Chapter 17
Out of all the places Elysia Parker had gone snooping, this might’ve topped the list.
The Lights was the newest and most popular club in Saarspur.
Located in the Endless Forest, it was slung up in the farthest reaches of the branches.
Just looking at the club had made Elysia uneasy.
The roofless club stretched through the weakest and smallest branches of the pines, gently swaying in the evening winter wind.
Architecturally, it was, in a word, precarious.
Elysia wasn’t used to magically designed buildings.
She now realized she had a strong preference for concrete, structural beams, and buildings that were connected to the ground.
The Lights gave her the distinct impression that one body too many within its doors would send the whole place crashing down, leaving them all impaled on the excrement of what was once a very stupidly constructed club.
Despite its stupidity, The Lights, she had to begrudgingly admit, was beautiful.
Dazzling, colorful lights shimmered and waved through the night sky, and because The Lights didn’t bother with a roof, its inhabitants were able to be as close to the gorgeous expanse of starlight as humanly possible.
The pines of the Endless Forest were only a fingertip’s reach away, rustling in the wind and scenting the air perfectly.
But Elysia wasn’t here to luxuriate in the beauty of the night sky.
She was here to steal the plans for some new magic-fueled gambling machine.
The Lights was one of the few clubs not owned or under the protection of the Reyez empire within Saarspur, which normally they would have been willing to overlook so long as The Lights didn’t cause any problems. But The Lights had procured a new distributor.
This distributor was bringing in all sorts of fresh products—drinks, drugs, games, beauty potions.
It looked like the beginnings of someone edging in on their market.
And the products were good too. Creative, underground types of ideas that Bellia, one of the richest and most stable kingdoms, hadn’t seen in a long time.
The Reyez family had no desire to stamp out such ingenuity. They wanted to poach it. And that started with an introduction—one Elysia was guaranteeing when she stole the foreign distributor’s newest design. Everyone knew theft and blackmail were how all great working relationships began.
Elysia sat at the bar, sliding her hand up and down her thigh.
The rhythmic, smooth sensation beneath her palm was a poor attempt to quiet the steadily growing alarm within her, but unsurprisingly did next to nothing to rid her of the distracting tension in her neck or silence the inner voice demanding her to get the fuck out and forget this club.
Elysia forced her hand to still. She couldn’t be giving herself away like that.
At least her dress was pretty if it was what she ended up dying in.
The deep, sensual green of the fabric was woven with a warming magic, so that even with the blustery chill, her muscles were as warm and relaxed as her nerves would allow.
Long sleeved with a wide boat neck and slim-fitting body, the dress moved with her rather than constricting her motions.
Resting on the seat of her stool was a cropped black jacket with a high collar and golden brass buttons.
Unable to help herself, she ran her thumb over the soft fabric again.
It was unsettling to realize just how crippled Kava must have been in the years that followed the Fall.
Buildings that had once relied on magic needing to be reinforced and reconstructed.
Clothing, crafts, and every product you could think of suddenly needing to be produced in a mundane manner.
She wondered how long it took people to learn how to make something as basic as food without magic.
It must have been a disaster. And yet now, Kava boasted electricity and steam-powered engines.
The rest of the world found them strange and unnatural, but she knew they were survivors.
It took a rugged, immeasurable sort of strength not only to keep your creativity but to find the will to create something new in the face of your entire world breaking.
And her people had done so, over and over.
Elysia played with her drink as her magic crawled through every corner of the club.
Money, sex, impulsivity, and longing.
People who were here to escape. People who were here to amplify. People who had felt nothing for a very, very long time. The rare few who were just genuinely enjoying themselves.
Elysia bit back a sigh of frustration. She’d been hoping this would be good practice for searching for the talisman given that she’d never used her magic to search for anything specific before.
It just dragged her around and she hoped for the best. Elysia rattled the ice in her glass.
It looked like she was going to need some magic lessons after all—from Maya.
Aidan could bite her ass if he thought she was going to fall for his bullshit just because he’d been nice to her when she was about to cry.
Her throat thickened with discomfort just thinking about that interaction.
She was letting him get too close. They didn’t have to cry on each other’s shoulders to work cordially together.
Her glass hit the wooden bar with a thud, her eyes latching onto a newcomer.
Stuffed into a three-piece charcoal gray suit, the man strode through the club with a quiet but powerful energy.
She tracked him as he cut a sharp, direct line to where she sat.
Her interest thrummed higher as she freely perused her mark.
Light skin, dark brown hair tinged with red, and a neatly groomed beard paired with muscles that were ready to bust out of his finely made suit.
Elysia’s magic slithered out, and she inhaled a nibble of his secrets.
Flashes of violence ripped through her mind along with numbers and a sense of astuteness.
As a former unbranded Reyez enforcer turned businessman, it all made sense. Interesting, indeed.
She smiled lazily, tipping her gaze up from the well-oiled leather boots now standing an inch from her stool all the way up to hard blue eyes.
“Welcome to my club, Ms. Parker. Given our mutual friends, I assure you that the sizable bounty on your head is all but forgotten.” Her mark stressed the word sizable while his gaze drifted from her face to roam all over her body as if the gleaming pinkish-red skin of the Reyez brand would suddenly make itself known from beneath her dress.
Resting a hand on the bar, he leaned against it.
