32. Henry
HENRY
W e have the full attention of the Raining Star Bar as soon as we step inside. The storytellers seated on a long line of barstools give me a slow once-over and then turn their backs.
“I’m picking up a bit of an icy reception from about half the room,” Gaven says.
He’s not wrong. He’s probably noticed that the Laurence family is our greatest competition for power in Mountain Haven, but I doubt he realizes that the most established storyteller in the fort is a Laurence.
The greater offense than my being a Havenwood is that we’ve entered and made noise mid-tale.
The storyteller on stage, Marjorie, only pauses a moment to give us a disapproving look before continuing.
I scan the room for any sign of Harlow, but even at a glance, I know she’s already gone. It’s probably too much to hope she went back to our room, but maybe I’ll send Carter back to check.
“There’s something I should have told you before,” Gaven whispers.
Several patrons turn to give us a dirty look.
“Only if it’s urgent?”
Gaven rubs the back of his neck. “Harlow can glamour.”
I grind my teeth, keeping my voice as low as possible. “What the fuck do you mean she can glamour? ”
He glances guiltily toward the door. “I suspect that’s how she never got caught sneaking out for her many trysts.”
I’m struck that Gaven knows she was sneaking out but not why. The ability to glamour explains how she never got caught as the Poison Vixen. If she changes her appearance for every kill, it would be a logical assumption that it’s a network of women fighting back, instead of just one.
“She’s twice-blessed?” I ask.
Gaven shakes his head. “No. One of her siblings has a blessing from Stellaria. Harlow has a necklace that has a limited amount of glamours.”
“So she could be anyone in this room?” I ask.
Gaven shakes his head. “She’s not here.”
I want to ask how he knows, but he’s been protecting her since she was a child. Surely he knows her mannerisms and gait even while glamoured.
Our only option is to wait for the story to end, so I can ask if anyone has seen her, but if she used magic to change her appearance, I don’t even know how we will ask if anyone saw her.
The five minutes we wait for Marjorie to finish her tale are the longest of my life. As soon as the crowd applauds, I cross the room to the bar, tossing a handful of coins into the storyteller’s basket on the way.
Nicolina Laurence turns to face me. She’s Stefan’s aunt, and while I know she has no love for me and my family, she does believe in tradition and the chain of command.
“You’re not usually one for the listening, Henry. You’re a man of action. Or has your new love changed you already? Your chemistry was quite something last night,” she says, her voice laced with accusation.
My parents and I knew this would be the most perilous time for our plan.
Not telling our people that this marriage is a sham, that we are using Harlow to bring her family down, made sense all those months ago.
The more people who knew, the more likely someone would tell her.
But now, seeing the faces of the wisest women in the fort with expressions ranging from anger to downright betrayal, I worry we miscalculated.
“My new wife is a fan of stories. I was hoping to bring her here soon,” I say .
I wait for her to say Harlow has already been here, but Nicolina purses her lips. “Shouldn’t you be busy entertaining her?”
“Yes. I’m actually here because I was supposed to meet a woman about some urgent fort business. Unfortunately, Harlow made me late.” I offer a smug smile.
Nicolina rolls her eyes. “What’s your woman look like?”
“She was wearing a red silk dress and?—”
“Blonde? Dark eyes?” Nicolina asks.
I nod.
“She seemed quite entranced by the tale of the Deathless?—”
Of course . Hundreds of possibilities, and it had to be that Divine-damn story that’s going to reinforce all of her prejudices about fort life. This is exactly why I wanted to choose the night we attended a story session—so I could curate Harlow’s experience.
“But she left a bit ago—wandered upstairs with Brennan Marley,” Nicolina says.
I force my mouth into a tight smile. My wife went upstairs with another man. If that man isn’t dead from poison already, I’ll kill him myself. The thought of Harlow kissing him?—
I shove down my rage. If I cannot manage one woman, the Carrenwells will have ruined my family for the second time in a decade.
“Thank you, Nicolina,” I say.
Turning back to my friends, I nod toward the hallway that leads to the boarding rooms. If Harlow kissed another man, I’m going to tie her to my bed for the duration of her time here.
My mind is a torrent of irrational rage. I don’t care about her, but I do need her, at least for the time being. If her recklessness ruins ten years of planning, I will ruin her .
When we reach the dark hallway, we find Brennan standing at the bottom of the stairs.
The very fact that he’s still standing means that Harlow didn’t kiss him, but I feel no less furious.
“Brennan, did you speak with a blonde woman in a red silk dress tonight?” I ask.
He instantly stills at the menace in my voice. “Yes, I spoke with her a little while ago.”
I’m so incensed. I fight the urge to strangle the man. He’s always on the hunt for a woman to bed, but he has the sense not to knowingly go upstairs with my new wife. Then again, she was glamoured.
I lunge for him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and shoving him back against the wall. “Did you take her upstairs?”
He stares at me with wide eyes. “Yes, but I?—”
“Is she still up there?”
“No—”
I tighten my grip on his shirt. “Did you fuck her?”
The hall goes silent for a second, then the floorboards creak behind me, and I just know that Carter and Bryce are exchanging one of their wordless judgmental looks.
Brennan lifts his hands in surrender, his eyes pleading. “What? Henry, no! If she’s one of yours, I didn’t know.”
There’s not a hint of deception on his face. He just looks baffled.
“Did she say where she was going?” I ask.
Brennan shakes his head violently. “No. She was curious after the stories, so I told her about the—” He cuts himself off and glances down the hall toward the bar.
“You told her about what?” I grit out.
