Chapter Thirty-One Paying Debts
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
PAYING DEBTS
Are you sure I can’t just kill him for you?”
Snorting, Reya reached into her pocket and clutched the velvet pouch containing a small glass vial of otherworldly silver blood. “This will only take a moment. Killing him would take longer, and require far greater preparation.” She’d thought about it more than once.
They stood side by side in the alley across from the Bear and the Bard. Tonight, even the Heap was bright. Caelan met her gaze. “But it would be far more satisfying.”
As soon as the storm had passed, Caelan had taken to the skies again.
Despite all of them riding hard for two days straight to cover three days’ worth of ground, they’d missed her deadline by an hour.
Reya nearly laughed that they had come so close only to enter the city an hour after midnight on its most crowded night of the year. Her time was up.
But she wouldn’t admit defeat. Not yet.
Around them, the streets of Edris were packed with revelers in town for the festival. Most of the action congregated in the city center, but vendors were set up in every district. Inns were packed, and every business had its doors dressed and thrown wide open.
Lumus Day, or the Day of Illumination, when the night sky was the brightest and most spectacular it would be all year, was one of the few holidays Daranathius kings had permitted Ianessians to keep from a time when they worshipped the All-Gods.
On old, forgotten buildings in Edris, one could still find the winged All-God of death, Atyx, depicted in stone, forever flying souls to the constellations of their ancestors or the Void beyond.
Except on Lumus Day, his day of rest, when the path between this world and the next was left unguarded for souls to cross over.
Sometimes they stayed for the night and sometimes the whole year, until Atyx slept again and the pathway reopened.
Every street lantern had been put out, and Rhiterrans were walking the capital with their constellation maps, heads thrown back in awe.
Reya usually spent the three-day festival above the city, where the wonders of the night glittered off the metal rooftops like a mirror and she could drink and dance her way across the galaxy to the wild beat of the crowds below.
It was fitting that her journey as the Crimson Dagger should end how it started, amid a sea of drunken revelers under a starry Rhiterran sky, where she had been left to survive.
“I’m not going to ask you to wait outside,” Reya said.
“Lennox has eyes all over the city. He already knows you’re here, and he knows you’re with me.
Trying to hide that at this point just looks like weakness.
But I need your word that you will not intervene.
” She faced him to make sure he felt the full impact of her meaning.
“You cannot react. He will say anything to try and get a response out of us both. To test what we mean to each other.” She gestured between them.
“If I get even the slightest impression that he intends to try and take you,” he began, leashing his temper, which had been intensifying since they’d arrived, “I cannot promise that this city won’t burn.”
“Don’t you know by now I can take care of myself?
” It was true. But for the first time in years, she didn’t mind that someone else wanted the job.
“I have to do this on my own. Give him nothing he can use against you, not even me. I will not become your weakness. And you cannot be mine. I need your word, Caelan.”
“You have it.” The flames in his eyes were so stark she wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke coming out of his ears. “And you are not my weakness. You make everyone around you stronger. That is why he wants to keep you.”
Reya’s eyes burned. He grabbed her arm as she made to leave, and she nearly collided with him as he pulled her back.
“Just—” He seemed to search for the right words.
“Remember who you are, Reyanwyn of the Mountain.” Those fire-bright eyes were searing and full of conviction, and she’d never felt so bare.
“We do not belong to our worst choices. You showed me that nothing in life is ever so black and white. It is infinitely colored.” He gripped her chin just hard enough to make sure she was listening.
“When you look that bastard in the eye for the last time, remember: There is no part of you that is not worthy of the rest.”
Deep inside her, a tiny, broken piece glowed like hot iron and melded back into the whole. “I thought you didn’t make speeches, general,” she said, fighting the sting in her eyes.
His answering smile was a soft, precious thing.
He hadn’t touched her again. Even if there had been time, she would have still pulled way, no matter how her instincts might have raged at her for it.
For the first time, she wanted more than just one night.
This time with Caelan had shown her she wanted something different for herself.
If she couldn’t have it with him, she wasn’t going to torture herself.
