Chapter 11 Nadje
Nadje
“So much gold for a servant girl.”
Nadje leapt up as the shadows in her room shifted.
Inkletter.
She’d expected his retribution sooner or later. Just not now, when her fingers had been delving into the treasure chest she kept beneath the floor.
She eliminated any threat to herself—and her gold—ruthlessly. She leapt for her sword, then vaulted forward with a high arc for his throat. But he half traced, becoming intangible. The blade whistled through him, embedding in the wall behind him.
“Bloodthirsty leech!” he said with surprise.
Lips drawn back from her fangs, she yanked her weapon free and swung again. Metal bit nothing but wall.
“Cease that.” His voice was silk and command, the same voice that once had ordered her not to orgasm. Despite Nadje’s fury, her body betrayed her, a violin craving the bow.
She would never get the drop on him; he was too old and too powerful, and his teleporting was an advantage few could defeat. Raising her chin, she dislodged her sword from the wall but kept it close.
“I’m not here to harm you, though you deserve nothing less.” He stepped into the lantern light of her tiny room, then stood like a glorious statue with those unblinking, dark-brown eyes.
He wore a white, sleeveless tunic that displayed muscled arms and a gold band above his bicep. That expensive-looking piece glinted. Habit took over, and her brain started an appraisal—
“We have much to discuss, little flame.”
Deciding that Inkletter was more of a lover than a fighter, she stowed the sword.
“Nothing to talk about, incubus. So be off with you.” She returned to fasten the lock on her hiding place.
She smoothed the tattered rug over the cubby and made a promise to create another hideaway the moment she got rid of this spy.
When she rose before him once more, adjusting her apron and dress, his gaze remained on her hiding place like a hawk finding a mouse. “Explain this treasure you possess, vampire,” Inkletter said in his formal way of speaking.
Footsteps sounded outside her room, a slow patrol cadence. The sentries were few, but they made regular rounds on this level, especially now. She lowered her voice to say, “Explain? What business is it of yours?”
“Your games have indelibly tarnished my lofty reputation. As you’ve ruined my career, I feel entitled to a portion.”
She would figure out how to gut him before she allowed him to take even a coin. She had no sympathy for him. None left at least. He’d been using her, and his indifference to her had sliced deeply. She’d been weak, nearly surrendering, even knowing he was a spy.
Her pleading with him in the throes? Had only been half faked.
She told him, “If one lowly vampire servant could ruin your reputation so easily, maybe it wasn’t so lofty to begin with.”
“You’re clever,” he said, sounding surprised and pleased.
You have no idea, incubus.
“Vastly more so than I thought. You must be educated.”
“School of experience,” she shot back. “Graduation every sunrise if I learned my lessons.” The foremost one: Live by my wits or die by the fang. “Unlike you.”
Her sources had reported that Inkletter was one of the oldest and most learned immortals alive and that he resided in the demonarchy of Grimrock with his own extensive library.
Princess Emilia, herself an amateur scholar, had despaired of their plan to trick such a male. Nadje had inwardly laughed and said, “I can handle him.” Arrogant males are the most easily fooled.
He said, “Then you must have had many opportunities for lessons in the Badlands, a land rife with peril.”
Over time, something about that place made immortals turn into the most monstrous versions of themselves. Vampires feeding on other vampires, shifters never resuming their humanoid forms…
After she’d clawed her way free of the Badlands—and the strigoi and giant crocodile shifters and godsdamned upright hyenas—she’d set her sights on this castle.
One night with a connected nobleman had earned Nadje a coveted position here.
Now that she’d finally gained a measure of security, she would do murder to protect it.
So why had she risked everything to help a princess?
As if he’d read her thoughts, Inkletter said, “And now more perils await you. The vampires will kill you if they discover your part in the abduction of a day-walking royal.”
“I can handle them.” The castle was on full alert, and earlier, a court inquisitor had interrogated Nadje.
But he’d impatiently waved her away after her first blank-eyed hair twirl.
He would never believe a female servant could be a coconspirator in the greatest crime this kingdom had ever sustained.
Though Nadje wished she could take credit for the plot, Emilia had orchestrated most of it. The princess hadn’t asked her to sleep with Inkletter—Emilia was too decent for that—but Nadje hadn’t minded dallying with the spy.