“I was trying to sound brave,” Brennan says. “I told her about the Breeder we’re holding, and she was rattled. She ran off before anything happened. I swear. It was only a few minutes ago. Please don’t demote me.”
I slam my fist into the wall beside his head. “Telling fort secrets to bed someone is a huge security risk.”
But I don’t have time for that now. Dread turns my chest cold. Harlow is too smart to investigate on her own—and yet I know that’s exactly where she went. Fresh fear hits me, pumping adrenaline through my body.
Bryce and Carter are already moving toward the back door, Gaven falling into step behind them.
I slam Brennan into the wall one more time. “We’ll talk later.”
Then I turn and charge off behind my friends.
By the time we get outside, I’m fully sprinting. I don’t care if it looks like I can’t wrangle my new wife. If Harlow is in danger, the entire future of Mountain Haven is at risk.
My breath saws in and out of me, the cold air scraping up my throat. I welcome the shock of it. The night is so dark, but I have moved through these streets so many times, I know them blind. Bryce, Carter, and Gaven’s footsteps pound along behind me.
I pick up speed as we pass through the gate to the sixth level and turn toward the holding cells. Laughter erupts from behind the gray stone building, and as I round the corner, I find the hunters who are supposed to be standing guard bent over a card game.
They all go rigid when they see me, but I don’t bother to lay into them.
I charge up the stairs to the second floor, jam my hand against the blood lock.
I wait one agonizing moment until the lock clicks and then throw the door open, faintly aware of Carter yelling orders to the men behind me and Gaven and Bryce’s footsteps on the stairs.
I’m not sure what I expected to find, but it’s not Stefan Laurence and Roland Hazrah leaning over the observation railing, reaching for someone on the first floor.
It’s not the Breeder loose from its cage.
And it’s definitely not my wife in a shredded silk dress, facing down a monster with only a small blade in her hand.
Our abrupt entrance startles Roland. His grip slips, and Stefan with it. Roland struggles to grab him and fails—both men tumble over the railing to the first floor.
A disorienting cocktail of fear and fury explodes inside me. I want to jump down to the lower level, but I have no idea how the Breeder got out of its cage or how it will react to four pieces of bait down there with it.
Gaven and I run to look over the railing in time to see Stefan and Roland struggling to their feet.
This is a disaster. If Stefan dies, his family will easily be able to usurp mine.
They can say we have no control of the fort, and they will be right.
Their hold will be temporary, since he’s their last living child, but it will be enough to ensure that the Havenwood family loses power—and in the long term, whoever steps in to fill the power vacuum could be worse.
Harlow stands between the creature and the three men, her gaze fixed on the barred first-floor door.
The Breeder watches her with studied patience, but Harlow ignores it. She gives the beast her back and turns to face the men.
She’s laboring, her hand bracing her left ribs. There’s a bright red slash across her forearm and she’s shaking badly. Her fear is so potent, I can smell it. Her hand is trembling so much, I’m afraid she’ll drop her dagger.
“They’re Polm-blessed.” Her voice is tremulous, and though she doesn’t look at me, I instantly know what she means.
Both Joe and Stefan have blessings from the Divine of Malice, and they’re hitting her with fear manipulation at once. I don’t know how she’s still standing. The strongest men I know would be curled in a ball on the ground, but Harlow is ready for a fight.
Killing any of these men would be bad—they all come from powerful Mountain Haven families—but killing Stefan would threaten everything my family has built, though it would be within my rights since using his magic against my wife warrants retribution.
Gaven, rigid beside me, tries to size up the Breeder. “Why doesn’t it attack? She’s bleeding. It should be on her already,” he whispers.
“We’d love to know,” I say. “We’re keeping it for observation, but this isn’t exactly the kind of testing we had in mind.”
The beast looks up at Gaven and cocks its head to the side, the only movement it’s made since we came in.
The Drained used to attack quickly and recklessly in the pursuit of the fastest path to blood. In recent years, one of the most notable changes in their behavior has been that they now tend to attack the strongest member of a party first.
The Breeder didn’t look at Stefan, who has a very powerful blessing from Polm, or either of his friends. It didn’t look at me. It looked right at Gaven.
It’s all but confirmation that the bodyguard is more than he appears. There’s no way the Carrenwells would send their youngest daughter here with someone they didn’t genuinely believe could protect her.
“Can you help?” I ask.
It would be convenient to let the thing kill him, but then we’d have to explain to the Carrenwells how he died and why we’re studying the Drained.
Divine know how they would manipulate that information.
Plus, now that Gaven has revealed that Harlow can glamour, I’m wondering what other secrets I could get out of him if I had the time to torture him.
“I need to get between her and that thing,” he whispers .
This could all be over in a second, but I’m not confident that Gaven could handle the drop.
“Go around the outside, to the ground floor door, but you have to wait until I open the door to come in. We can’t risk that thing getting out.”
I turn to Bryce. “If it somehow gets up here, you’re all that stands between it and the rest of the fort. Don’t let it get by you.”
He nods, tying his hair into a bun at the nape of his neck as Gaven brushes by him and climbs out the window.
I have no warning before the mayhem breaks out. All three men on the first floor sprint toward the door, but Harlow is closer. At first, I think she’s going to run, but when she reaches the door, she stops.
“Harlow, let Gaven in. Then run!” I yell.
She stands between Joe, Roland, and Stefan, but she doesn’t run.
Determined to defy me, she lifts her hand from the bar on the door and turns to face them with her blade clenched in her fist. She stands between three Divine-blessed men and one evolved Drained and their only way out, and she’s ready to fight.