He emboldened her to believe she was worthy of the life she wanted. And so she would accept nothing less. Not even from him.
Caelan’s fingers brushed her free hand with a flash of heat she knew was intentional, one last flame to light the way.
With that, Reya pulled up her hood and let the thief come out to play for the last time. The bouncer had the cellar door open before they’d even reached the end of the alley.
They were expected.
Reya didn’t look at Caelan as they entered the tombs. Nor did she bother being polite as she cut through the crowd of grinding bodies to where Lennox was in his usual booth, speaking to a client.
“Move,” Reya said to the man.
“Excuse me?” he sputtered.
“Move or be moved.”
“It’s all right, Felix,” Lennox said, a smile playing on his lips. “This won’t take long.”
Affronted, the man slid out of his seat with a huff. Reya claimed the space he’d vacated, expression cold and unyielding. Meanwhile Caelan sat at a nearby table and bought into a game of cards, the very definition of unbothered, lethal arrogance.
Lennox pulled out his gold pocket watch and flicked open the cover, but she already knew the time. “I was beginning to think I’d have to send someone to fetch your brothers.”
Reya balled her fingers into a fist beneath the table…
and then let it go. She removed her hood and reached back with one hand to scoop out her mane.
It tumbled over her shoulder in wild waves, the gold veins especially bright after weeks at sea.
Lennox took in the flushed, sun-bronzed skin, the new freckles and scars.
The clothes from Kalúe. Every inch the thief he’d raised.
And yet, that was not who sat in front of him now. Everything had changed.
She had changed.
He drank in her anger like aged whiskey. Reya stared down the man who had broken her to make her unbreakable. Judging by the look in Lennox’s eyes, he knew what she suspected.
There was one person who could have reached the Savant before she did.
Someone who had met with the man in black and knew that she would be desperate enough to take such a ridiculous job.
Lennox had sent her in circles, knowing if she did the impossible and managed to get her hands on Kraken blood, she would inevitably use it to pay him.
And if she didn’t, she would still be indebted to him.
Regardless, he walked away with a prize.
What she couldn’t figure out was why he’d set her up to kill Domwell St. Lucius.
Her best guess was that Domwell had at one point proved himself a risk to Lennox’s businesses, and Reya had been a convenient way to save coin on an assassin.
But it was never that simple with her employer.
He was playing a long game; she just didn’t know what it was.
“Why.” It was not a question, but a demand.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”
They were going to speak in riddles, then. Reya sighed. She was so tired. “The Savant still breathes. Though, I’m guessing you already knew that. I can’t say the same for Domwell St. Lucius. Or the small army he hired to take me hostage.”
If Lennox was surprised she hadn’t strangled the Savant by his own entrails for sending her on a wild goose chase, he didn’t show it.
At first, she’d been angry enough. But the Savant’s only crime was taking payment from the highest bidder.
And in their line of work, that was just good business.
Not to mention, she’d needed the Savant’s seal on the blood to make this a verified exchange.
He offered her an indulgent smile. “Domwell St. Lucius served his purpose.”
“Evidently. But why send me to kill him?” At the card table, Caelan set down his hand a little too hard. She probably should have told him her suspicions before they came in here.
Lennox lifted his drink, extending one finger from his hold to point at her, accentuating his words. “Never pay someone to do that which someone else will do for free.”
The hand Reya kept beneath the table flexed on her ruby dagger. She didn’t want to play this game.
“Is that what has you bent out of shape?” he continued, not bothering to deny he already knew what had occurred on the Balfour.
More proof that she never would have been able to run from him.
The question was, what else did he know?
That was what she needed to find out before she left here.
“Do you know what Domwell St. Lucius did to women like you?”
Yes. And that had certainly made cutting off his head easier. “I’m not an assassin, Lennox.”
If it weren’t for the calculating gleam in his eye, she would have said he looked truly amused. “You’ve always believed that. But you’re a killer just like the rest of us, kiddo. You can help as many captive Sages as you like, but it won’t make your hands any cleaner.”
The words hurt, just like they were meant to.