Chapter 27 #2
Azrian should’ve been irritated by the invasion of his space, and yet, as he waited with his shoulder leaning against the doorframe, the irritation never came.
Instead, the image of her soaked into some hollow space in his chest he’d thought long emptied.
It was all terribly improper, even a little absurd.
Certainly a weakness, for the Emperor’s Hand to be so captivated by the sight of a woman. He found that he did not care.
Miss Almarien stretched and stifled a yawn, long arms pointing to the sky. She spotted him, then, and her breath hitched, scooting backwards in the chair’s embrace as if it could protect her from a possible threat.
“Threads,” she hissed. “I did not see you.” She blinked rapidly, tucking a loose strand behind her ear. “How long have you been standing there?”
He considered answering, then realized he wasn’t even certain how much time had passed. “I could ask you the same,” he said instead.
He stepped into the room, letting the door click shut. “What are you doing, Miss Almarien, commandeering my home? I don’t believe I allowed the staff to follow your instructions.”
She glanced to the side, searching the shadows as if someone might emerge to shoulder the blame.
The papers remained in her lap, her fingers splayed protectively over the ink.
“I called on you, but your butler informed me you were out. He suggested I wait here, as he didn’t know how long you’d be absent.
I gather,” Sabine added, a little dryly, “that he does not often contradict your orders.”
He arched a brow, moving to the hearth without taking his eyes from her. “You must have made yourself terribly persuasive.”
She gave a one-shouldered shrug, more diffidence than pride.
“I was determined not to lose my nerve before delivering these.” She held up the papers; the edges were already softened by repeated handling.
“Besides, I had no interest in eavesdropping on your staff. The documents required my full attention.”
He drew up the chair beside hers, angling it so their knees were nearly touching.
“Lovely chairs,” she said, after a beat. Her fingers traced the armrest’s silk piping with idle appreciation.
A smile tugged at Azrian’s mouth—surprising, traitorous.
“I had them recently reupholstered,” he said, and let his gaze rest meaningfully on her unbound hair, on the simple lines of her dress; it was another creation of Keshiran silk, as most of the gowns Lady Delarine clothed her in.
Azrian had never known much about the fabric until he’d seen it flow like a stream from Miss Almarien’s body on their first promenade, felt it under his fingertips at their first dance, watched it cling obscenely to her wet skin after a deluge.
“I’ve developed a newfound fondness for Keshiran silk. ”
The color that rose to her cheeks was instant and unguarded; she looked down, lips twisting in something that was neither a smile nor a scowl.
Before either of them could break the moment, the maid entered, balancing a tea service.
Azrian nodded for the service to be set on the table; the maid retreated, leaving the room fragrant with bergamot and heat.
He poured, steady hands betraying none of the ache between his ribs. “If you called on me, I assume it was not simply for the comfort of my chairs.”
She gathered the documents, eyes flicking over the headers in a practiced scan.
“It’s the Bennetts and the Valdris. Some details did not sit quite right.
I could not put my finger on it at first. But then there was a line in the Bennett file, here—” She tapped the page, her expression sharpening with focus.
Livor mortis manifested as vivid red mottling, atypical but not inconsistent with rapid cooling of the chamber.
She looked up at him, eyes searching. “What do you make of that?”
Azrian considered. “Were there any reports of tampering with the windows?”
“No mention of forced entry, nothing about broken locks, nothing about a malfunctioning stove. Yet the investigator saw fit to mention the cooling, as if anticipating the question but offering no answer.”
She flipped to a second sheet, her nails catching on a stained margin. “Then here— marked pallor of the extremities, with faint cyanotic shading at the fingertips. ”
A pause. Miss Almarien met his gaze full-on. “Does that description sound familiar to you?”
She hardly allowed him time to think. Like a steamboat at full power, Miss Almarien pressed on.
“When I examined Marianne’s body, her left glove was missing.
The skin there was bluish—distinctly so, and not consistent with common toxins.
It haunted me for days—” she fanned the reports to show him, “—because it was familiar. A clue. I just couldn’t figure out why. ”
A shiver chased down Azrian’s spine. “You believe it was not poison that killed them.”
Miss Almarien’s mouth twisted, triumphant. “That is my suspicion, yes. The Valdris—their lips. They looked… wrong. Did you notice it?”
Azrian closed his eyes, conjuring the image with miserable clarity.
Marianne’s mouth, lined with a vivid, theatrical red, as if meant for a stage.
Her husband’s as well. It had struck him as odd at the time, but he’d found ways to explain it away to himself.
They’d kissed, and her rouge had transferred.
Or maybe he had a taste for makeup. Either was a plausible enough option, but neither was as likely as the picture Miss Almarien was painting.
“Yes. Unnaturally red, covered in rouge. Powdered thick, almost to the point of grotesquery. Which would’ve been the easiest way, especially in haste, to mask—”
“—Perioral discoloration,” Miss Almarien concluded his sentence. “Which was, coincidentally, noted prominently in the Bennetts case.”
