Chapter 11 Silas
“She’s wearing new lipstick.”
Jace hasn’t stopped tapping his fingers against his knees since we pulled out of our lot behind them. He’s jittery, unfocused. Wired in the way he gets when he’s too invested and trying too hard not to show it. It’s grating on my nerves.
“I saw,” I repeat for the third time.
“And that jacket…”
“I saw, Jace.”
He huffs. “You’re being too calm.”
I don’t answer. Not right away. My hands stay steady on the wheel because that’s the only part of me I let show. Everything else is already moving—calculations, contingencies, and threat elevation models firing one after another behind my ribs at a sickening speed.
Ahead of us, Romily’s car turns down a side street toward one of the louder spots on the outskirts of the downtown area. We got lucky when tracking Eris, seeing they were heading in our direction.
She had us nervous for a minute, but I suspected she wouldn’t waste such a dress on yelling at us.
No.
Eris and her best friend are going out tonight, just as she said. They’re heading to the type of bar where noise covers sins, and no one will remember your face.
Eris sits in the passenger seat, her head tipped in a way that tells me she’s laughing at something Romily said. Her profile is backlit by streetlamps. The lipstick she’s wearing is war paint. Her jacket is armor. And she looks…
Dangerous.
Alive.
Unapologetically pissed.
“She still hasn’t messaged,” Jace mutters, scrolling through the app logs. “Nothing since she closed it.”
“She’s angry,” I say by way of explanation, not that he needs the reminder.
Her dress is reminder enough that we fucked up.
“Because of us?”
“Because of her.”
Just saying it out loud makes something cold twist beneath my sternum. She should never have been that close or even known Eris’s name.
She shouldn’t know anything.
But she does.
And I need to know how.
“I still don’t know how she found her,” Jace states, echoing my thoughts. “She shouldn’t know about Eris. We kept her out of everything.”
“Someone is watching us,” is all I can add.
“Someone is always watching us,” he snaps. “She’s had so many private detectives sit outside the loft, I’ve lost count.”
“Which is why we’re watching Eris now,” I remark, pointing at the black sports car as Romily parks.
Jace goes quiet, glaring out the window as he takes a fortifying breath and releases his frustration.
We pull into a spot a dozen vehicles down, giving the two a wide berth so we don’t look like perverts stalking them in the carpark. Eris and Romily get ahead of us before we follow on foot, blending into the late-night crowd.
The line outside the bar is long, but the doorman waves them in without hesitation.
We wait all of thirty seconds.
Then move across the street toward the entrance of the bar.
I pass the doorman two hundred-dollar bills, and he nods us in with mild suspicion that I choose to ignore.
Inside, the atmosphere pulses with neon lights, dark corners, and too much bass vibrating through cheap speakers. It’s the perfect place to disappear.
The perfect place to watch without being noticed.
We split without speaking. Jace drifts toward the far end of the bar. I take the entrance. It has the best vantage point, the best field of view to observe all the writhing bodies as I search for Eris.
It’s also the best choke point if something goes wrong… And I don’t miss the fact that Jace left this spot to me. I suppose murder needs a quicker getaway, and beating someone to an inch of their life needs bail money.
Eris is easy to find.
She always is.
Gravity has a face, and it’s hers; shining metallic gray eyes, plump lips…
A dress so short I wonder which of us will get in a fight tonight.
I would never stop her from wearing it, though I do wish I was going to be pulling it off her tonight, leaving it in a pool of black lace on the floor of my bedroom.
Eris stands with Romily at a high-top table, drink already in hand, chin lifted in a defiant tilt that says I dare someone to try me tonight. Her jacket hangs open, leaving one shoulder bare, lipstick slightly smudged like she either kissed someone or bit her own mouth trying not to.
I want to suggest a better place for that lipstick… But I don’t dare interrupt her night out. Not in her current mood.
She looks like a blade just pulled from the fire.
I keep my distance.
Jace doesn’t. He shifts forward, shoulders angling toward her like his body forgot we’re playing invisible tonight.
My phone buzzes.
Hollow
Still tracking. She’s marked.
One of you check in every five.
Cipher
Already on it. Find the wicked bitch?
Hollow
No.
I don’t like how fast Eris moved past the afternoon.
Cipher
She’s not moving past it.
She’s reacting to it.
I look up, studying every move Eris makes while she’s so carefree. But it’s an illusion. She isn’t carefree at all… She’s acting as if she isn’t aware of her surroundings, as if I can’t see the subtle way she checks over her shoulder when Romily’s attention is elsewhere.
She’s also burning energy that she can’t seem to displace anywhere else. Dancing will wear her out… Then again, something tells me she shares a trait with Jace.
Not turning away from a fight when the energy freely crawls under their skin.
Eris laughs again, her head thrown back, throat exposed. Her eyes are bright with amusement as she glances over her shoulder once more. She finishes her drink and frowns at her cup like she wants something stronger. Like she wants trouble.
It’s only when Romily holds up her middle finger that I realize Eris has been tracking the guys at her back, the table right behind her.
My hand tightens into a fist as a man touches her forearm, but Eris moves back, shaking her head.
Jace starts toward her, his phone clutched in his hand as he looks in my direction.
I shake my head, mouthing, “Don’t.”
He changes direction, coming to stand beside me. “She looks—”
“I know how she looks,” I cut in. “You can go closer, but stay out of sight.”
Jace’s hands curl like he needs something to hold or hit as he steps away from me. He doesn’t stop moving until he’s found another high-top table in the shadows where he can stay close to Eris without being seen by her.
I sweep my gaze across the establishment, over the dance floor, down the bar…
And that’s when I see her.
The wicked bitch I refuse to call by any dignified name.
Sitting at the far end of the bar, where Jace was minutes ago, in a dark silk dress with red-soled heels dangling off one foot. Her hair is pinned up like she’s waiting for someone to undo it, elbows propped on the counter as she swirls her drink.
Jace hasn’t noticed her yet, or he’d be back at my side.
Eris isn’t moving from her table, at least not that I can see from my periphery.
Every instinct I have sharpens to a point as the wicked bitch glances up from her amber liquor and looks directly at me.
She doesn’t spare any attention for Eris or Jace…
She just smiles at me, her lips painted the color of expensive warnings we should have heeded the first time we met her.
If I cared, I’d reciprocate the warning, and let her know she’s not in the same war paint our Goddess of Discord wears.
But I don’t give a fuck about her.
The wicked bitch is playing a game.
And as of today, so is Eris…
Though I can’t say if they’re playing against each other, against us, or if someone is operating on the wrong board entirely.