11. Henry
HENRY
W hen we step inside Guardian’s Crossing, I help Harlow out of her cloak, and she immediately starts toward the bar like she owns the place.
“Don’t worry, I’ll put it on your tab,” she says before I can offer.
I silently thank the Divine that my family has the money for whatever outrageously expensive bottle of wine she’s going to order.
Bryce and Carter are seated toward the back of the room at a table by the window. I push through the crowd, trying to ignore the grating music.
Mercifully, they have a mug of ale waiting for me.
“That was quicker than I expected. How was the murder?” Bryce teases. “Did you help her hide the body?”
“Keep your voice down,” I say, snatching up the waiting ale. Carter pours me a whiskey to go with it.
Bryce winces and lowers his voice. “Sorry. I’m just invested since I tipped you off in the first place.”
I’m glad I had him standing watch. I knew she wouldn’t just go along with a normal date night.
I sigh. “Yes. Thank you for trailing her earlier. You didn’t happen to notice how she managed to ditch her bodyguard?”
Bryce shakes his head. “No. She just kind of came out of nowhere and dashed across the front driveway so fast I had to run to catch up.” His gaze darts past me. “Where is she?”
I nod to Harlow. She’s leaning an arm on the bar, looking at me and my friends. She lifts a hand and waves.
“Fuck me! That’s her?” Bryce seems a second from drooling as he watches her lean across the bar. “I didn’t get a good look at her in the cloak. That’s quite a dress.”
I scrub my hands over my face. “That dress looks like it belongs in a brothel.”
“Looks like it belongs on my bedroom floor, more like,” Bryce says.
“Will you shut up?” I snap. “We’re trying to get information out of her, not worship her.”
“I don’t know,” Bryce says. “I can think of a lot of ways I’d worship her if she let me.”
A strange prickle of something akin to jealousy twists in my chest. I blow out an exasperated breath. “Can you stop drooling over her long enough to get information out of her?”
Bryce frowns, chastened, as he takes a long gulp from his mug.
“I can’t tell if you’re mad at her for being gorgeous or mad at yourself for noticing,” Carter says.
I scowl at him.
“Am I supposed to pretend she’s not?” Carter presses.
“You were supposed to be a good companion and friend.”
“And honesty makes me neither?” he asks.
“Honesty makes you tedious,” I grumble.
Carter laughs and throws back the rest of his ale. “Look at it this way—you’ll certainly enjoy taking her to bed.”
I’d been trying to put the thought of it out of my head, but watching her bend suggestively over the bar to speak with the bartender brings to mind the image of her bent over like that for me.
“What’s she like?” Carter asks.
“Vicious. Angry for no reason I can comprehend. The woman has had everything handed to her?—”
“I thought you, of all people, would be the first to be a little more discerning. You know well that privilege is not always what it seems,” Carter says.
“Are you sympathetic to our enemy?” I ask .
“Of course not, but it would be foolish and show a lack of training and temperance for you to presume to know her when you’ve only just met. Do you know why she’s looking for men to kill?”
Carter is so pragmatic—so calm in the face of chaos. I’ve admired that quality as much as I resent it at times like this, when I just want him to agree with me.
“No,” I say.
“Then you know nothing,” Carter says. “What could be a more important thing to know about her than the answer to that question?”
He has a point. The entire purpose of this arranged marriage is to get close to her and figure out how to tear her family apart. Her nightly activities are obviously a thing she doesn’t want them to know about, as evidenced by her lack of bodyguard and her oblivious city watch brother.
“How am I supposed to get anything out of her at all? While she might not hate me specifically, it’s clear she hates that she’s being married off.”
Before we arrived in Lunameade, this task seemed easy, but Harlow is right.
I’m not nearly as good at reading people as she is.
Mountain Haven is vast now, built up from nothing, but it’s not the city.
She’s seen more of men than I could ever hope or want to.
So what makes her so violent when she could live a cushy life of comfort?
Curious people die quickly around here, and I already know Harlow has no issue with murder, but I need to figure out why she’d take such a risk.
I glance back at the bar. Harlow said she was getting a bottle of something and then she’d join us, but she’s been chatting with the bartender for a while now.
“I thought she’d dress more discreetly. She looks?—”
“Arresting?” Carter suggests.
