Chapter Thirty-One Paying Debts #2
Was that why he’d set her up to kill St. Lucius? Just to show her how ugly she was on the inside? Maybe for once there was no bigger plan at work. Maybe he’d just wanted to prove a point. Even as she had the thought, she knew there had to be more to it.
A server dropped off a glass of spiced mead, yet more evidence that he’d planned this down to the second. But she didn’t move to take it.
“Stay a while. I’d love to meet your friends.” He chuckled at her deliberate lack of reaction. “Why not invite the large one over here so he doesn’t have to pretend he’s not straining to hear every word we’re saying. Enjoy yourselves.”
Friends. Not friend. He knew Omira and Thance were in Edris despite them entering the city separately, even through different gates.
Inviting them all here for a good time was the equivalent of threatening their lives.
Reya’s shoulders tensed, knowing she needed to get out of these tombs before Caelan burned them down.
But then she felt a warmth at her lower back, like the touch of a hand.
She’d asked for his word, and he’d given it. He would not betray her trust.
“I’m afraid we have another engagement.” Lennox’s eyes followed her movements as she reached into her pocket and set a tiny vial, less than half the length of her pinky finger, on the table in front of him. “Pure, undiluted Kraken blood.”
With an unreadable expression, he picked up her offering, holding the silver vial to the candlelight.
Reya removed an envelope from her pocket next. The Savant’s quill and star seal shone in Rhiterran blue wax on the parchment.
Lennox inspected the seal carefully, then broke it and read the letter of certification in the Savant’s familiar script, along with its valuation.
“It’s all people are talking about down at the docks, in the streets—below them.
I must admit I didn’t believe a whisper.
But there can be no doubt if the Savant has given his seal.
” His eyes lifted to hers. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how you got this?
Something tells me it’s a tale I’d love to hear. ”
Reya tapped her fingers on the table from left to right. Kalúe and her crew had been true to their word. They had not revealed her.
“I thought not.” He refolded the letter and set it aside, then took a sip of his drink, never taking his eyes off hers. “I don’t believe for a moment the pirate princess did this on her own. You know where the Guardian is, don’t you?”
Reya almost laughed. If only he knew.
“Did you steal it? Or did the she give it to you in exchange for saving her from me?”
Whatever his suspicions, Lennox didn’t believe it was Reya, that much was clear. Or at least his ego refused to consider that the God Power might have lived under his nose for all these years and he’d had no idea. Either way, she had the information she needed. She was done here.
“This more than covers my debt,” she said.
He chuckled, tucking the letter into the inside pocket of his tunic.
“Agreed. But debts are meant to be paid on time. I’m afraid there is interest to be collected.
You knew the cost of failure when you accepted the terms. Unless you’d rather choose a brother to take your place.
” Victory glittered in his eyes, and she read the words there: You’re mine.
She would never be his again.
“I’m guessing you don’t want the rest, then,” she said.
“The rest?”
Reya pulled out another vial, this one far larger than the one she’d given him.
She tilted it, letting the blood rise against one wall of the glass, sparkling even in the low light of the catacombs.
“I agreed to mitigate your losses or enter your employ for another decade, in that you’re correct.
But we never negotiated your cut of my earnings. I’ve come to hash out the details.”
Lennox’s eyes glowed with displeasure as she pointed to the vial in his hand.
“My starting offer is three percent. I might be willing to raise it to seven, if you were to agree to a five-year term instead. Or, you can take one hundred percent,” she tapped the larger vial on the table once for emphasis, “and agree here and now to no term at all. Since we both know this vial is worth more than I have or ever will owe you.”
He leaned back in the booth, playing his fingers on the table like a pianoforte. “Good to know you’ve been paying attention all these years.”
“I am ever your apt pupil. Now, are we done? Or am I taking this with me?”
His smile was a thing of nightmares. All of which she had lived already. “And you’re sure this is all of it?”
“Everything I have.” Her expression didn’t so much as flicker. Technically, that was true. She didn’t have any more… on her person.
“And you’re aware that if I discover that to be false, this deal will be void, and there will be no corner of the world for you to hide in?”
She nodded once.
“Then we are agreed.”
Reya slid the vial across the table. “That concludes our business. Permanently.”
“There’s no need to be dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic,” Reya said. “I’m leaving Edris.”
This city, the small sanctuary she’d built for herself in it, would always be a part of her. But it wasn’t home. Home was a place she hadn’t found yet. But she would. One day.
He flexed his wrists on the table. “Where will you go?”
“Not sure yet,” she lied. “There’s a whole world out there. And unlike you, I’m not confined to this isle.”
The taunt found its mark. A crack shot up the side of his glass. “What happens when your coin runs out?”
“I told you years ago, I have other skills.”
His face twisted in cruel disgust. “What are you going to do, start whoring?” He gestured vaguely to the blood. “Is that how you got this?”
Reya swore the temperature spiked. She pictured herself standing in the forge she would build one day, manning the bellows and remembering the heat of the Alethian fire-wielder who had held her with such reverence.
She ran a hand through her hair, sweeping it away from her face, while she formed her next words. “I will forge like my father before me.”
“You’ll forge.” He said it like it was the most comical thing he’d ever heard. How she hated him in that moment for mocking her joy. “After what I made you into… I thought you were smarter than this.”
There is no part of you that is not worthy of the rest.
“I’m more than what you made me,” Reya said calmly, but not meekly.
“When you tire of living like a common pauper, don’t you dare come crawling back here.”
“I’ll survive.” Again, those words. But she would do more than survive. She would live. “I’ve survived far worse. I survived you.” Reya gave him a small smile. “Whatever comes next, I’m grateful it was you who found me in that alley.” For who I am because of it.
“You can find your way out.”
Reya leaned forward, looking him dead-on for what she said next.
“You and I—we’re square. So, let me be abundantly clear.
If you touch my brothers—if I find out you went within a league of them—I will be on the first sailing back here.
I will wake Atyx myself only to throw your corpse at his feet and watch as he carries you to the Void. Do we understand each other?”
He took a long, slow sip of his whiskey and licked his lips of every drop. “My, my. How tall you’ve grown.”
“Goodbye, Lennox,” she said, and slid out of the booth.
Reya didn’t look back.
She passed by the card table where Caelan was already cashing out, making for the tunnel, and was nearly to the entrance when someone grabbed her hand. But it wasn’t the warm touch she expected. It was chilled and wet, as though the bearer had just set down a pint of cold ale. She turned.
Gavin. “Can I talk to you, Red?”
“No.” She tugged on his grip, but he held on.
“Please.”
Were those curtains actually smoking?
“I have nothing I want to say.”
Caelan fell into step behind her, looking for all the world like he didn’t care that another man was currently holding her hand, even as she began sweating beneath her leather. Gavin finally let go, and it was almost comical watching him try not to straighten himself to Caelan’s height.
“New friend?” Gavin asked her, holding Caelan’s amber eyes.
She smirked. “You could say that.”
“I thought you didn’t have friends.”
“Let’s say I’m warming up to them.”
For the first time since they entered the tombs, Caelan’s lips twitched. Gavin made a good show of trying to laugh it off, but she could tell he’d understood her meaning. She’d moved on. “Five minutes is all I ask. Please.”
She didn’t hate Gavin or harbor a grudge. She understood him. They’d worked together for years. Had both done things that surely kept them up at night. Had each experienced Lennox’s unique brand of cruelty and been molded by it.
“You’re one of the good ones, Gavin.” They were friends. But that’s all they were. “Don’t let him change that.”