A Man Without a Mirror #2
Sir Belchin strolled up to the bar. His ogling eyes slathered goo down Jinna’s back, then finally rested on the man behind the bar.
“You were right about the size,” he told Karin.
“What about the other thing?” As soon as he asked, Jinna’s face crumpled, and the man knew immediately what had happened.
“I’m sorry,” Jinna whispered, refusing to look at him.
“Are they attached?” Belchin asked, pursing his lips.
Karin shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
Belchin rolled his shoulders. Watery hazel eyes flicked back and forth from the man to Jinna. He seemed to bristle with rage at the very concept that they might be romantically linked. “She sold you out, creature,” he told the man.
“Give her some credit,” Karin cut in, her nose wrinkling at the suggestion that one of her workers was less than loyal.
“I threatened to kill her if she didn’t tell me where she’d hid the body.
When she said she’d buried it, I knew that was a lie.
When she said you’d burned it with your bare hands, well…
it was just interesting enough to believe.
” She drummed her fingers on Jinna’s shoulder.
Each human tried so hard to be intimidating. The man withheld an eyeroll at the act. He inched his hand across the bar until his fingers touched Jinna’s. The night lady finally looked up at him through her waterlogged lashes. “I had to,” she said. “They need me.”
“I know.” The man wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed. “I know.” His chest ached, but he understood. Jinna earned more in a night than her whole family scraped together in a week. Without her, they’d never have enough to buy their citizenship.
The man sighed. He counted the Valosians—twenty in all, with five barricading the door, six blocking him behind the bar, and the rest scattered around. Them, he’d let burn. He might be able to save Jinna, but not the rest of the Den’s workers hidden in this building.
There was no escape.
The man looked up at the ceiling, asking Magic to maybe drop him a favor.
The rafters were silent. Figures.
“What do you want with me?” the man asked Belchin, startling him out of his staring match with Jinna’s open back.
“It speaks Micrean.” Belchin pulled at his doublet. “I mean to claim you as my champion for the Valosia. You will win me millions of talons, and in exchange I will not kill you. Or her.” His eyes returned to Jinna.
The man’s jaw worked from side to side. He considered bringing the Den down just to flatten Belchin. “You can’t kill me,” he said, rolling his eyes.
Belchin scoffed and snapped his fingers.
The Valosians on either side of the bar rushed in, only for the man to crank the furnace that lived in his chest. The air cringed, and the soldiers stopped in their tracks.
One unsheathed his sword and stuck the tip into the dancing air, only to gape as it glowed bright red.
Jinna gasped, but before she could do much else, Belchin grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back against his chest. He pressed a tiny knife to her throat.
“I see you weren’t lying,” Belchin barked, eyes wild.
Seemed every time the man refused to shake in his boots at one of Belchin’s threats, the old fuck’s blood pressure rose.
Well, the man sure as hell wasn’t shaking now.
Fire rose in the back of his throat every time Jinna’s breath rushed out in panicked puffs.
The man inched closer to burning the whole place down. For her, damn the collateral.
Karin’s chin dipped toward Belchin. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with that blade?” she growled.
“Don’t get so prickly,” Belchin snapped. “All your barman has to do is come nice and quiet, and we’ll all walk out fine.” He scraped the knife up Jinna’s throat. “But if our friend here refuses… well, it’s not like you don’t have ten more of these in the back.”
Jinna tried to keep her breathing steady, body locked still, but her eyes watered. The man tried to tell her silently that everything would be just fine.
“So I come with you, and you let her go?” the man asked, eyes flitting briefly down to the bar top. Nice wood. Damn shame.
“Let my men cuff you and I’ll let her go,” Belchin said with a sneer.
The man nodded. Then he shrugged. “Not good enough.”
Belchin and Jinna’s brows drew in.
“What?” The man sat his hands on his hips. “I can burn this whole place to the ground and you think that’s only worth a girl and my life? A life which your mortal weapons can’t even threaten?” He raised a brow. “I think we need to renegotiate.”
“You motherf—”
The bar ignited. The whole top was suddenly engulfed in flame so hot it shone blue.
The heat kicked Karin, Belchin, and Jinna to the ground. Jinna stole the opportunity to break free from Belchin’s hold, pushing herself to her feet faster than the other two could roll onto their backs.
“Do you want to finish that, Sir Belchin?” the man drawled, incinerating the bar and stepping through the blackened gap. As soon as he crossed his ash threshold, his glamour burned away.
Bone-white horns curled forward from his hairline.
His hair squirmed free from its braid, twisting in his heat.
Brown eyes warmed to bright red, crackling and singing for destruction.
Lightning shattered through his eyes. The “tattoos” under his skin churned awake, billowing up and across the right side of his face.
His first name was Calamity, the one his mother gave him upon slicing him from her womb when she could no longer take the torture of carrying him.
His second name was Massacre, screamed as he burned through whole worlds without half a thought.
His third, Tyrant, was gasped out as his victims succumbed to the weight of his boot on their throats.
Nameless, the man was still each of those. Worse, now that he had an excuse to be.
He strode to Belchin as the human tried to drag himself away. Belchin’s back hit a chair, and he shook when he noticed the black footprints the man left behind him. The man crouched, still massive enough to tower over Belchin.
“Are you ready to renegotiate?” Inferno screamed behind the bass of his voice. Just as the man spoke, something clicked by his ear.
He turned his head and Karin squeezed the trigger on her double crossbow.
The bolts burned to bursts of ash the second they touched his skin.
“Did that feel smart?” the man asked. The heat from his words scorched her crossbow and she dropped the burning ivory weapon in a puddle of gold from its melted mechanism.
Smoke curled from her hands, palms blazing red.
When she looked up at him, for the first time she didn’t remind him of his wife.
Bast never would have shot him with a double crossbow. But if she had, her shot certainly would have connected.
“Now that we’re all aware of what I can do,” the man said, “let’s discuss what you’re willing to pay for it.” He rose to his feet. This was a complication to his plan but one that he had to accommodate. For Jinna.
Belchin’s eyes popped over to Karin, who cursed under her breath in her home language. Jinna crept around to finally get a good look at the man she’d been badgering to marry her for a week.
“What would you appraise my value as?” he asked her.
Jinna, in all her flame-tyrant fear, cracked a grin. “I’d pay at least three thousand talon an hour. And need about ten hours.”
Thirty thousand. Enough for her and her parents to buy papers, with some left over for a nice house out west in a neighborhood with good streets. But still…
“What if I said my height is directly proportional to the length and girth of all other appendages?”
Jinna snorted and bit her lip, knowing exactly what he was doing.
The man had decided that being free wasn’t enough.
Jinna took nasties and drunks every night to work up the money just to be a person in this country.
He would help her extort all the money she wanted from the people who’d done the same to her.
“Forty thousand, surely,” Jinna said, rubbing her arms.