Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
R onin followed Mireille down the sparse hallways, the harsh lights buzzing overhead.
He’d never seen someone move so gracefully. She glided along the concrete, her steps silent and her back rod-straight.
She turned through a windowed door, ARCHIVES printed on the glass.
“Good morning, Sonya.” She offered a kind smile to the female Windrider behind the desk. So she was capable of being cordial. Just not to him.
The cream-winged Fae smiled back. “At it again, I see? I left the room set-up for you.” Sonya passed a plastic card to Mireille. “Thank the High Gods the IA is finally taking those complaints seriously and looking into Otto.”
Ronin stepped up to the desk. “What complaints?”
The Windrider gave Ronin a questioning look and Mireille piped up, “He’s my partner on this one. You can answer him.”
“Partner?” Sonya barked a laugh. “Where’s he been the past three days, then? And since when do you need a partner?”
Mireille side-eyed Ronin. “I’ve been asking myself the same question. He certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice.”
That makes two of us , Ronin thought. “What complaints ?” he asked again.
“Not very polite, is he?” Sonya cocked an eyebrow at Mireille, who returned a conspiratorial grin.
“And rather impatient, given he was nearly a half-hour late this morning as well.”
Sonya patted Mireille’s hand. “Well, if anyone can turn him around, I’m sure it’s you, dear.”
Ronin stared at the two females, slack-jawed. Unused to being so thoroughly ignored.
“What complaints have you heard?” Mireille asked.
Sonya answered her , and Ronin bit his tongue to keep from throwing his hands up in consternation. Like he needed this bullshit on top of the massive hangover he was nursing. He’d gone on a bit of a bender after that visit to the chronomancer.
“I gave you the reports about those Fae who disappeared, right? Their loved ones were sure they’d been at the estate, but Otto and his associates somehow managed to persuade the IA they were lying.” Sonya frowned. “I never bought it. Grease the right palms, and rich bastards like Otto can make any story disappear.”
“Right.” Mireille nodded. “Thought maybe you were talking about something else. I haven’t gotten to those files yet.”
“Maybe your new partner can help.” Sonya aimed a shit-eating grin at Ronin, who merely grunted back.
Mireille swept away from the desk, and Ronin hustled to keep up.
“Be nice to her, Butcher!” Sonya called out. So she had known who he was.
Mireille wended her way around empty tables and stacks of books, then stopped at the last door in the back corner of the hall. She swiped the card across a black panel, a beep sounded, and the door swung open. The lights flickered on, revealing a windowless room containing a table piled with documents and open filing boxes.
“Have you searched through all this already?” Ronin asked, incredulous, as Mireille settled into a chair and motioned for him to take the one beside it.
From her bag she pulled the original folder, the one Skanisse had given them days ago, and plopped it onto the table. “What did you think I’ve been doing for the past three days while you were out”—she sniffed, her upper lip curling—“fucking females and getting plastered on Delirium?”
“Had some sinning to work out of my system before shackling myself to your prim ass.” Ronin stretched his legs out under the table and cupped his hands behind his head.
“I hope you enjoyed yourself.” She pushed the folder toward him, her silver eyes dragging over his muscled arms as if she couldn’t help herself. “But now it’s time to work. You need to read this.”
He didn’t budge. Maybe even flexed a little. “If you’ve already read it, why don’t you just tell me what you’ve learned and spare me the homework.”
“Lazy ass,” she muttered under her breath. “You planning to just coast along and let me do all the work for you?”
“Again,” Ronin said, chewing on a fingernail, “if you’ve already read through all this, what’s the point of me wasting my time? You’re the super-spy genius, right? What could I possibly find that you haven’t?”
Mireille’s fists clenched, her teeth grinding. He’d caught her. No way would she admit she might’ve missed something.
She glared at him, but opened the folder, then brought a hand to her neck to smooth a few red curls that had escaped her bun. The movement washed her scent over him, that odd mix of musk and ripe flowers, and his wolf perked up.
Tell her to let her hair down , the creature purred. We want to see her wild and untamed .
Ronin ignored him as Mireille removed several photographs from the folder and pushed one across the table.
“Otto.”
Ronin rolled his eyes. “I know what Otto looks like.”
Her face was tight, like an exasperated school teacher, her fingertips lingering on the photo’s edge.
He snatched it up for a closer look. He was still amazed by the clarity opticorders could achieve, a Fae invention about a century after the war. Before that, all visual representations were drawn or painted. Whether the device had been invented by science or magic, Ronin didn’t know. Though he supposed, in Ethyrios, they were one in the same.
