10. Harlow #2
“We don’t have more time. I’m not asking for your permission. I’m telling you that friendship means having someone’s back, and this is a risk we are both willing to take—and we have backup,” Bea says .
She’s trapped me here and waited until the last minute to spring it on me when I have no other option. I want to argue, but I know she’s right.
Bea looks away and nods. “I’m glad that’s settled. Now you better get going before your mark moves on or finds another lovely lady for the night.”
I grin, drain my ale, and dart out the back door. The night is cold and my breath puffs out in little white clouds as I tug up my hood and walk north, following a series of narrow alleys and quiet side streets.
Ashen Eclipse is a dark bar in the northeast quadrant of the city that is themed around Divine Stellaria and the complete darkness she washed the world with when her husband, Asher, was kidnapped.
I’ve been there a couple of times before. It’s not really my kind of place, but the city is only so big and everyone needs a change of pace sometimes.
Pausing at the end of a dark alleyway, I brush my fingers over my enchanted necklace and close my eyes.
I don’t want to waste the limited magic left in it, so I just focus on changing my eyes from violet to bright blue.
The familiar press of Aidia’s magic tingling behind my eyelids makes me want to cry.
When I blink my eyes open a moment later, the world looks slightly hazy. The film will clear after my body adjusts to the magic.
Two drunk men stumble by the alley, and their laughter sends me into motion again.
I cross the street and take several more twists and turns down alleyways until finally I approach the back of Ashen Eclipse and peek around the side of the building.
Several men stand by the door, smoking and laughing with each other.
My preference is to make an entrance, but I’d rather not get too much attention until I’m actually inside. I’ll have to use the back entrance.
I turn and immediately stumble back from a dark, looming figure beside me.
Bracing my hand against my thundering heart, I laugh at myself for being so jumpy.
With the streetlights out, what looks like a person is actually just a statue of Stellaria clasping Asher’s hand.
As my eyes adjust, I realize her face is a mask of narrow-eyed vengeance, while Asher looks at her with total adoration.
I stare at the Divine of Endings. Asher is so rarely depicted in art around the city. People have a strange nervousness about him—as if it were he who cursed the world to darkness and not his wife.
When I was young, I was convinced that wariness came from the rarity of blessings from Divine Asher.
Not one of the high houses had a family member with a blessing from the Divine of Endings, and in my lifetime I’d never heard of a New Moon Blessing Ceremony where a child had received a blessing from Asher.
But my parents were always saying that the Divine were mysterious and it wasn’t up to us to question their decisions.
Aidia had other ideas about why the people of Lunameade were so wary of paying homage to the Divine of Endings.
She thought that the men of Lunameade were disturbed that Asher willingly shared his power with his wife, and the reason they didn’t like statues of him in the city is because they don’t want their own wives getting ideas.
Now that I’m older, that seems more likely.
Mercifully, the back door is unlocked, and I enter, slipping down a long, dimly lit hallway until I reach an equally dark bar.
The atmosphere in Ashen Eclipse is much more subdued. A man plays haunting piano music in the corner, and most of the patrons either seem to be listening to him or speaking quietly amongst themselves.
The only exception is a group of eight young men by the front windows who laugh loudly and take turns bouncing coins into shot glasses on their table.
One of the men ducks out of the way of a rogue shot and slips from his stool onto the floor.
His friends break out into loud hoots, and everyone in the bar turns to look at them.
I use the distraction to search for my target.
Even in the dim candlelight, my mark is so easy to identify, his bright red hair like a beacon the moment I step into the bar. I toss my cloak over a chair in the corner booth. As I cross the room, heads turn to take me in.
It’s the dress. It’s spectacular and obviously expensive, which draws the eye in this part of town. Many of the magical family guards spend time here, so it’s not exactly a bad neighborhood—more the part of town where they have just enough to covet expensive things.
There’s an opening at the bar a few seats down from my mark. I lean over to flag the bartender down, showing off my backside. The young man behind the bar is on me immediately, a flirtatious smile on his face .
“Big night, miss?”
I twist a lock of hair around my finger and nod. “Could I get a chilled bottle of sparkling wine?”
He hesitates for a moment, but I pull out a Mattingly family marker. The bartender’s eyes go wide when he sees it, and he nods. He disappears into the back room.
