“Fuck you!”
“Get your hand out of my face, Ashlinn,” Mia warned.
“I should knock that cigarillo out of your mouth!” she yelled.
Mia shook her head, taking another drag. “Have you ever noticed how people start to shout when they’ve nothing worthwhile to say?”
“Maw’s teeth, you’ve got some stones. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s one person in the entire world right now who’s on your side, and—”
“Mercurio’s on my side, Ashlinn. Long before you.”
“I don’t see him anywhere around here, do you?” Ash shouted. “I don’t see him dragging his arse from Godsgrave to Whitekeep to Stormwatch. I don’t see him sneaking into arenas and planting wyrdglass in the sands and sending you warning about the monstrosity set to melt the flesh off your damned bones. He did nothing but try to talk you out of this, and I’ve done nothing but fucking help you!”
Mia shook her head, grinding her cigarillo into the wall. “Not because you hate the Ministry as much as I do. Not because you stand to gain from all this, O, no, Mother forbid. Because you care so much about me.”
“And that just fucking terrifies you, doesn’t it?”
Mia scoffed. “I have two shadow daemons who quite literally eat my fear, Ashlinn. I’m not terrified of anything.”
“Mister Shithead and Wolfie aren’t in the room,” Ash snapped. “It’s just you and me, now. And for all your bluster, that thought scares you witless. By the smell of you, you had to smash a bottle of goldwine just to muster the courage to send them away. But you did send them away. And you’re too much a coward to admit why.”
“Fuck you, Ashlinn.”
“I thought you’d never ask, Mia.”
Mia tensed, springing up off the bed, hands in fists. Ashlinn stood her ground, staring Mia down, jaw clenched. Their faces were only a few inches apart, the air between them crackling with arkemical current.
“Don’t pretend you don’t feel it,” Ash said. “Because it’s written in your every line and curve. You might know me, Mia Corvere, but I know you just as well. And I know what it is you want.”
Mia grit her teeth, one hand curling into a fist. She didn’t know whether she wanted to punch the girl or …
There was an ocean of lies between them. Ash’s betrayal. Tric’s murder. The certainty the girl would do or say anything to get what she wanted. But there was truth in her words too. Of every person she knew in the world, the only one here helping her in her darkest need was Ashlinn J?rnheim.
Ashlinn J?rnheim was made of lies.
Ashlinn J?rnheim was poison.
And Ashlinn J?rnheim was beautiful.
Mia couldn’t deny it. Soft lips parted in the smoky light. Long red hair spilling about her shoulders in waves. Her skin was smooth, a hint of anger in her cheeks, turning them to rose. Big blue eyes framed by dark curling lashes, the look in them making Mia’s fingers tingle, her belly flip. Wine humming in her veins, she stared into those pools of sunsburned blue and saw her reflection, saw the same thing in her eyes as she saw swimming in Ash’s own.
Want.
Want.
But …
… without her passengers beside her, Mia was afraid.
Not of wanting a girl, like perhaps Ash suspected. She’d had one before, after all. Even though that golden beauty in Aurelius’s bed was simply a means to an end, Mia could admit she might have found a way to kiss the senator’s son sooner. Might have ended him quite some time before she felt those golden lips between her legs, tasted the girl on Aurelius’s tongue.
No, if Mia was afraid, it wasn’t of wanting a girl.
It was wanting this girl.
Ashlinn J?rnheim.
Thief.
Liar.
Killer.
Traitor.
“How can I trust you?” Mia asked. “After all you’ve done?”
“If I wanted you dead, Mia…”
“I’m not talking about trusting you with my life, Ashlinn.”
Mia looked at Ashlinn’s heaving breast, pictured the heart beneath it. Wondering if it thundered as hard as hers, or if all this was simply a means to an end.
Ashlinn lifted her hand, bringing it up to Mia’s face. Her fingers brushed Mia’s skin, eliciting a dizzying rush of warmth that had nothing to do with the sunslight or the wine she’d drunk. She inched closer, eyes flitting from Mia’s own, down to her lips. Breathing harder, moving closer, just an inch away now, just a heartbeat. And Mia looked across the room and Stepped
to the shadow
of the curtains
pulling them aside, throwing the window open, her head spinning from the drink, from the shadowalking, from all of it. Ash called her name, but she ignored it, scrambling over the sill and climbing down the wall, swift as a morning-after goodbye.
Calling Eclipse to her side, she dragged the darkness about her shoulders and over her head, stealing off into the nevernight streets. Celebrations of her victory were still ringing from taverna windows, from smokehouse doors, echoing in the very air. The fear draining from her like poison from a wound as Eclipse coiled inside her shadow, leaving her cold and hard and unafraid.
She couldn’t trust Ashlinn J?rnheim. That much was certain. But the thought of standing over the corpses of the men who’d destroyed everything she loved? The feel of cold steel in her hand and warm blood on her face and the knowledge that everything she’d worked for over the past seven years was now finally within her reach?
That she could trust.
And nothing else mattered.
She ran her hand down her cheek where Ashlinn had touched her, her skin still tingling.
Nothing at all.
CHAPTER 19
YIELD
They called for Mia before dessert.
Dona Leona had commanded her to wait in a small antechamber, down in the servants’ wing of the governor’s palazzo. A guard was posted at her door, she was given a simple meal and some watered wine, while the guests in the banquet hall enjoyed aperitifs of stuffed quail hearts doused with brandy butter, followed by a main of roasted honeyfish and kingclaw braised in goldwine.