few deep breaths to calm her nausea, she opened her eyes again and slowly looked around the room.
It was dim with the curtains drawn over the window. The little bit of light that filtered in told her it was either dusk or dawn. She was in a large bed that was nearly as comfortable as her own. A heavy navy blue quilt covered her. Cassius was laying beside her. On the wall to her left was a dresser with six drawers. Next to it was a walk-in closet and across the room was a door that led to what she guessed was a bathing room.
“Where is here?” she asked, her eyes settling on Cassius. He was in brown pants and an open button-down shirt revealing his muscled chest and torso.
He put his hands behind his head and said, “Sorin’s apartment. More specifically his bedroom.”
“What?” Scarlett asked, her brows arching in surprise. She looked around the room again. She should have guessed at the scent of ashes, cloves, and cedar that hung in the air. There were no personal effects around the room though. “Why are we here?”
“It was too far to take you back to the manor so we brought you here after the party,” Cassius explained. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I would expect to be feeling, I suppose,” she muttered. “Is Sorin here?”
“He’s out in the main room,” Cassius said, with a nod to the closed door. “Nuri has been staying here during the day with Sorin or I checking in on you. At night, we’ve been here.”
“And right now it is?”
“Night. The sun is nearly set.”
“I had a dream,” she said quietly.
“The same ones you’ve been having?”
“No. This one was…not that,” she whispered.
“Ah,” was all Cassius had to say as he sat up and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into his side. She nestled into his chest.
They were quiet for a moment before Scarlett said, “You should take me to the manor.”
“Tomorrow.”
“What? No. You need to take me back tonight,” Scarlett argued, sitting up once more.
“Not tonight. Prince Callan is coming tomorrow evening. You need to stay here so you are not seen arriving the same evening he does. Also, you need to talk to Sorin,” Cassius said gently.
“I don’t want to talk to Sorin,” Scarlett snapped, swinging her legs over the bed to stand. Her knees wobbled slightly, but there was no way she was staying here another night.
Cassius was by her side in an instant with a steadying hand on her elbow. “You had no trouble talking to him the night of the party,” he teased. “You even took him to the sea star beach.”
“I’m not drunk on wine tonight,” Scarlett scowled.
“You cannot go back to the manor tonight, Scarlett,” Cassius said. “We cannot risk it, and you know that. The castle was risk enough. The Fates were on our side in this one.”
“I can sneak back in undetected,” Scarlett argued.
“It’s not safe there for you right now. Besides, as much as Sorin loves that dress, you smell.”
Scarlett looked down to find herself still in the red dress she’d worn to the party. Cassius was right. She could smell herself. She sighed. “I’ll take a bath, but I’m not talking to Sorin. I’ll just stay in here until Callan arrives tomorrow.”
“You need to talk to Sorin,” Cassius said again, leaving her side and heading to the bathing room. Scarlett followed him as he turned the knobs on the tub to begin drawing her a bath.
“Why?” Scarlett demanded, her hands going to her hips.
“Because he holds answers for you.”
“He told you? About me?” Scarlett’s voice was soft, quiet. Why was he telling anyone but her?
“He’s told me a few things that he’s worked out,” Cassius admitted, adding some lavender and jasmine soap to the tub.
“Then why wouldn’t he tell me anything?” Scarlett asked, her voice sharp. She could feel her anger and hurt from the past several weeks bubbling to the surface. Her hands were cold and clammy.
“Scarlett,” Cassius said, his voice cautious, “he told me very little, but enough that I trust him.” When Scarlett didn’t say anything, he added quietly, “He had answers for me too. And Nuri.”
Scarlett’s gaze softened as she looked into Cassius’s eyes. “Tell me everything.”
“I can’t right now. I have to go and meet Drake tonight to finalize everything for tomorrow, which is why I’m leaving, but I have given Sorin permission to tell you anything about me. I will fill you in on whatever he doesn’t when I see you tomorrow.”
Cassius turned to help her with her dress. It was just as difficult to get off as it was to slide on with how fitted it was. And trying to get it off while still slightly shaky? Forget it. As for Cassius seeing her naked body, that hadn’t been an issue for years. He held her hand and helped her climb over the lip of the tub, keeping her steady while she lowered herself into the water. The bubbles from the soaps and oils came nearly to her chin. She submerged her head, coming back up with soaking hair and water running down her face.
“I cannot imagine Sorin had lavender and jasmine soaps laying around,” Scarlett commented, pushing her hair back from her face.
Cassius barked a laugh. “No. Nuri brought them, and Tava gave me clothes that are out on the dresser. He had buttoned his shirt now and was working on the cuffs of his sleeves.
“Come here,” Scarlett said, motioning for him to come closer. She dried her hands on a nearby towel and fastened the buttons.
As she worked, Cassius said, “For what it’s worth, there’s a connection there, with you and Sorin.” Scarlett finished the final cuff and started to protest but he stopped her. “You don’t have to agree with me. I’m just telling you what everyone else sees. I may be your favorite, but if he’s in the room, your eyes go to him first, then they seek me out. When you’re not looking, he’s constantly watching you, assessing for threats. And the two of you dancing the other night? Whether there was wine involved or not, I swear you both glowed in an odd way. It was as if there was no else in the room. It’s been there since the first time you two faced off in the training galley. He’s able to reach you when no one else can. I see it. Nuri sees it. Everyone sees it. What it is? I guess that’s for you two to sort out.”
Scarlett was speechless. She was staring at the bubbles, playing with them in her fingers. She couldn’t even look Cassius in the eyes. She felt his fingers grip her chin and lift her face to his. “You are fierce and strong and a survivor. You need no one, Scarlett Monrhoe, but wouldn’t it be nice to have someone there with you so you can rest and take a breath, even if only for a minute?”
“That’s what I have you and Nuri for,” Scarlett whispered, tears burning at the back of her eyes.
Cassius leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I love you dearly, but I worry about the times I can’t be there. And Nuri…she’s her own creature. You two are as likely to kill each other as you are to protect each other, especially without a buffer any more. Just think about what I said.” He stood up, and before he turned to leave he said, “Talk to Sorin, Scarlett. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
When he reached the doorway Scarlett called out, “Cassius?” He stopped and looked over his shoulder. His shoulder-length brown hair swayed slightly with the motion. His dark brown eyes studied her with expectation. “Everything’s about to change, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Seastar, nothing will be the same again.”