Chapter 25
CHAPTER
Reid waited with Sachia and Koen, hoping, praying, that his wife would make it here. He knew no one better at formulating a plan—surely she would find a way.
Masked women and men moved around the first floor, which had transformed entirely since the last time Reid had come here.
Instead of an art gallery, it was set as a sweet-smelling garden, based off some Asteryan folktale about a demon and the bride he stole.
Silver and gold chains hung from the ceiling with oil lanterns attached to each, washing the room in warm light.
Winter jasmine threaded through those chains, creating curtains of falling flowers that resulted in pockets of privacy within the space.
Pomegranates and bloodred roses decorated the tables, and all the women were dressed as if they were the bride themselves.
Paint covered the exposed parts of their bodies, swirling to appear like vines.
Women hung over the seats near Koen and Reid, though just as Reid always knew his closest friend to do, Koen shied away from their touch or attention.
Conversely, Sachia continued making friends with the workers, seeming entirely in cahoots.
Reid knew this was a strategy to gain access to one of the third floor’s private meeting rooms, which Sachia would happily pay for.
Reid could hardly focus on any of what they said, though.
He kept picking up on little Asteryan words he was starting to memorize.
Heiress. Marriage. Lord Karev. Husband. Wife.
Hatred burned in Reid, low and simmering, but he kept his composure, or at least tried to.
Koen had reluctantly told him of the outcome of their meeting; Vaasa had accepted an engagement to Lord Karev.
Reid had known it was coming, and yet it felt as though all that black powder had been stuffed into his chest and detonated.
Reid turned as a couple entered the room.
Her face was covered by a mask built of crimson roses and pomegranate seeds, but he would know those indigo eyes anywhere.
The costume she wore held similar imagery, the gauzy material of her dress thin and draping over her body, only acceptable in the warmth of a room.
It reminded him of the detailed statues decorating the grander architecture of Mekes, particularly the ones on the Asteryan Citadel.
While the bodice hugged her waist tightly, the bloodred fabric of the skirts fell as if carved from granite.
A slit in the dress revealed the length of her leg, and Reid’s jaw tightened at the sight.
At knowing Karev had seen Vaasa in this dress first.
The bastard didn’t even seem to appreciate the woman on his arm. Karev’s eyes roved the room, seemingly counting the number of people he wanted to leave an impression upon.
“This ends in his death,” Reid whispered to Koen, careful not to speak Icrurian too loudly. Though Koen assured him the new rumor was that pirates had killed Lord Vlacik, Reid knew well enough that story would change if their group became too suspicious.
Vaasa’s eyes locked on Reid, then lifted to a woman who stepped behind his chair and ran her hands over his chest. Despite the way Reid wanted to recoil, he didn’t.
He couldn’t. To plant even a seed of doubt in Lord Karev’s mind would be dangerous for Vaasa.
Reid had to pretend to be anything but interested in her.
But there was a heat in his wife’s eyes that made him feel like the devil—the very one who’d stolen a bride and inspired the night’s decorations. Vaasa watched where the woman touched him, and despite everything he knew about her, her lips turned down.
A break in her composure, even if only for a moment.
Reid stayed the course, taking measured sips of his wine. Koen looked away from them, and Reid followed suit. Sachia sat beside them, her eyes traveling over Vaasa and Lord Karev, then turned to him for confirmation. When Reid subtly nodded, she uncrossed her legs. “Third floor.”
Sachia approached Lord Karev and Vaasa, her face obscured by a full-length mask.
Given Sachia’s breeches and tucked-in blouse, she blended in with the rest of the revelers quite perfectly.
Someone handed Reid another drink, and he pretended to sip from it, focusing instead on Koen, who spoke with another man there.
Koen was brilliant at small talk, and even though Reid couldn’t fully follow the conversation, he knew enough about tone and body language to know the man Koen spoke to was enthralled in the conversation.
Sachia walked back to their table, and two of the women pulled out chairs for Lord Karev and Vaasa, who were pretending to be anyone but who they were.
Lord Karev took the seat nearest them. “Good evening,” he said in Asteryan.
Koen turned to the lord. The two exchanged words that Reid couldn’t understand, and his lack of Asteryan infuriated him. Just like it had at the table when he’d listened to his wife without knowing what she said.