“With the cause of death marked as asphyxiation, there would’ve been no need to conceal it. But with Marianne and her husband, it would’ve made the poison look suspicious. Hence, the rouge.”
Which meant the killer was not an unbonded at all, as he’d theorized just that morning. “The lips, the blueish tinge, the reddish livor mortis, the chill…” Azrian took a deep breath. “The murders were not mundane at all. The killer is an Ice weaver.”
He stared at her. For a long moment, the only sound was the clink of porcelain as he set down his teacup. Genius. He would’ve missed it entirely. “You are maddeningly remarkable.”
Her cheeks colored again, and her fingers fluttered at the edge of the scattered papers. “I believe you mean remarkably maddening, my lord, as you’ve not failed to inform me.”
He smiled, and this time the expression felt deeper, almost unfamiliar. “No. I meant what I said.”
They sat like that for a moment, silence thick. Rain crowded the windows, tracing rivers down the warped leaded glass. The world outside was gray and uncertain, but here, in the lamplight and steam, everything seemed briefly possible.
“I met with the Handler this morning. He’s a well-known murderer for hire. And he gave me some precious insight, as well.”
Miss Almarien furrowed her brows. “I beg your pardon, did you say a murderer for hire ? And you simply went and visited him? On your own?”
Azrian pressed a hand to his chest in mock sympathy. “My, Miss Almarien, you fear for my safety?”
“It would be convenient for me if you died.” She shrugged. “But then I would have to unravel these murders on my own, and that would be quite burdensome.”
His smile was a row of blades. “Fortunately for you, I’m infinitely more deadly than him.”
“How fortunate, indeed.” She leaned back against the chair. “This… Handler, then. What insight might he have provided?”
“He believed the killer was a novice who left too much evidence behind. As you’ve so brilliantly uncovered, much of the evidence is fabricated, but I still tend to believe a more experienced murderer would’ve made a cleaner job of disposing of both bodies and evidence.”
She considered this, tapping a single finger against her lower lip. “A theory that holds merit.”
“He also implied that as long as marked people exist, bodies will continue to fall.”
She watched him, eyes sharp as scalpels. “So you believe—what? That the Children of the First Flame are attempting to cull the marked from the face of Velyar?”
A long pause. He swallowed, letting the next words stretch between them. “He told me something else. Something I only half-believed, until now. He thinks the Registry is lying about the origin of the marks. Which begs the question—have they lied about the role of the Children, too?”
“If the Children aren’t the threat, then what does that make the Registry? What does it make the Empire?”
“Complicit, at best. Architects, at worst.”
Miss Almarien’s face softened. “You think you’ve been hunting the wrong prey.”
He looked down at his hands, at the callouses and scars. “I don’t know what to think. I’ve spent over ten cycles as the Hand. I’ve always known the Emperor made me a weapon, but now I’m forced to wonder if he’s made me a monster, too.”
She shook her head fiercely. “No. A monster wouldn’t ask whether he was one. You’re simply a man, and men make mistakes. You’re asking the right questions now.”
“Am I?” His voice was raw, stripped of its usual control. “Or am I simply asking them too late? How many have I hunted? How many have I—” He stopped, jaw tightening.
“Killed on the Emperor’s orders?” Her expression held no judgment, only a terrible understanding. “You cannot unmake the past, my lord. None of us can. But you can choose differently now.”
“The Emperor’s Hand doesn’t simply choose. That’s not how this works.”
“Then perhaps,” she said softly, “it’s time to stop being the Hand and start being Azrian.”
Something in his chest constricted at the sound of his name on her lips. She seemed to have heard it, too, because her cheeks pinked and she looked away, blinking.
“Lord Vaelros, I mean.”
Azrian wanted to believe her. He wanted—more than that—to simply go on sitting here, the world’s madness held at bay by nothing more than the warmth of her presence and the soft, telling curve of her mouth as she pondered another riddle.
He wanted to reach across the small distance and take her hand, to see if the cold would abate.
But marked couples were dying. Caelen and Miss Celastra might die.
She might die. So his own peace would have to wait.
Azrian glanced at the scattered death records, the careful notations, the underlines, and knife-sharp questions.
He’d rather have faced the world’s sharpest truths with this woman at his side than shoulder a thousand gentle lies alone, anyway.
“The Handler said a lot of cryptic things about ancient legends. I cannot say it made much sense, but I gathered this much from it: the Children may have the missing piece of knowledge we seek. If we only knew how to find them.”
Miss Almarien avoided his gaze, bottom lip captured between her teeth.
He narrowed his eyes. “What are you keeping from me, maddening creature?”
She lifted her palms in front of her. “Before you anger, I would like to remind you that, first, we established you think me remarkable, and second—I did try to tell you this, in the Registry archives, but we ran out of time.”
“Out with it, Miss Almarien.”
She took a deep breath, then released it with a sigh. “I may know where to find the Children.”