Not at first anyway.
“Prince Co?tin alone will hunt her down,” Inkletter predicted. “Rumors say he believes she is his mate. Does the interest flow both ways?”
She snorted. “Not at all. Emilia despises him, considers his infatuation a sickness.” Even so, Co?tin—so beautiful, fallen, and twisted—intrigued Nadje.
She’d learned from a source that the prince had gotten high on intoxispells and bragged about having a devastating advantage over another kingdom in the Skein—leverage so secret that even King Neculain knew nothing of it.
If true, it would change the landscape even more than Emilia’s abduction. It would change business. Nadje took market conditions very seriously.
Inkletter said, “Historically, vampire royals haven’t shied from incest.”
“The other royal siblings don’t shy away from anything.” Sin and depravity marked each of their existences. Their personal servants returned to this ward with haunted eyes and bloody clothing, telling hair-raising tales. “But Emilia did.”
“She must have paid you a fortune to take such a risk. Is that how you came by this gold?”
Nadje shrugged. “She had nothing of much value.”
“Then why help a royal you barely know?”
“Because the princess hates the kingdom’s slavery and her family’s crimes.” Nadje’s own past—naive, young, begging for passage out of the Badlands—drove the rest. “Not to mention that the king’s decree is one every female should fear.” Nadje shivered, scarcely able to imagine such a scenario.
Inkletter inclined his head at her point. “So you’re not a revolutionary plotting to burn the kingdom one royal at a time?”
Not good for business. “Coin usually prevails with me.” Survival had a price, and she budgeted to afford it.
Yet still she found herself asking, “Is Emilia safe among the Berserkers?” That had been Nadje’s fear: for the princess to leap out of the pan and into the fire.
But Emilia had been willing to risk anything.
“Your friend is not in immediate danger.”
Nadje wouldn’t call them friends, per se. She didn’t want or need friends. They just got killed or turned out to be liabilities. More effort than she could bother with.
Inkletter said, “The queen wed her to a Berserker shieldchief, her second-in-command.”
Nadje’s inhale was sharp. “Already?”
“Yes. But he hates vampires. With significant reason.”
The room contracted. The idea of gentle Emilia in a warrior’s bed—scorned, trapped—stoked a burn in her chest. “Will he hurt her?”
“He’s a decent male, but I honestly don’t know.”
She forced herself to file away this worry and concentrate on her own. “Are you going to tell the guards about my involvement?”
He crossed his arms, exuding all the entitlement of an untouchable male. “Not once you cut me in.”
She laughed at him. She’d hoarded this gold all her life, and one day—or night—it might be her salvation.
Undeterred, he said, “Since I can no longer spy, I must embark on a new career. You shall be my first blackmail mark.”
“Get fucked, incubus.”
He cocked his bald head. “You act as if I don’t hold all the cards.”
“You act as if we’re playing cards.”
The corners of his lips twitched, his grin giving a hint of his even white teeth and his demon fangs. “When did you figure out I was a spy?”
She let him change the subject, even though it prolonged his visit—his last visit.
“I knew from the start. Whenever someone lies to me, the little hairs on my nape stand up. It’s as apparent to me as if I’d scented fresh blood.
Besides, no male is as perfect as you, unless it’s an act.
” She sounded jaded for her age of a century or so, but she had seen it all.
“After that, I asked around—you’re not the only one with sources—and learned all about you.
Your library in Grimrock. Your sources. Your studies. ”
His posture shifted. “So everything was fake?”
“No. Unlike you, I came when you were balls deep.” And he truly hadn’t. “So hats off to you for your control.” That control had haunted her. How had she nearly lost it with a male who viewed her as a mere mark? She was the con—not the conned. “At least you got a meal out of it.”
“I am an incubus. I do feed from a partner’s pleasure during intercourse.”
So how many meals had he harvested since she’d last seen him? Had other females sustained him, their cries in his ear? “Do you never come when working?”
“Incubi are demons. Demon males can’t spill seed with any but a mate.”
“But you can orgasm though.”
He shrugged and that gold band glinted again. “I prefer not to.”
