Chapter 41
41
S idney’s head ached. What little light was in the room seared his brain as he opened his eyes. Pain sent him wincing, and nothing congealed beyond a flickering glow, diffused by dust in the air.
He was lying on something cold, hard and a little gritty. When he tried to get a hand beneath him, his limbs barely moved. But they did move which was better than before.
Before. What had happened? It was all so fuzzy in his head. His mouth felt chalky. A whistle split the silence and made Sidney wince again. He tried to lean back but his shoulders pressed against something heavy and cold. A circle of pillar candles surrounded him, came into his field of vision as shadows shifted. Where the fuck was he? And what had he gotten himself into?
“Hello?” Speaking made his throat ache. His voice rasped, coated with the sugary residue from the petit fours. The ones in the conservatory. The ones Zac had offered from his plate. There’d been something wrong with them. Asterion had warned him.
And then there was Zac himself. He’d done something to Sidney. The pain that had shot up Sidney’s thigh and frozen him in place. Stopped him from speaking to Jonas. How could Sidney have been so stupid?
Panic tightened his chest. What was he going to do?
“Jonas?” But he wasn’t there. Of course, he wasn’t there. Why would he be, after what he’d seen Sidney doing?
Footsteps to his right brought Sidney’s mental spiral up short. A door opened and a ball of brightness made him shrink back, as multiple lanterns came into the room.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
“He’s awake?” The voice was masculine and unfamiliar to Sidney. Not Jonas. His vision was still spotty, and everything except Sidney was cast into shadow. Concentrating made his temples throb.
The orbs moved around the outside of the room, and there was the scraping of wood on stone. Sidney could hear voices, but he couldn’t focus on them. Couldn’t hear them. He wanted to start screaming, but he wouldn’t be loud enough to get the attention of anyone outside of whoever was already in the room, and they didn’t seem particularly worried about him. Slowly, Sidney dragged his arm up to his forehead, to try and press away the ache. His fingers came away tacky with blood…
From when Zac knocked him unconscious. He remembered. Zac had pushed Sidney’s frozen body onto the floor and cracked him on the head with a ceramic pot. Son of a bitch. He’d drugged Sidney? Magicked him? Was it the same thing?
A vague memory of Leo sitting him down years ago, when Sidney was barely more than a teenager, trying to lecture him about not leaving drinks unattended at bars, made Sidney shudder with an inappropriate wheeze of laughter. If Leo could see him now. If Leo would ever see him again.
And Jonas. Jonas. He’d wanted to call out to him. Jonas had come to find Sidney. Why? And Sidney had been on Zac’s lap. Sidney hadn’t wanted to be. He had wanted to be. But he hadn’t meant it.
“Mr. Sidney Quince.” A man walked into the circle of candles, holding a lantern and a scroll in one hand. As he came closer, Sidney could make out that he was not particularly tall or wide. Average, mostly. His hair was dark and slicked back, and so was his outfit— black with shining lapels and sturdy looking boots. The only color at all was a startling shade of turquoise that lined his cape, and a bright yellow marigold tucked into his lapel.
Sidney looked up at him as the man crouched down in front of Sidney and set the lantern on the floor between them, shadows strange over the long angles of his face.
“A last-minute addition to the guest list by none other than the prince of Andurnei himself. Lucky lucky.”
“Who are you?”
“That’s not relevant at the moment,” the man said. “The most pressing matter is you. And how cooperative you’re interested in being.”
“Fuck off,” Sidney hissed. The man smiled, a line of teeth beneath a stupidly thin moustache, above a patchy goatee. His eyes were dark and narrow. Sidney hated him. But he did also look familiar. Had he seen him at the party? He would have remembered the outfit, surely.
“There’s another Quince on our guest list.” Leo. Shit.
“It’s a common name,” Sidney said. The man snorted.
“Not even sort of.”
“Our father is a congressman.”
“So Leo Quince is your brother?” Shit. Shit. Fuck. Sidney was not coherent enough for this.
“My father is a very important man. He?—”
“I don’t give a shit about your father,” the man snapped. In any other circumstance, that would have been hilarious. “How do you know Asterion?” Sidney didn’t respond. The man already had Leo as leverage. Why did he care how Sidney knew Asterion? Know was a strong word, anyway. Asterion?—
Asterion was where Sidney had seen this man before. Beside Asterion in the photograph in Jonas’s attic. The narrow nose, the pointed chin and high cheekbones. The dour expression.
“You’re Edward Morrow,” Sidney said. The man scowled.
“ Edmund Morrow,” Morrow said, one eyebrow arching. The sorcerer then. Sidney could tell he’d struck a nerve, getting the name wrong. Thanks to Mark, Sidney was now very adept at recognizing a pretentious ass when he encountered one.
“A sorcerer.” Sidney tried the word in his still slow mouth. Morrow’s scowl deepened. There was a chuckle from outside the circle of light, soft and feminine.
“How do you know Asterion?”
“I don’t. He’s a friend of a friend.”
“Asterion doesn’t have any friends,” Morrow snarled.
“ You’ve known him a long time,” Sidney said, thinking of the photograph. Morrow sniffed.
“To know him is to loathe him.” Then he paused. “Wait, how do you know that?” Sidney shrugged. Tried to shrug. His body was stiff, sensation still eking back into it. “Who told you that?” Sidney stayed quiet, and Morrow glared at him. Then he leaned back. “Zachariah!”
The Zac that stepped forward, to the edge of the circle, looked nothing short of bored. His spectacles were tucked in his pocket. He was checking his nails.
“Yes?”
“Tell me again about the demon who stumbled in on you and Mr. Quince in the conservatory.” Oh shit.
“Big fellow.” Zac’s voice was deep and rough. Not the polished accent he’d had with Sidney in the hallway. Fucking bastard. “Grey horns. Flame-y sort of skin. Dark hair. Looked a right mess.”
Morrow glared at Sidney.
“You know Rookwood?”
Sidney kept his mouth shut. With a growl of frustration, Morrow dropped onto his knees, moved the lantern to the side, and slid closer to Sidney across the stone. Sidney tried to move backward, but the large stone, whatever it was, was still behind him.
Morrow reached out and clamped his hand around Sidney’s throat. He pushed Sidney’s still throbbing head against the rock and glared down at him. Then he leaned forward, his nose almost touching the base of Sidney’s throat, and inhaled. All at once, Morrow drew back, dropping Sidney to the floor.
“Well, fuck me!” Morrow laughed, a hard, joyless sound, as Sidney wheezed, trying to catch his breath. “What else did Jonas tell you about me?”
“Nothing,” Sidney gasped. He tried again to get a hand under himself and finally succeeded. He straightened up, arms trembling, and his pocket watch dropped out of his pocket and clattered against the floor.
“He told you nothing?” Morrow demanded. “I don’t believe it.” Sidney swallowed down a groan of pain.
“He barely mentioned you at all.”
Fury was an ugly look on Morrow. His brows crumpled as his mouth curled into a sneer. He snatched up Sidney’s pocket watch and clambered ungracefully to his feet.
“That’s mine!”
“Shut up!” Morrow barked. “Desdemona, bring the knife! We’re doing this now.”