I roll my eyes. “She looks adequate.”
“That dress is a weapon,” Carter says. He nods to the bar, where every single man’s gaze is trained on her—or, rather, the back of the dress. “Though you’re right. It’s not exactly the best way to stay under the radar. I think the whole place is staring at her.”
A quick glance around the bar confirms that most of the room does seem to be trained on her.
She’s half-bent over the bar, pouring herself a glass of sparkling wine and laughing as the bartender slaps her hands from the bottle.
The woman reaches to tuck a hair behind Harlow’s ear and then rubs her temple.
The gesture is soft, intimate, and for a moment Harlow is bare-faced.
She smiles indulgently and winks at the woman.
“Looks like they’re close,” Carter says, startling me from my gawking.
I take a long swallow of whiskey and it burns all the way down. “It seems so.”
That’s something I can use. Perhaps she’s not as cold-hearted as she likes to seem.
Harlow grabs the ice bucket and some glasses and starts across the room toward us, her eyes shooting daggers at me.
Carter clicks his tongue and leans forward in his chair. “I don’t know why you’re pretending you’re not interested. You love exotic things. How could you not like your poison princess and her violet eyes?”
“They’d likely be more effective if I could see them,” I say.
Carter grins. He loves to throw it in our faces that he can see color and we can’t, but that strangeness in our magic is still a mystery.
Though all of us who nearly died in the Drained attack ten years ago couldn’t see color for a time, those who fall in love seem to get that back through a divine mystery we still don’t understand.
Carter’s color returned when he fell in love with Naima. He claims it happened the first time he saw her, but I’m fairly certain it was several minutes after that, when he used a crude pickup line on her and she dumped her ale on his head.
“Keep your voice down,” I snap. “I told you her magic so you could watch your back, not blab it in the middle of a crowded bar.”
“These men are too shit-faced to hear anything but the sound of their own lewd thoughts,” Bryce says. “The way I see it, there’s no reason you can’t do your assignment and enjoy all its considerable benefits. She looks like she’s planning your death.”
Carter shakes his head and claps Bryce on the shoulder. “It’s twisted that you’re into that, my friend, but it explains so much about your love life.”
“Spoken like someone boring and settled who forgets how much fun a good hate-fuck can be,” Bryce says. “Harlow, let me help you.” He launches to his feet and helps her set the glasses and bottle on the table. Then, he takes her hand and makes a show of bowing to kiss it.
“What a gentleman,” she says.
I don’t miss the way she bends toward him, offering an eyeful of her cleavage as she takes her seat. Bryce doesn’t even pretend not to notice, letting his eyes linger on the swell of her breasts.
“That’s a lovely dress,” he says.
“This old thing?” she says, running her fingers down the plunging neckline.
Bryce tracks the path of her finger until I slap his arm.
“Eyes to yourself. That’s my fiancée,” I say.
Bryce tips his head back and laughs as he opens the bottle. “You’re going to have your hands full with this one. She’s way too pretty for you.”
Harlow preens, but I can tell she’s just trying to get a rise out of me. It’s so irritating that her technique is working. For a breath, I fantasize about how much easier this would all be if I could simply manipulate the truth out of her.
“So, what are we doing here?” I ask. “I’d really like to know who is responsible for my mother getting hurt.”
Harlow clicks her tongue. “Relax, mama’s boy. We are all motivated to find out what happened last night. Bea is well-connected, so I thought I’d ask if she’s heard anything.”
Bryce hands her a glass of bubbling wine, and she sips it.
She hums in satisfaction and grins at me. “I hope you don’t mind, my wolf. I had her put this exceptionally expensive bottle on your tab.”
I frown. “I hope that she has something valuable for the price of that bottle.”
She purses her lips. “She said that she heard a few drunks in here last night, an hour or so after the attack, who let it slip that there’s a rebel meeting place at a bar near North Hold.
That’s Rafe Mattingly’s territory. I loathe him and I also think there’s a strong chance that he’s Rochelli.
It would be out of character for him to be so sloppy.
So either he planted that information, or he’s bold enough to try to bait my family to do something. ”
“Isn’t he the mayor?” Carter asks.
Harlow sighs. “Unfortunately. ”
“I don’t understand your politics,” Carter says. “What does the mayor do?”