“And if you sign up willingly,” Nadine said, her attention on the milling crowd, “Royce and I can protect you from whatever horrible scheme of vengeance Naavarasi is undoubtedly cooking up at this very moment. Now where is…Nyx! Come here.”
Nadine’s daughter—thankfully in her Nordic-goddess human disguise, not the monster I knew was lurking under her porcelain skin—trudged across the room. She had a box in her hands, wrapped in black, and her fingers squeezed it hard enough to crush the edges.
“Be appropriate,” Nadine told her.
Nyx thrust the box at me and stared at the floor.
“This one,” she grumbled, “offers you congratulations on the auspicious victory of your knighthood.”
She was sore, and it wasn’t hard to see why. She’d been one of the hunters on my tail when Naavarasi slapped me with a bounty, and I slipped out from under her claws just before the contract was revoked. Then I’d bluffed her, in this very room, and embarrassed her in front of her rivals. I would have felt raw about it too. I figured it wouldn’t cost me anything to play nice.
“Hey,” I said as I took the box, slowly building a pile in my arms, “Thanks, Nyx. You didn’t have to say that, and I really appreciate it.”
“This one did have to say it,” she snapped, then stomped away. Okay, we weren’t going to be friends. At least I tried.
I was looking for a table to set my growing collection of cursed presents down, when another familiar face dropped by. Well, a familiar voice. I didn’t recognize the guy—a surfer type in his twenties, fish-belly pale, with the Y-shaped stitch of an autopsy incision showing at the collar of his over-starched dress shirt—but I knew him the second he opened his mouth.
“Have to tell you, friend, this is not the future I saw in the ol’ crystal ball.”
“Hey. Fontaine, right?”
“In the borrowed flesh,” he drawled. “Congrats on the big promotion. You’re a smart cookie, though. You know your new prince just slapped a juicy target on your back.”
“I hope you’re not here to take a shot,” I said.
He cracked a smile. “Not unless it’s a legal contract and I’m getting paid to do it. Nah, I came by to make sure there weren’t any hard feelings. I mean, I did almost bleed you out like a prize hog.”
“Forget about it,” I said. “You were just doing your job.”
“And thankfully,” Caitlin said, returning with Emma in tow, “now we’re all one big, happy family. Hello, Fontaine.”
“Ah! Ma chère, enchanté.” He kissed her hand, bowing low, then turned my way. He held out a business card: pale cream, with a single monogram F in black. “And now that you’re an esteemed member of the courts, hang on to this. You can always call upon me for your bounty-hunting needs, be it a formal challenge through the Order or a bit of freelance work.”
Emma folded her arms and glared at him. “Really? You came by to drum up business?”
“It’s a hard life out there for a working man, darlin’. Always gotta be hustling. And who better to solicit than a person who knows the quality of your work firsthand?”
“True,” I said. “You did capture me when nobody else could. So where’s your little friend?”
Fontaine curled his lips, irritated. “My partner? She murdered somebody she wasn’t supposed to. Had to put her in time-out.”
Emma brushed past him with a small box cupped in her palm, like the evil queen with a poisoned apple. She offered it to me.
“Congratulations, Daniel. We’ve had our differences, but you’ve been a good friend to our court, and more importantly—to me, anyway—a good friend to Caitlin. I’m glad you’re one of us now.”
I wasn’t on board with the “one of us” thing, but I thanked her as I took the present.
“Go on,” she said, “unwrap it.”
We parked by a spot of empty table so I could set down the rest of the gifts. I tore into Emma’s, peeling the paper back, and lifted the gray velvety lid of a jewelry box. Inside, a platinum tie clip, studded with diamonds, glimmered on a bed of white satin.
Caitlin’s jaw dropped and she pulled her friend into a hug. “Oh. Emma. You’re the sweetest.”
I glanced between them, looking for an explanation.
“That clip was given to Emma by her mentor, when she was just finding her feet,” Caitlin told me.
“And it was given to my mentor by…” Emma said with a grin.
“Me,” Caitlin said. “And now it’s home again, full circle. Deliberate full circle. Oh, Emma. Seriously. You’re wonderful.”
I felt the cultural divide shift beneath my feet like tectonic plates. Across worlds, across species. I understood enough to grasp that Emma had just honored me, big-time, but without the social cues I would have been lost. This was the world Sitri’s knighthood had hauled me into, with customs and rules and expectations I was barely beginning to understand.
If those plates kept shifting underneath me, they could tear me in half. I needed to find my footing fast. I was looking for something to say, to show my thanks, when I saw another familiar face on the far side of the party.
My blood ran cold. Then burning hot.
“Pet?” Caitlin asked, catching the expression on my face. “What is it?”
“Naavarasi,” I said.
24.
Naavarasi hadn’t come as herself. That would have been enough of an insult, after what she’d just done—tried to do—to me and Caitlin. No, her guise was for my eyes only. She flitted through the party in Gothic black lace and leather, her auburn hair in tight ringlets, antique rings dripping from her fingers. The shape-shifter had worn that face once before to trick me—the face of my ex-girlfriend Roxy, a reminder of the relationship I’d managed to send crashing down in flames before I met Caitlin.
I cut through the crowd, steaming toward her, and she had the nerve to smile when she saw me. I stopped dead in front of her, with Caitlin, Emma, and Fontaine in tow.
“The last time you took on that form,” Caitlin told her, “I backhanded you across the room. Are you eager for a second taste?”
Naavarasi sipped her cocktail and chuckled. “Try me. Here and now.”
I took another step toward her, and Emma’s hand clamped down on my wrist. She yanked me back.
“Uh-uh,” Emma said. “You know the rules. No fighting between members of the courts.”
“After what she pulled—”
“The things we can prove she did were all perfectly legal,” Emma said. “What we can’t prove, we can’t prove, so they don’t count. As far as the laws of the Cold Peace are concerned, she’s in the clear. And so are you, as long as you keep your hands to yourself.”
Fontaine rubbed his chin, glancing between us. “Afraid Emma’s got the right of it. I’d like to be workin’ with you next time we cross paths. You take one swing and you’re right back on the Chainmen’s target list.”
Which was why she wore Roxy’s face. Naavarasi was baiting me. Trying to push me into making a dumb mistake before I found my footing as a newly minted knight. Cheap trick, but I knew from firsthand experience that cheap tricks were usually the most effective ones in the book.
“And to think,” she said, turning her attention to Caitlin, “that I promised to walk you through this very room on a leash. It’s going to happen eventually. You could save yourself so much pain by just surrendering here and now.”
Caitlin’s stony silence was her only reply. I took a deep breath to steady myself, to find my cool.
“I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work,” I told her. “Now, this is officially my party, and I don’t think your name was on the invite list. So turn around and walk away. The stairs are right behind you.”
Naavarasi smirked. She looked to Caitlin. “He doesn’t know anything, does he? Tell him.”
“Terms of the Cold Peace,” Caitlin said, her teeth clenched. “A feast or revel open to members of multiple courts is open to all members of all recognized courts, as a means of preventing collusion. Remember how we crashed Prince Malphas’s poker tournament in Chicago and they weren’t allowed to throw us out? Naavarasi is allowed to be here, under the same rule. So long as she minds herself.”