Chapter Forty-Two
CHAPTER
Forty-Two
THE SOCIETY IS thin these days, and it’s about to get thinner.
You’d waste a tributary bookshop on Roth? Cassandra had said incredulously. Roth’s played a bad hand, he’ll admit, but not entirely through stupidity. He’d known the society would want something from him.
Now, he’s going to find out what.
It doesn’t take him long to strip the society of their disguises, revealing their true identities.
He finds the Hanged Man and the Empress in bed together, fast asleep, corset and noose flung to the floor in an apparent frenzy of undress.
He almost ruins the moment by laughing, scorn overtaking his shock.
He shouldn’t be surprised that at least some of the society were sleeping together; he’d figured as much with the Sun and the Moon, or perhaps Judgement and Temperance, as the two most pedantic, miserable assholes of the lot. But the Empress… and the Hanged Man?
What bedfellows love and hate make, indeed.
He stands over the bed, his shadow blanketing them.
Without the mask, the Hanged Man’s face is softer than Roth thought it’d be.
Gentle life lines etched into the corners of his eyes.
On the other hand, the Empress is less beautiful than he’d imagined.
A plainer face, a meaner mouth. How ordinary.
How powerless. No wonder they’d hidden behind masks and make-up for so long.
He looks at them both, contemplating the decision in front of him: who will put up the greater fight? Then he raises his knife against the Empress, still sleeping.
Maybe it’s bad luck. Maybe it’s Lady Fate, with one diverting hand on the knife. But the Hanged Man wakes, and his eyes fix on a shadow behind Roth, just for a second.
“Beatrice,” he gasps.
The Empress awakes. Her eyes flash red fury.
Roth seizes on the distraction and lunges. But the Hanged Man pushes the Empress out of the way at the last second. The knife sinks once, twice, three times into the Hanged Man. He wheezes, like a punctured balloon—a vital artery severed—and collapses back onto the bed.
Red, glistening on Roth’s hands.
The Empress puts up a good fight. Almost too good. She dives out of bed, lunging for the nearest book. Anything to pull power from.
But Roth is a fast learner; he already bears a reading of his own, if clumsier than he’d like. He reads for strength, and only strength. What else is there?
Her fingers have just clasped on a book when he pushes her back onto the bed.
She struggles, and he’s gratified to see fear, finally, reflected in her eyes.
Without the corset, the make-up, the pretence, she’s just a woman.
And him? With the reading pulsing against his skin, he’s so much more than a man.
“Tell me why I was supposed to take Chiron’s bookshop,” he snarls. “Tell me what you really wanted.”
It’s a drawn-out process. But he gets it all from her, in the end, and he can’t say he’s surprised when he does. Through bloodied lips, she hisses it to him, piece by piece. A paradox book to save the society. A sacrifice to sate the river. And Roth, so eager to sink his fists into it all.
He leaves the knife buried in her chest, as a message to Temperance, whoever the hell he is. Roth will find him, in time.
Then he wipes his hands on the bed, grimacing. He didn’t think it would be such a messy procedure. Even his shoes, the last pair he’d bought on his credit card before he’d maxed it out, are spattered with gore.
The hitman, he reflects, was right.