Intelligence shone in his eyes, giving away how he’d moved from mere muscle to owning a club like this in the heart of Reyez territory.
He leaned in as if they were having a private moment, waiting a few seconds to speak.
Elysia sensed eyes on them from around the club as he held his position near her ear, but she maintained her indifferent posture.
As if people hadn’t stared and panted after the Crown Prince.
She was immune to such rabble. Heat rolled off the club owner’s body, and his voice this close to her neck made her skin crawl.
“The games here really are unique. You’ll have to let me know how they compare to Kava’s.”
Elysia maintained her half-lidded stare, giving him a barely perceptible nod. “As you’re well aware, our games rely strictly on cunning given that we cannot use magic to,” she paused, opening her gaze to better meet his, “enthrall the masses.”
He smiled mirthlessly, dropping a handful of gaming chips onto the bar in front of her. “Perhaps you should let your cunning rest and allow us to enthrall you then.” With that, her mark stalked off, the crowd giving him an easy berth.
Elysia’s nostrils flared the second he was gone.
He knew. He didn’t know exactly why they’d sent her, but he’d taken a solid stab in the dark with that little quip about the games at The Lights.
Fuck me. She might as well have strolled in here with a banner that said, Hi, I’m a Reyez initiate and I’m here to steal from you!
Would you like the bounty on my head before or after you kill me?
But Simon Maspan was her mark, and there were rules she had to follow.
Rule number one. No fated magic or underrealm creatures. In other words, no magical traveling, or man-eating pint-sized dogs.
Rule number two, as spoken by Sylvia Reyez. “There are no rules. Steal the damn plans, or we’ll kill you and send you back to Gage as a present because both he and our death god deserve better than some girl who can’t even steal or kill properly.”
And then she’d been given an address, the whisper of a name in her ear, and instructed to be home by dawn before being booted out the door with a hearty chorus of may death guide you, which was quite possibly the creepiest farewell she had ever received.
Maspan kept proving himself to be unfortunately capable.
His security and employees communicated like a practiced team.
There were magical eyes on the walls that she didn’t understand, but intuited were watching as the paintings blinked and swiveled.
Elysia slid off her stool, slipping into her jacket.
Letting her magic out to play was her best bet at this point—one way or another she had to find those plans.
Elysia quietly followed her mark onto the terrace, awed at how cozy it was without the frigid wind or snow pelting her in the face.
Past the perimeter of The Light’s terrace, winter raged on, but inside its bounds, guests enjoyed the magic of a perfectly pleasant winter night with stars twinkling above.
Staying in the background, she mulled over the few tidbits and images she’d managed to extract from his psyche.
Maspan kept looking at his head of security with the type of suspicion that would have made most men run.
He was nervous then—about the incoming game plans and possibly even her.
She’d also learned that Simon hated casinos but loved money, and he was very, very excited about something.
Which made sense.
Given that the new game plans were being delivered tonight.
Elysia dropped her head back against the wall to better see the sparkling swaths of night sky. Thanks to the magic, she didn’t even feel a breeze. Gods, she could get used to this.
Eyes snapping back to Maspan, she observed how he moved from person to person, room to room, dropping a hand on a shoulder or a quick word with a grin, but he was monitoring. Expectant and cautious.
Well, he should be. She took another sip of her drink and wondered who would be delivering the new plans to the club and if the head of security was going to be a problem.
It was getting late, and she wanted to get this over with.
Dropping her drink onto a table, Elysia decided to move things along.
Strolling through the club, she grazed her hand over walls, windows, and doors.
A new building like this didn’t hold nearly as many secrets as the beauties in her home city, but nonetheless, she let herself revel in the sly, deceptive nature of The Lights.
All at once, she knew she’d found what she was looking for as the feeling of it hooked behind her navel, and pulled, pulled, pulled.
Unlike in Kava, where she had no control, Elysia now grabbed hold of her magic, wrestling it until her mind cleared a little, and she managed to slow her feet, only hesitating when her magic tugged her right back out the front door.
Halting on the threshold, she almost lost the thread as her logic fought back against where the magic demanded she go.
The twinge of fear in her chest reminded her of every time her magic had almost been the death of her, but still she followed it out the door and away from the bouncer to the side of the club.
Her heels echoed against the smooth black deck.
Stopping, she searched for where her magic could possibly be pulling her as she rested her hands against the railing.
The hook behind her naval yanked, demanding she go up over the barrier and out into nothing.
Fingers gripping the railing, she pursed her lips as she looked out into the pines.
Her stomach clenched and she took an instinctive step away from the ledge.
She’d scaled rooftops and spires and run along soot and rain-slicked tiles. But no one would recover from a drop like that. She rubbed the still tender Reyez branding as she tried to talk herself up.
You can do this. You’re a mediocre thief, who’s terrible at poisons, and you’re not about to let down the only man who’s ever taken care of you.
With that, Elysia hiked up her dress, revealing several small blades strapped to the insides of her thighs.
Twisting her thigh harnesses, she settled them properly, no longer caring if she had suspicious bulges beneath her dress.
Climbing up and over the railing, her now bare feet rested dangerously on the deck’s edge as she clung to the railing behind her.
Bracing herself, she let go of the railing, and took one terrible step out into nothing.
A soundless scream tore from her throat as she dropped.