Bonus Scene
Stavros
The thief glares at us, her body taut and her rumpled red-blond hair shining in the lantern’s glow. To my hazy vision, she’s like a lit match come to life.
“If this is the thanks I’m going to get after I’ve stuck my neck on the line a dozen times, I’ve had enough,” she snaps out to end her tirade, and darts past me.
Her previous comments are still ringing in my ears. Her claims about how Julita exploited our weaknesses—my weaknesses. How easily the woman who brought us together manipulated us all.
I can’t even say I believe she’s lying.
But we’re not done with the interloper in our midst either. I whip my right hand out to catch her arm, but she dodges as swiftly as ever.
With a flick of her hand, she’s already grasping the right books to trigger the secret passage.
I wrench myself around. “Ivy, you can’t just flee like a—”
In the space of those words, she dives into the shadowy opening in the wall. The plaster solidifies in her wake.
Blast it all.
I push myself forward to give chase. But as I reach for the same books, Casimir lets out an urgent sound. “What do you think you’re going to say to her?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I retort, my voice coming out in a growl. “We weren’t finished with this conversation.”
The courtesan manages to sound mild but firm at the same time. “She appears to be finished with it. Do you really think you’re going to get any further with her if you barge after her ordering her to listen?”
My hand hesitates on the books. I wouldn’t have been much of a general if I couldn’t see logic even when my temper’s riled.
Aleksi speaks up before I have to say anything else. “She was trying to make us angry, wasn’t she? Everything she said about Julita…”
He hesitates. His mask might hide most of his expression, but his distress is obvious in the strain in his voice, the tense slant of his mouth.
Out of all of us, the scholar was always the softest on Julita. I didn’t need to be any kind of companionship specialist to have noticed that.
Casimir’s tone gentles. “I don’t know if that’s how Ivy would have presented things if she hadn’t been upset. But I think we all know that Jules was perfectly willing to flatter and flirt to get what she wanted.”
“And what did she want more than to never have to worry about scourge sorcerers again?” Benedikt says wryly, but there’s a tension in his face too that suggests he’s not much happier about the situation than Aleksi is.
I don’t particularly want to get into this subject. Julita was lovely to look at and charming to speak with, and yes, she flattered me and even sometimes flirted with me. I never truly believed she felt anything more than friendly affection for any of us.
But there could have been a moment now and then when it felt good to indulge in the fantasy that she might.
What niggles at me more is the idea of her looking at me—at the most quickly decorated general of my generation, at the champion of dozens of battles against our greatest enemies, entrapper of riven, and a decent professor whether I wanted the job or not—and seeing only the cracks I buried so very deep.
The fissure lines where she could pry her fingers in and prod me into doing her bidding.
I’m here, aren’t I? I followed her this far, on a quest I’ve barely seen any evidence to justify myself beyond her reports.
Fuck.
I clench my jaw. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? Julita’s gone, in just about every way that matters. You couldn’t have her even if she wanted you, Aleksi.”
The scholar winces. “I never said—I wouldn’t have presumed—” He pauses. “I didn’t even know her all that well.”
His gaze slides to the wall Ivy vanished through. I wonder how well he’s gotten to know the thief in our midst.
The woman whose sardonic retorts and totally un-thief-like honor have gotten under my skin in equal measure.
The woman who had no real stake in this fight but has not only stuck it out but gained us more ground in a matter of weeks than Julita did in months.
The woman who shines like a flame and sparks more emotion in me than I’ve wanted to look at.
Which possibly is why that spark flared into a full out inferno I can’t say she necessarily deserved the moment I saw her with Casimir in their intimately disheveled state.
“We still need to settle things with Ivy,” I insist.
Casimir smiles tightly. “I agree. But we need to settle them the right way, or she’s going to flee right out of the college and our lives.
She came down to the archives feeling uneasy.
She was already convinced that she’s too out of place here to really contribute, even after everything she’s done.
And you all hammered that point farther home. ”
I grimace. She hadn’t sounded all that out of sorts… but I can recognize that if even I barely feel like I belong in this place, a woman who’s been living on the streets of the outer wards can’t be having an easy time of it.
I shouldn’t have called her a street rat again. I’d be an idiot not to know she’s more than that at this point.