Powerlessness dragged claws down his limbs.
Lord Karev laughed at something Koen said, and as a woman approached and draped her arms over Karev’s shoulders, handing him a goblet of wine, he said something with a confident tone, and Reid was able to make out the word. Share.
Whatever it was, Vaasa gave Lord Karev the most charming grin. He raised a brow at her, looking between her and the woman, and then Vaasa shrugged as if she were entirely unbothered.
She’d given him permission, he realized. Permission to go bed another woman.
Anger simmered in his body at the man’s sheer disrespect.
At the marriage Vaasa would have been relegated to had she never met Reid.
He wanted to reach across the table and swear to her that it would never be that way between them, that the idea of sharing his bed with anyone else made him sick to his stomach.
He kept his hands to himself.
They all chatted, Vaasa casually sipping on her wine and tipping her head back in laughter.
Her red-stained lips put on quite the performance as she smiled and spoke, eyes only drifting to him for moments at a time.
Reid tried not to stare at her. Instead, he stayed quiet and watched the room like a diligent guard.
“And how are you this evening?” Vaasa asked in Icrurian, keeping her voice low so as not to garner any attention at the use of the language. Each day they spent in this city, the more Reid despised it.
He met her gaze. “Impatient,” he admitted.
Lord Karev didn’t seem to care that they spoke, not as he leaned into the curly hair of a beautiful woman whose skin had been painted as if she were a statue.
“Murderous?” she asked, a pointed question that simmered in his gut.
“This establishment brings it out in me,” Reid confessed.
Vaasa furrowed her brow for a moment, and then said, “It was you? Not the pirate?”
Reid remembered it so clearly, though he hadn’t made a show of the killing.
Hadn’t enacted any of the twisted things that had spun themselves out in his mind.
He’d wanted to drag out the man’s suffering like the slow inching of daylight.
But instead, it was like the pinching of a candle, the way Reid took that man’s life.
Just like this moment, he hadn’t understood the Asteryan that slipped from Lord Vlacik’s lips, yet he knew it was a plea.
It hadn’t brought about hesitation. From a young age, Reid had not taken apologies from people who could never earn forgiveness.
“He sealed his fate, just like that one.” He gestured with his head to Lord Karev.
Vaasa opened her mouth to retort, but Sachia interrupted in Icrurian, “Have you found a way for us to enter the prison?”
A subtle reminder that they could speak no further on a topic such as that. Not unless they were in private.
Vaasa carefully glanced at Lord Karev, but this line of questioning wouldn’t be unfounded. He knew well enough they intended to infiltrate the prison island.
“Do you know if the prisoner we seek is still there?” Koen asked in Icrurian. He wasn’t speaking about Sachia’s brother, that much was certain. Reid watched Vaasa’s expression drop to what he thought might be guilt.
“Yes. I have a plan to see her soon,” she said.
“You do?” Reid asked.
Vaasa nodded.
Reid frowned. How exactly would she do that? He was about to ask, but Lord Karev said something in Asteryan that made Vaasa and Sachia immediately switch back to the same language. After a moment of what looked like explanation from Sachia and Koen, Lord Karev relaxed.
Eventually, Sachia stood, two women beckoning her and Vaasa away from the table.
Vaasa looked wistfully over her shoulder at Lord Karev, playing such a perfect submissive fiancée, and Reid thought she’d asked permission to go somewhere.
The act made his hand twitch beneath the table.
Lord Karev pursed his lips, then gave an amused smile like he would to a child who he no longer cared to supervise.
He said something at the table in a haughty tone as the women dragged Vaasa away, and everyone laughed.
Koen was rigid as he did so. The lord didn’t even bother glancing at where Vaasa walked.
Instead, his eyes trailed back to the curly-haired woman, the same one Reid had watched the man lust after the last time they’d been there. The moment Vaasa was gone, the woman whispered something in Lord Karev’s ear.
Reid lifted his goblet to his lips, this time taking a heady sip.
The men around them laughed, and Reid wanted to pull the dagger from his boot and thrust it through Karev’s throat.
But he had his opening when the lord stood from the table, nodding his farewell to the group and following the woman past the jasmine curtains and disappearing up a set of stairs opposite the set that Vaasa and Sachia had just ascended.