Thanks to his severe, triangular face, Otto looked even more serpentine than most Deathstalkers. Dark, vertical pupils stood in stark contrast to his pale yellow irises, and his nose was so flat it nearly disappeared into his ghostly skin. His black hair was short and slicked back from his forehead. In this particular photo, his sharp fangs were popped, extending past lavender lips to his pointed chin.
A notorious dandy, he wore an impeccably tailored three-piece suit in a loud purple-and-green plaid, and the stunning female clinging to his arm wore a long fur coat in matching purple.
Otto was staring at the female with such predatory possessiveness that Ronin shivered. The Deathstalker’s intensity was legendary, though Ronin suspected one didn’t earn the kind of wealth Otto had acquired without it.
He handed the photo back to Mireille. “Your future boyfriend looks dangerous. Like he might just eat you alive.” Mireille sniffed, not taking the bait, and he wondered why he had such an urge to rile her. “Assuming you know who that female is?” Mireille shook her head. “I can’t remember her name. Veronica? Vanessa? Something with a V. Former mistress of one of the Emperor’s cousins. She left the male for Otto. Skanisse wasn’t wrong about him being a famefucker.”
“How do you know that?” Though her tone was incredulous, he swore she looked impressed.
“He brought her to a few of my fights a while back. Haven’t seen them together since, though. Rumor around town is she left him. Went back to the Emperor’s cousin. Good news for you. Nothing heals a broken-hearted male like a good rebound fuck.”
She vented a disgusted scoff, then slapped another photo onto the table. It had been taken on the same day, though the view was wider. Otto was helping Veronica-Vanessa into a black sedan on some street in Kheimos. Two Fae stood behind him, one male and one female.
Mireille pointed at the male. “Julius Kosera, but everyone refers to him as the Greyhorn. Rhinoceros bi-form and Otto’s personal muscle.”
“I know him, too. Defeated him in the arena decades ago.”
Kosera had been furious about the loss at the time, though he’d never returned to challenge Ronin again. Guess he’d found himself a new job.
The towering Beastrunner was nearly seven feet tall, his bulging muscles threatening to split the seams of his black suit jacket. His skin was a dull shade of gray, reminiscent of sun-dried mud, and his bald head showcased a squished face, two beady, black eyes and a long hooked nose.
“She’s the one you have to look out for though.” Mireille tapped on the female. She was short, barely crested Kosera’s ribs, with straight hair that fell to her waist in contrasting sheets of white and black. Dressed head to toe in black leather, her small, shapely frame was accentuated by a corset-like belt filled with gleaming blades. “Layla Fetar. Honey badger bi-form. Otto’s fixer.”
Ronin let out a low whistle. The female was beautiful and deadly, her deep brown eyes lit with sharp cunning and violent menace. He thought it convenient for Otto that he had a honey badger bi-form in his employ. There weren’t many left on the continent, and their blood could be used as an antidote to Deathstalker venom, which was fatal for humans and could lead to True Death for other Fae, if the antivenom wasn’t administered quickly enough.
“She looks like a real fun time,” Ronin smirked.
“This isn’t a joke,” Mireille spat, swiping up the photo. “She used to be a Shadow Maiden.”
Ronin’s brows rose. The Shadow Maidens were a group of lethal females tasked with personal security for Empress Mila and Princess Belen. Trained from birth to kill in a thousand different ways. It was considered a great honor to be chosen for the position, one typically held for life.
“Why’d she defect? I can’t believe the Empire would have allowed such a thing.”
“That information isn’t in any of these files.”
Ronin dragged a thumb across his lower lip. “A hundred drachas says I can persuade her to tell me.”
Mireille’s eyes flashed with heat before she huffed a grunt. She tossed another folder onto the table, and he chuckled at her irritation. “Shipping intake forms.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
“They were actually.” She opened the folder and pulled out several marked documents. “Most of them were full of innocuous things—produce, meats, linens, crates of wine from Nephes. But look at these.” She ran a finger down several sheets, pointing to areas where the amount of the shipment was far larger.
He glanced at the entries. “Anastasium. Isn’t that?—”
“The god-touched stone of Stygios, yes.”
“Why would Otto be ordering such a large amount of the god-touched stone of the High God of Death and Destruction? And why wasn’t this order flagged?”
“Well, technically it was, if it made it into these archives.” Mireille frowned. “But the IA only gets involved if it’s over a certain amount. All these were just below the legal limit. He was trying to stay under the IA’s radar by spreading the shipments out and burying them among other ordinary items.”
“What’s anastasium used for?”