“Ah. Fucking someone for pleasure while fucking them over is a bridge too far?”
“Something like that.” Could this spy possess a tinge of morality?
Beyond the door, footsteps sounded, boots returning. A pause right outside. A faint jingle of keys.
Nadje froze.
Another beat. The sentries shifted. Listening?
Footsteps again, receding. Nadje relaxed a fraction, not relief, just borrowed time. She hissed to Inkletter, “You have to go.”
He crossed to her bed and reclined with his arms behind his head, brazen, as if this ward belonged to him. “Not without my cut or an explanation for that gold. I don’t like unsolved mysteries.” He plumped her threadbare pillow. “Otherwise I shall get very comfortable.”
He looked deliciously demonic in her bed. Her mind turned to the passion they’d shared there. And on the floor. And against the wall.
Well, passion on her side; he’d been unaffected except for a brief time when she’d been sobbing with the need for release. In that moment, he’d seemed about to lose himself as well.
She’d repeatedly imagined him succumbing to his lust. His hips jerking as he came, his claws digging into her flesh, his pointed demon tongue twining against hers as he groaned…
Gods, that thought got her going. She’d masturbated so much in the last couple of days her fingers were sore.
She gazed up warily, commanding herself not to replay her fantasy.
He’d be able to scent her arousal! She needed to put him off the scent, literally.
And she needed him gone before the guards returned.
“If you’re so keen on coin, incubus, I could help you make more.
Instead of blackmail, consider smuggling.
You wanted to know about my chest. That’s how I’ve earned it. ”
Figuring he’d turn her down, she’d led with this offer. Yet having uttered the words, she warmed to the idea. His ability to trace would be invaluable. And it would help her control him better. Right now, this loose end could get her executed. “I have a job, but I need someone who can teleport.”
“You can’t at all?” When she shook her head, he said, “Back in Gaia, vampires often spontaneously developed that talent when they needed it most.”
“Not here then,” Nadje murmured noncommittally. Countless dicey situations should have triggered her ability.
She stifled a shiver, recalling the morning the strigoi had taken out an entire encampment of her fellow vampires. The sun had risen in the desert, but the strigoi’s fur and raised wings had protected them as they’d slashed at the tent shading eight-year-old Nadje and her mother.
Mam? became my shade. Her last embrace turned to ash.
Nadje could still taste it.
“To where do you smuggle?” Inkletter asked, drawing her from memory.
Inner shake. “All over the Skein.” Sensing his genuine interest, she decided to divulge more. “I move everything from witch sigils to fey poisons.”
He frowned. “Witches trade? Their coven disdains selling magic. They conjure their own gold now and loathe their Gaian commerce past.”
Inkletter would know all about the history. But Nadje knew about the present. “Yours truly cultivated a nice relationship with rogue witches. With my connections and your tracing, we could clean up.”
Would partnering with a cold and calculating male like this be a risk? Absolutely. Yet the seed, now planted, grew.
“Why hasn’t anyone else established these trade routes?”
“Demon gangs have, but we could undercut them. Plus, they get sloppy and tend not to return from various jobs.” Her old gang had. She’d watched them vanish into the Helter and never return.
On the sentries’ next round, Inkletter said in a low tone, “Why would you stay here after your coup? You have enough gold to leave and enjoy many years of comfort.”
“I could potentially live forever, and I plan to. I need hundreds of those chests, and the nobles here are some of my best customers.” They purchased intoxispells and glamours and luxuries like the blood of rare cryptid beasts.
“You’re taking a lot of risk.”
If the royal family found out she’d helped Emilia, they wouldn’t kill Nadje, not for a long time. Since full immortals could regenerate without the mercy of death, she might be tormented for centuries.
Devising tortures for regenerating bodies was a passion for some in the Skein. Still, she said, “I’m accustomed to risk and can tolerate it. Can you?”
“I can if the rewards are commensurate. What job do you need my help with?”
A precarious one. He would either die—problem solved—or survive and prove himself a worthy partner.
Without a teleporter, she’d given up hope of completing it herself.
Inkletter offered a chance, but not a great one.
Giving him one-in-ten odds of making it back from this fiery area in the Skein, she smiled at him, flashing her sharp fangs, and teed up his scenario.