Chapter 2 #3
He talks to him, low, while he plays. Asks him about the Guille poem.
Which collection it is from. Whether Emery prefers the early work or the later cycles.
His voice stays quiet, pitched for Emery's ears alone, and the intimacy of it is artificial and deliberate and still manages to make Emery forget there are other people in the room.
He shows Emery his cards, not to impress, just holding them open between them with an ease that suggests years of familiarity rather than minutes, granting access without ceremony.
Emery cannot reconcile this man with the crime lord he was hired to kill.
He is too polite, too careful, too genuinely interested in a conversation about poetry with a dancer in a brothel.
The stories say he breaks bones with his voice.
The stories say he once killed a man for looking at him wrong.
Emery is sitting in his lap and the most dangerous thing Bastian has done is rub his thumb across his hip and quote a poet at him and neither of those things should feel as threatening as they do.
This is working. Bastian is interested. Emery needs to let him want and then put a knife in his throat. That is the plan. That has always been the plan.
"Play that one," Emery says, tapping a card near the center of Bastian's hand. It is the wrong card. He knows it is the wrong card. He wants to see what happens.
Bastian plays it without question.
The contact across the table makes a triumphant sound and takes the round. One of Bastian's crew, the half-giant, glances at Emery and then at Bastian and then back at his own cards with studied neutrality, having decided this is not his business.
Bastian turns his head. His lips are close to Emery's ear, close enough that Emery can feel the heat of his breath against the sensitive skin there, and the low amusement in his voice sends goosebumps cascading down his neck.
"That was a terrible choice."
Emery turns into the voice. Their mouths are inches apart.
"Maybe I wanted you to lose."
Bastian's hand tightens on his hip. One brief compression of fingers, a squeeze that borders on painful and lands squarely on the right side of it, and Emery's pulse kicks hard enough that he feels it in his throat.
The dark eyes are so close, so depthless.
There is a gravity to them that pulls at something behind his sternum.
He has him.
He can feel it in the pressure of Bastian's hand, in the quality of the silence between them, in the way the ambient noise of the Hollow has become irrelevant to whatever is happening at this table.
He has done this before. He has brought men and women to this precipice and pushed them over and never once felt the ground shifting under his own feet while he did it.
The ground is shifting now. He ignores it.
He leans in. His lips brush the corner of Bastian's mouth, barely touching, a whisper of contact that could be accidental if either of them were inclined to pretend.
"There's a room upstairs," he says.
Bastian's hand leaves his hip. Emery almost protests the loss, which is unacceptable, but then both of Bastian's hands are at his waist and he is being lifted, carefully, set on his feet with a steadiness that communicates effortless strength.
Emery stands and looks down at Bastian still in his chair and waits.
Bastian lays his cards face-down on the table. He does not excuse himself to his crew or his contact. He does not explain. He stands, and he is tall, and Emery has to tilt his chin up to maintain eye contact, which he finds unreasonably annoying.
Bastian takes his hand.
Palm against palm, fingers closing around Emery's with a firmness that is not a grip but is not casual either.
Bastian's hand is larger than his and hotter than any hand has a right to be and Emery's pulse is hammering against his wrist in a way that Bastian can certainly feel.
He does not pull away. Pulling away would break the spell and the spell is what gets him alone with his target.
Bastian leads him toward the stairs. The half-giant at his table glances up from his cards, registers their joined hands, and returns to the game without comment.
The copper-haired woman doesn't even look up.
The man in the half-mask is another matter.
He watches them go, and his white gaze lingers on Emery with steady focus, committing a face to memory.
They climb the stairs and the noise of the Hollow fades behind them. Emery's hand is still in Bastian's and his skin is still burning where they touch and his thoughts are already on the knife strapped to his thigh.
The hallway at the top is dim and quiet, draped in the same deep reds as the rest of the Hollow.
Doors on either side, all closed. The sound of the crowd below is a distant murmur that makes the silence between them feel larger than it is.
Emery's feet are silent on the floor. Bastian's boots make soft, deliberate sounds. He has not let go of Emery's hand.
There is a blade strapped to his thigh, hidden beneath the drape of his trousers. He can feel the cool press of it against his skin. Once they are alone, it ends with one clean stroke.
He follows Bastian down the corridor and wonders when, exactly, his fingers started holding back.