Excited curiosity transformed Mireille’s cold features into something warm and unnervingly attractive. Ronin tried not to stare. “That’s the strange thing—its uses are purely decorative. It’s not like mentrite, the god-touched stone of Thakavi, which is mined from a single source in Cernodas to produce commstones. Or polemite, the red stone of Vestan that powers Tartarus.” Ronin shivered involuntarily at the name of the infamous prison. “Or even nessite, Anaemos’s stone that has the power to suppress wind magic. Anastasium has no uses, because the source of Stygios’s power on Ethyrios remains a mystery. If one even exists.”
“So what’s Otto using it for? Lining his bathtub? Making candlesticks? Paperweights?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re not as funny as you think you are?”
“Never,” he scoffed. “I’m fucking hilarious. Maybe you could find a sense of humor if you spent less time working and more time interacting with people.”
Mireille ignored his taunt, placing the shipping intakes back into the folder and rising from her chair, then bent over to pick up another filing box.
Delectable , his wolf crooned.
Ronin stifled a laugh, though he sure as shit didn’t disagree. Pretty sure she hates us, buddy . Don’t get your hopes up.
Mireille hauled the box onto the table in front of Ronin. There were hundreds of folders inside.
“Wrath of Vestan,” Ronin choked out, “how are there so many?”
“These are the reports that Sonya was talking about. Review them and see if any patterns jump out at you.”
Ronin pulled a folder from the box, then extracted a document written in swooping letters. “What does this say?”
Mireille gaped at him. “You don’t speak Aramaelish? I assumed you did, based on that phrase you have tattooed on your knuckles.”
Ronin shrugged. “I only know a few words here and there.”
Aramaelish was only used as a daily language on the continent sporadically, for official purposes and mostly among the higher class Fae. Which Ronin certainly was not. His parents and sister had only spoken to each other in the common tongue, the language used most often throughout Ethyrios and among the humans as well. Most signs on the continent were written in Aramaelish, so he’d gleaned some. But he certainly couldn’t speak or read it.
“Let me guess,” he said, “you’re fluent.”
“Of course I am. It’s a necessity that operatives speak it in addition to the common tongue.”
“If we’re supposed to be dating, that’s something I should know about you. I don’t even know where you’re from, what your parents’ names are.”
She dipped a hand into her pocket, a flicker of the deepest sadness darkening her silver eyes. Shit. Had something happened to her parents? He felt a small stab of guilt for teasing her.
Until she opened her mouth and proved, yet again, what a cold bitch she was.
“I don’t want to know anything about you, Butcher. Only what’s absolutely necessary. You’re a tool to get me through this assignment and nothing more. I don’t need your sympathy or your intimacy, and I’m certainly not going to offer anything of the kind to you. So, let’s just cut the bullshit. Play your role and I’ll play mine, and when this is all over, we can go our separate ways.”
Ronin whistled and spread his arms across the back of his chair. “She-wolf does have claws, after all. What nerve did I just hit, huh?”
Mireille didn’t answer, merely scowled, her foot tapping against the floor. “Off fucking limits.” She leaned down to pick up her bag.
“Where are you going?”
“Theater. Practice. Files are all yours.” She gestured to the bookshelf. “There’s an Aramaelish dictionary over there if you need help translating.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to do this? It’ll take me five times as long.”
“Guess you’d better get started then.” She hauled her bag over her shoulder and headed for the door. “See you tonight.”
“What’s tonight?” he barked out, halting her.
“Skanisse didn’t tell you?” She pinched the bridge of her nose, mumbling, “It’s the debut of our fake relationship.”
“Oooo, you’ve finally admitted it’s a relationship. Say it again, baby. Tightens my balls.”
Her silver eyes blazed and if looks could kill, he’d be bleeding out in his chair right now.
She whipped open the door. “If we’re not able to score an invite to that event, or if anyone suspects we’re not really a couple, this isn’t going to work. And we can both say goodbye to our rewards from the Emperor. Dinner. Riashi’s. Eight o’clock. Then tomorrow night, he’s gotten you a ticket to the ballet. Better hope Otto shows up.”
“Can’t fucking wait,” he grumbled, slouching down in his chair.
“They wanted you on this assignment for a reason, Ronin. And it’s not just to be my gorgeous arm candy. Maybe a miracle will occur and you’ll find something in those files that I didn’t. Do your fucking homework.”
The corkboard on the wall rattled as she slammed the door behind her, leaving him alone with his wolf and the files.
Groaning, he strode to the bookshelf to grab the dictionary, then slumped into his seat and plucked out a folder.
He’d prove to that smug little minx that he could find answers, too. That he was just as smart as she clearly thought she was.
It was only hours later, the juicy tidbits of information he’d found piled before him, his eyes scratchy and his back aching in the tiny chair, that he realized Mireille’s clever manipulation of his pride.
Maybe she was smarter than him after all.