“All right,” I say. “We find her, and we show that we can calmly discuss the actual matters we’re here for and put the rest behind us.”
Benedikt snorts, but he moves toward the wall alongside me. Apparently Casimir is satisfied with my current attitude, because he and Alek join us as I finally open the passage.
We tramp up the shadowy stairs. I peer into the hallway of the tapestries first, confirming no one’s around.
No one to see us together… and no Ivy either.
She’s gotten quite a head start.
The royal bastard glances in both directions as he emerges with the others. “Which way do you figure she went?”
“She didn’t want to deal with us,” Aleksi says in his flatly pedantic way. “I doubt she wanted to encounter anyone else in this wretched place either. She’d have gone around the back rather than past the library.”
I can’t argue with his reasoning. Biting back my annoyance, I jog toward the bend at the end of the hallway.
The others hustle behind me.
“Perhaps we should split up,” Benedikt suggests. “I’m sure she’s made it out of the building by now. We can spread out, and whoever encounters her first summons the others.”
I’m about to agree when I round the corner, and my gaze catches on a form slumped on the floor in a heap of dark green silk.
Ivy was wearing a dark green gown.
A bark of alarm breaks from my throat. Then next thing I know, I’m charging down the hall as fast as my feet will carry me.
My vision clouds as I try to focus on the crumpled body. I shake my head as I run, jerking my gaze away and back again, every trick I know to regain my focus for the second or two my ruined eyes will give me before it all goes hazy again.
I see her red-blond hair, like spilled sap rather than a flame now.
I see the glint of a deeper red in the liquid spreading around her torso.
My heart thunders in my chest. My thoughts whirl in my head in a constant chain of fuck no fuck no fuck no.
We ran her off. We told her she’d let us down, she decided she’d had enough assholery, and now…
I’m vaguely aware of other footsteps thumping around me. Of a gasp and a strangled sound from my companions.
I drop down by her fanned hair, sliding my fingers around her throat, praying and bracing myself at the same time.
Sabrelle, this wasn’t a fair fight. Look down on her, let her live, let me feel her pulse.
There’s no way of knowing if my patron godlen or any other heard my plea, but a faint heartbeat stutters against my fingertips.
“She’s not gone yet,” I rasp out, turning toward the wound. The red-stained fabric, clearly punctured by a knife, blurs before my eyes.
Benedikt crouches by the top of Ivy’s head, swaying a little with the color drained from his face. “Fuck. All that blood.”
Aleksi stumbles to a halt and stares down at the scene. “Who would have—is she even still breathing?”
Was he not listening to me? I ignore the question, groping for the thin laces I can only focus on for a second at a time. “Loosen her gown! I need to see the wound.”
Casimir skids to a stop, his eyes wide. “Ivy… I’ll bring a medic.”
He spins around and dashes back the way we came. At least one of my allies has kept his head enough to do something useful.
Aleksi is fumbling with the dress’s ties. As he works them loose, I ease back the panel of fabric over the wound to try to get a closer look.
A groan sputters from Ivy’s lips.
“She’s alive!” Benedikt blurts out, because apparently he was too shellshocked to process what I said earlier either.
Aleksi glances up at me, his hands closing into fists. “You’re hurting her.”
I scowl at him. “I’ve got to stabilize her as much as I can.” With another twitch of my head, I take in the severed flesh. “It’s a clean cut, but not bleeding as badly as—”
Neither of the other men appears to be listening to me, too busy gaping at the fallen thief again. Gritting my teeth, I cut myself off and reach farther down her dress.
With a sharp yank, I tear a broad strip off the outer layer of the skirt. I bunch it over the wound in an attempt to stem the bleeding as much as I can.
As I exert pressure on the spot, Ivy gasps. Her eyelids jerk half-open.
“There’s our fighter,” Benedikt says in a reassuring tone, as if he’s done anything at all for her in the last few minutes. “We’re getting you help, Ivy.”
It may not come fast enough. The knowledge clamps around my gut.
She didn’t deserve this. Not a bloody death in the Domi’s hallway, not the shit we hurled at her just before.
She has stuck her neck out, just by coming here. This wasn’t even her fight.
The ache in my gut swells into a burn of determination. Whatever happens to her, the brutes who did this are not getting away with it.
I jab my elbow toward Aleksi. “Hold this. Firm but not forceful.”