He’s not like us, Reymond had said. He’s better than us.
Feeling even guiltier than before, she took several more sips of her drink. Reymond had warned Enne against leading Levi into trouble, and telling Levi her secret definitely counted as that. She still didn’t consider herself ruthless and cunning like the Scar Lord, but she was starting to see what he’d meant when he’d compared them. She’d held a knife to someone’s throat. She was the girl who’d poisoned the wolf. She’d lied to Levi from the moment they’d met.
Maybe New Reynes had already corrupted her.
But another, quieter part of her suspected otherwise. Enne should’ve felt ill walking into rehearsal today, knowing her talent descended from such a notorious bloodline. Instead, she felt exhilarated. In Bellamy, her aspirations had been confined to keeping up and fitting in with her classmates. Never had she been given the chance to excel. Never had she tasted ambition...desire.
For the first time in her life, Enne felt confident. All those years spent agonizing over her shortcomings, all those years attempting to be something she wasn’t. At what point in Enne’s life had she decided that others controlled what she wanted, that she couldn’t just reach out and take it?
Maybe the city hadn’t corrupted her at all. Maybe she’d always been this vicious, and the Scar Lord had simply been the first to see it.
“So,” Levi said, startling Enne out of her thoughts. “This is where you tell me exactly how you overpowered a fake Dove.” Even though Enne had come here expecting to tell him about last night, the strain in his voice told her he was trying to shift the subject away from his friend. She decided to let him...for now. “They teach you hand-to-hand combat at that finishing school of yours?”
“Yes, of course.” She grinned. “That’s a requirement nowadays to become a lady. I could fight you while balancing books on my head.”
“Look at that.” He pointed at his arm, and Enne—foolishly—leaned forward to look. He flicked her on the forehead. “I just trembled.”
She kicked him in the leg. “Rude.”
Then she left her leg there, stretched out, her foot touching him. She felt like every move she made around him was a dare to herself to see how far she would go. And she wasn’t sure if she was doing it simply for the thrill, from the drink...or because of something more.
But she wasn’t in this city to find romance with street lords; she was here to find her mother. New Reynes was so intertwined with Levi’s character that flirting with him would be like flirting with the City of Sin itself, and after all of this was over, Enne still very much intended to return home. Anything between them could only be a distraction. Besides, considering all those articles of clothing left behind in his wardrobe, Levi hardly had reason to find interest in her.
She slid her leg back.
“After Lola told me what she knew,” Enne continued, “she decided she’d kill me. She said that my existence was too dangerous for the city.” She paused, expecting Levi to deny this, but he only nodded for her to continue. “After that, she attacked me. She’s tall, but she’s not very fast. It wasn’t hard to take her knife.”
“Being the expert fighter that you are,” he joked.
“I’m stronger than I look. You try keeping up with dancing and acrobatics rehearsals all day.” She grabbed the box of cookies from the coffee table and tore it open. “If it wasn’t for my supposed Dondelair split talent, I’d essentially be pudding right now.”
“Yes. Pudding. I’m sure.”
She narrowed her eyes and shoved a cookie in her mouth. “Anyway, after that, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just...leave. Lola was set on killing me, and if she told anyone about my talents, the whiteboots would kill me for her.” She pulled her gaze away from Levi, in case he noticed the darkness in her eyes from the things she’d done. “So she swore to me. Now she can’t tell anyone the truth.”
Levi leaned forward and took the box. He slid out several gingersnaps. “When you say swore...?”
“Blood by blood. Life by life. Something like that.”
He straightened, then slid closer to her. She really wished he would stop doing that. The smell of his aftershave was annoyingly tempting.
“A street oath?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a lord?”
“I guess so.”
“You’ve been in New Reynes four days, and you’re already building yourself a gang? Just what have you been reading in that guidebook of yours?”
She ripped the box out of his hands. “It was the only option. It’s not as if I ever need to see her again.”
“You might want to. Oaths aren’t unbreakable,” Levi warned. “There are all sorts of rules about challenging lords and loyalty. Telling your secret to a third party? That would be hard. Killing you?” He made a slicing motion across his throat. “Give the girl a gun, call it a duel and you’ll be dead.”
None of that seemed very logical to her.
“Well, what else should I do?” Enne had already made up her mind not to kill Lola. In the moment, she could’ve called it self-defense. But now, it felt cold-blooded. Enne wasn’t a villain.
“You should keep an eye on her. Keep your enemies close, and all that. And oaths get weaker when you don’t see each other.”
“And we’d do...what? Knit? Have tea?”
“I don’t know. She probably knows a lot about families and talents, being a blood gazer. Maybe she could help us learn more about these Dondelair and Scordata parents of yours. That could lead us back to Lourdes.”
Enne pursed her lips. Lourdes was a monarchist and a Mizer sympathizer, so maybe if they found a link between Enne’s birth parents and her mother, it would help them in their search. Enne loathed the thought of returning to the Deadman District and confronting the hate in Lola’s eyes, but this could be their only lead.
“You’re right,” she said, reaching for her drink. “We probably should ask Lola.” The whiskey and coffee liqueur burned their way down her throat.
“There’s something else,” Levi said, sliding closer again. Now Enne had her arms wrapped around her knees, and Levi was seated facing her, only inches from her feet. She curled in her toes and looked everywhere but at his face. “That card left in Lourdes’s hotel room wasn’t just a normal playing card.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s called a Shadow Card.” He bit his lip. “During the Revolution and through the Great Street War, the Phoenix Club was famous for playing something called the Shadow Game. It’s a card game where the invited players are...killed.”
Her stomach clenched. This was it...this was when she learned that her mother was dead.
“The cards all symbolize different things. Only one card is used for the actual invitation: the Fool,” he explained. “That wasn’t the card in Lourdes’s hotel room, which meant the one we found was only a warning.”
“So either Lourdes is hiding from the Phoenix Club,” Enne said darkly, “or she’s already dead.”
“Yes. I suppose it’s been that way all along.” He placed a hand on her knee. “It isn’t as bad as it—”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday?” She shoved his hand off.
“It was dangerous to talk about it in the open. I was going to tell you when we got back to St. Morse, but then you wanted to be alone. And by alone, I mean, steal my best pistol and stroll over to Dove Land behind my back.”
Enne curled herself tighter into a ball. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to come to New Reynes and discover there’d been some terrible storm—maybe that no ships had been sailing for months. And Lourdes would just be here, waiting for her chance to come home.” She could picture Lourdes seated outside a café on the South Side, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. In Enne’s fantasy, Enne ordered herself a pastry and sat down beside her, and Lourdes told her all about the adventures she had in the City of Sin.
And then they went home.