I swing my boots off the table and sheathe my blade. “I’ll take care of him,” I say, an eager hitch to my voice. Every time I’ve seen the bounty hunter, the metal spurs on the back of his boots have been caked in blood. Don’t need a grand imagination to work out who the blood belongs to. Likely the poor Moonplume he apparently charmed after slaughtering its former rider, if the rumors are true.
I’ll take a vast amount of pleasure in his assassination.
I rise from my seat—
“No,” Sereme bites out, and I frown.
“What do you mean, no?”
“Sit, Raeve.”
I sigh, then do as she ordered, loathing the spark of satisfaction in her eye.
“Why don’t you want me to kill him?” I ask past clenched teeth. “That’s what I do. I take out the trash nobody else wants to muddy their hands with, sweeping the path clear of any filth that might prevent the Ath from completing its missions. Rekk is in the path, Sereme. He’s endangering other members—most of whom I respect.”
She gives me a bland look that doesn’t so much as pinch, though perhaps it would if she’d ever done anything to gain my respect.
“Let. Me. At him.”
“No.”
That fucking word again.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s well-watched bait.”
“Then I’m perfect for the job.”
“No,” she chides for the third time. “Your instructions are to lie low until he’s gone. That means no random slaughterings when you find someone doing something they shouldn’t, or hear someone crying out for help. No jobs. Nothing until I say otherwise. You will only leave your home to purchase produce or to come to me if I call on you.”
I frown, thoughts churning hard and fast, whisking into a snowstorm caught beneath my ribs. There’s not a single hit Rekk Zharos has failed to bring down, so he’s not leaving this city without blood on the tip of his barbed whip.
“If we don’t eliminate him, he’ll take one of us down, and it won’t be pretty.”
“I’m aware,” she says through tight lips, a stern finality to her tone that strikes my nerves with that Sereme-serpent bite.
Meaning …
She’s going to toss somebody considered less useful at him. A sacrifice to the ravenous Crown.
Something inside me splinters, bowing beneath an immense weight pressing against my ribs, my upper lip curling. “You feed the monster and more will slip from the shadows. Once the smell of blood taints the air, they don’t … stop … coming.”
Sereme sighs, reaching across the desk to straighten her quill collection. “Are you going to tell me how to do my job again, Raeve?”
It’s getting old for me, too.
“Every time we intercept a transport carriage full of young elemental conscripts, it’s a bandage on a much bigger problem. So long as the King continues to rule, there will be more carriages. More bounty hunters. More death and suffering.”
Still, her eyes are cast on her quills, like she values the task more than she values everything the Fíur du Ath is supposed to stand for.
I snarl, slashing my hand across the table, littering the floor with feathers. “What about the sick? The starving? The nulls?”
Slowly, she pulls her hand back, scouring me with a wide-eyed stare. “We spent all slumber saving fifty-seven nulls. At your bidding—”
“An operation I funded myself,” I snip, brow raised. “Or perhaps you thought I wouldn’t notice, since I don’t often check my reserves?”
“Of course I docked your reserves,” she sneers. “Running such a large-scale operation is costly in ways you’ll never understand. We risked our entire cause to keep you happy. Hindered political progress. Someone had to pay.”
To keep me happy.
Right.
“You know what that tells me?” I say with a humorless laugh. “That the Ath doesn’t value the nulls as much as it values the elementals. I don’t go down to the Undercity just to scatter bloodstone, Sereme. I go down there to see if anybody needs help, because nobody else seems to give a fuck.”
She snatches the vial dangling between her breasts.
Shit.
I brace myself as she scrapes the tip of her tailored nail down the groove of my rune—
My entire body jolts, the same scratching sensation scoring one of my ribs like a filleting blade.
“Why can’t you just be happy?” she snips while my breaths come short and sharp, eyes narrowed on the poisonous female. “You have the Elding’s favor. He does more for you than he’s ever done for anyone else. Isn’t that enough?”
I bind my side with a trembling hand, struggling to wrap my mind around the jealous taint to her tone. Not only have I never met the Elding, but being his favorite is swiftly tumbling to the bottom of my priority list.
She lifts her nail, brows hiked up her forehead, finger poised to mess me up all over again.
Creators, I loathe this female.
“Hard to be happy when the King’s mincing young elemental minds until they’re brainless killing monsters. When thousands of less valued folk are rotting in the Undercity, failing to scratch out an existence in the mines—slaves to the kingdom’s well-oiled cogs.” Wiping beads of sweat from my brow, I reach into my pocket, unscrunch the notice I ripped off the wall, and slap it on the desk, though Sereme merely glances at it. “If we don’t usurp the King, I’m convinced things are going to get much, much worse.”
“Not now,” she says in a firm, even tone. “Not until the Elding deems it so.”
Same story, different dae.
“Screw the Elding.”
Another sadistic scrape of her nail, this one scouring down the knobbles of my spine. Another series of hissed breaths, and I chew on the urge to lurch across the table and pop her eyeballs from their sockets—fuck the repercussions.
But I hold my composure, the pain still slicing down my bowing vertebrae like skipping stones as I speak through gritted teeth. “Slitting King Cadok Vaegor’s throat will not only keep me from being a pain in your ass, it’ll protect the cause.”
She releases the vial.
I swallow my breath of relief, refusing to give her the satisfaction, instead jabbing an unsteady finger at the notice that’s fully armed to do irreparable damage. “Nobody will suspect it, given the heat surrounding our name.”
“Simply killing him without a thorough, well-constructed plan would leave the Queen in charge.”
“Perfect.” I throw my hands in the air, wondering why it was presented as a negative when it’s exactly what this kingdom needs. “This is her ancestral land. She should be in charge.”
“The Tri-Council would never allow it. Queen Dothea can only speak with Clode.”
A sour taste coats my tongue. “Don’t they have a tri-bead son?”
“Prince Turun hasn’t been seen for many phases. Some say he went mad, and rather than make the problem public, the King was all too happy to hide him away.”
“Bet he’s still more competent than King Cadok Vaegor. Perhaps he’ll pop his head back up once his pah’s remains fertilize the ground?”
Sereme looks at me like she’s more than ready to grab the broom and sweep me toward the door. “Again, Raeve, you assume you have some say in the matter. You don’t. You have one job, and that’s to follow my orders. When I say stab, you say how deep. When I say leave Rekk Zharos alone, you leave Rekk Zharos well the fuck alone.”
It’s weird hearing her swear. Perhaps I’d pump my fist and call it a victory if anger wasn’t churning in my gut like a snowball that grows with each bouldered roll.
“How do you live with yourself? Honestly?”
She grips her vial again, and my entire body flinches.
Satisfaction ignites her eyes, a smirk curling her lips that boils my blood. “These aren’t easy decisions to make, but I must consider the cause first and foremost. Your strong affinity with Clode, your skill with a blade, and that savage side I glimpsed before you collapsed in the Undercity the first time we met makes you an essential tool we can’t do without.”
An icy rumble builds in my chest.
I curse the dae she fell upon me, seeing that side of me I barely understand myself. Not that I remember that part of our meeting—tucked beyond a veil of ice I was all too happy to ball up and wither beneath.
I do remember the screams that somehow found their way down to me. I also remember being pitted with a certainty that whatever I was doing was not okay, but that the part of me in control lived by a different set of rules.