“I’m not going to tell you to shut up again, Ash.”
Ashlinn sighed, her temper fraying. “You have no fucking idea what’s going on here, do you? I know you, Mia. Do you have any idea what the Red Church actually is? Do you think they’re ever going to let you kill Scaeva when he pays their wages?”
Mia felt the consul’s name like a fist in her belly.
“You’re full of shit.”
“Why do you think Scaeva isn’t dead already? Half the Senate want him in the ground, you think they couldn’t afford to hire a Blade to do him over if he wasn’t protected by Sanctity? Julius Scaeva is a fucking bastard, but he’s not a fucking fool. He’s been a patron of the Church for years.”
“They’d never—”
“They’re assassins, of course they would! There’s no sanctity to what the Red Church does. They murder people for money. Half of them are psychopaths and the rest are just sadistic bastards. They’re not servants of some divine Goddess of Night, they’re fucking whores.”
Mia’s mind was racing. She knew nothing Ash said could be trusted … but somewhere in her words, Mia could hear the ring of truth. People who posed a threat to Scaeva either got killed like her father, or bought like the braavi. Wouldn’t it make sense he’d buy the Church, too? Why else would they order her Scaeva wasn’t to be touched?
“How do you know all this?” she asked.
“Because I’m a sneaky bitch, Mia.”
“You’re a lying cunt is what you are.”
“There’s an obsidian vault inside the Revered One’s chambers,” Ash spat. “And inside that vault, they keep a ledger of every offering the Church has undertaken. All their patrons. All their shit. When I poisoned the Ministry at the initiation feast, I stole the ledger, Mia. That’s the reason they’ve been hunting me and my da for the past eight months. Not because we betrayed them. Because we know all their dirty little secrets.”
Ashlinn turned her head a little, despite the blade at her throat. Just so she could look into Mia’s eyes.
“Including the one about you and your father.”
Ashlinn fell silent as Mia pressed her blade back against her throat. Ash killed Jessamine. She’d killed Tric. Mia knew she’d do anything, say anything to avoid being taken back to the chapel.
“You’re a liar,” Mia said.
“I am at that. But not about this, Mia. If you take me back to the Church, they’re going to kill me, and you’ll never know the truth of what they did.”
“And I’m just supposed to take you at your word on all this?”
“You can see for yourself.”
“… You have the ledger?”
“Something tells me names on a page aren’t going to sway you. But I can tell you exactly where you need to go to find proof written in something more than ink.”
“O, aye? And where would that be exactly?”
Ashlinn looked up at Mia, blue eyes glittering like broken sapphires.
“Back to Church.”
*
“We have nothing to talk about,” Furian spat.
Mia was still sprawled underneath the Champion of the Remus Collegium, his forearm against her throat. Muscle rippling in his arm, across his chest. She pressed her fork into Furian’s ribs again, hard enough now to break the skin.
“I’m not sure about the other women you’ve known,” she said softly, “but I don’t much fancy it on my back. Let me up.”
“I should knock your teeth out for even talking to me. How did you get in here?”
“Let. Me. Up. Fucker.”
Furian glanced to his now unlocked door. Mia had no idea of the consequences if they were discovered in each other’s company, but she doubted they’d be pleasant. She could hear the guard patrol, slowly coming closer.
With a curse, Furian twisted off Mia, pushed the door closed. He listened for a moment, ear to the wood as the guards passed by. Mia looked the champion up and down, skin prickling in spite of herself. She’d never seen a man quite like him, all hard tanned skin and rippling muscle. But there was a speed to him, also. Lithe and fierce, like a big cat. His body was utterly hairless—shaved, she supposed, to show off his physique to the adoring crowds. His jaw was strong, the rivers and valleys of his abdomen leading her eyes down, chewing her lip as she drank in the sight of him.
She’d no idea what had come over her. Though she’d found Lord Cassius attractive, her reaction to his presence hadn’t been quite as … carnal. Perhaps because she’d never been quite this close to the Lord of Blades? Perhaps because she’d been younger? Whatever the reason, looking at Furian now, she found her breath coming quicker. Thighs aching. Waves of butterflies thrilling her belly.
His chamber was sparsely adorned. A small barred window looked out over the ocean, a simple bed stood against the wall, a practice dummy and wooden swords in another corner. A small shrine to Tsana, First Daughter of the Everseeing and patron of warriors, sat beneath the window, and the three interlocking circles of Aa’s trinity were scribed on the wall in charcoal. Though it was only trinities blessed by Aa’s truest believers that made her feel ill, the sight of the holy symbol was still a little unsettling.
All in all, Furian’s accommodations were hardly a marrowborn villa. But compared to the barracks, they were positively palatial. And better, private.
When the guards had passed beyond earshot, the champion turned to Mia. His jaw was clenched. Long dark hair framing those delicious chocolate eyes.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Mia breathed.
Furian stalked across the room and snatched up a strip of gray linen from the bed, wrapped it around his waist to make himself decent.
“Feel what?”
Mia pulled herself up off the floor, dragged her hair behind her ear. She saw movement from the corner of her eye, glanced to the shadows cast on the wall by the shrine’s candlelight. Hers. His.
“Maw’s teeth,” she breathed. “Look…”
Their shadows were moving of their own accord.
Hair blowing as if in some hidden breeze, ebbing and flowing toward each other like waves on a lonely shore. Mia’s shadow reached toward Furian’s, though in the flesh, the girl hadn’t moved a muscle. The Unfallen reached out and touched the wall, as if to test if his shadow were real. But his shadow didn’t move as he did, instead reaching out toward Mia’s.
The champion stumbled back, held up three fingers—Aa’s warding sign against evil. And at that, the shadows fell still, trembling only for the candle flame.
“You’re like me,” Mia said.
Furian blinked, turned away from the shadows to look at Mia.
“I am nothing like you,” he growled. “I am gladiatii.”
“I mean you’re darkin,” Mia said. “Just as I am.”
“I say again, I am nothing like you, girl.”
“Where is your passenger?”
“… My what?”
“Your daemon,” Mia said. “I have two who live in my shadow. Usually, anyway. What shape does yours wear? And where is it?”