Interesting . When Aidia passed me this marker, I wasn’t sure it would come in handy for something, but that level of service makes me wonder if my twisted brother-in-law makes a habit of gifting his household markers to beautiful young women.
Most families give those markers out sparingly because they’re essentially a free pass to add your tab from anywhere in the city onto the corresponding Gatekeeper House’s bill.
The young bartender returns, opens the bottle, and stashes it in a bucket of ice. Batting my eyes, I snatch the bucket and two glasses and cross the room to a table in my mark’s line of sight.
His gaze is heavy on me as I cross the room and slip into my seat.
I meet his eyes as I pour myself a glass of wine. Leaning back in my chair, I take a sip, letting a few drops splash onto my chest as I draw the glass away. The chilled wine slides down between my breasts.
“Does that work?” a voice right next to my ear says.
I jump and whip my head around to see Henry’s smug smile.
He’s squatting behind me, his dark blue eyes filled with amusement as he studies my target.
I try to stuff down the panic that he might have followed me all night—that he might know Bea is involved in this.
“What are you doing here? This bar has a strict no-wild-animal policy,” I say, leveling him with a glare.
He settles into the seat beside me and helps himself to my wine. “Well, lovely, as you’ve seen, I’m excellent at walking on my hind legs. I’m sure no one will notice.”
Every eye in the room presses in on us now.
I arch a brow. “Oh?”
He purses his lips. “They’re all looking at that dress—or maybe the lack of dress.”
I smile brightly. “So you noticed.”
“Isn’t that the idea? For men to notice you? ”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
He leans back and holds his drink up to the room. “It’s date night with my beautiful fiancée, of course.”
“Not until later.”
He winks at a man walking by. “But how could I wait when the heart wants what it wants?” His voice is overly loud, and people keep looking at us. This is not the attention I want to be getting.
“You’re ruining everything,” I whisper.
He cocks his head. “By wanting to get to know you?”
“By standing in my way.”
“Ah. I know what happens to men who get in your way.”
I scoff. “Not all of them, unfortunately.”
“Tell me. Do you pretend to hate me because you’re stuck with me or because you can’t stop thinking about me biting your thighs?”
I almost choke on my wine. “Bold of you to assume you can imagine all the ways I loathe you.”
His lips twitch into a half-smile. He leans back, throwing a casual arm over the back of my chair as he looks around the room. “I would say this place seems a little dark for you, but I’m wondering if you’re here to do to some other man what you did to me.”
“Leave him hard and lonely in a boarding house?” I suggest.
Henry glowers at me. “No. I was talking about the poison part.”
“Tell me what you want before I smash this glass and try a more direct method,” I say, forcing my face into a sweet smile.
“To get to know you.”
That’s probably half-true, but I want to do whatever I can to get him out of my way. “Fine. Ask me a question.”
He grins and sets his glass down. “How did you learn to fight?”
I roll my eyes. “How did you?”
Henry hums in amusement. “Thank you for asking, Harlow. I was trained by my father and mother because everyone beyond the walls gets extensive training. I’m just wondering why an elegant woman with a cushy life behind these nice big walls knows how to defend herself so well.”
I purse my lips and take a sip of wine. The bubbles tingle across my tongue. “So you think I’m elegant?”
He laughs. It’s loud and genuine and it rumbles through my chest in a pleasant way. “That’s what you got out of that?” He takes a long sip of the wine. “You know you’re elegant. You don’t need me to tell you. Besides, I hear you have unusual eyes.”
“You hear ?”
“I can’t see color. Ever since the attack—” His voice trails off and his eyes go far away.
“Your eyes were damaged when the Drained attacked Mountain Haven? How old were you?”
He shakes his head. “Twenty-three. I was so brazen and idiotic. Always looking for a fight. I sure got one.”
I swallow hard. I don’t like thinking of him that way—young and foolish and humbled by violence. It’s too relatable.
“Don’t do it, lovely.” His voice is almost a purr.
“Do what?”
“Don’t believe for one minute that I’m some wounded man who will be patched up by your love.”
I lean toward him. “I’m not the loving type. I have nothing to give you but poison. You, on the other hand—” I wave at him. I’m not sure what game he’s playing. One moment he’s a little too raw, and the next he’s taunting me.