Page 59 of Shadows and Flames
For me to tell him.
I startled from the morose turn of my thoughts at Elián’s hand clutching my jaw. I shivered all the way down to my toes as he kissed me fiercely, with hot possession as he showed everyone, myself included, that I was his. That he was mine.
“Tom and I have to go take care of something. But I will see you later tonight, yes?”
For once, Tom and Tana remained quiet, any protest from them flattened into the din of the crowd around us. It smelled like sea salt, rotten fish, and piss, and the shouts of the people of Vharas were just as unpleasant. It was a convenient city for ships to restock their supplies, to offload some goods. For people to transfer between ships as they continued to their destination.
One would think this would incentivize the powers that be to spruce up the place. But, it was just as unsightly as the last time I’d been here. Humans who’d not yet discovered the concept of regular bathing milled past, garbage overflowed in receptacles to the point that people just chucked their discarded items in the general direction of the piles. Weathered faces told of long work hours for little pay, and with the moon rising, they would soon turn to raucous entertainment and debauchery to distract from the filth and exhaustion.
My lip jutted out as I processed Elián’s implication, but before I could answer, he bit it. His teeth weren’t exactly gentle, but he drew no blood.
I clutched my fists into the deep brown tunic clothing his upper body. It was the darkest color I’d seen him in yet, and still it was more vibrant than anything he wore in my dreams of the past. The deep opening that showed his chest was almost as revealing as the hungry look in his mango eyes.
So, I played. “Have you forgotten? We’re enemies again, El. Who says we’ll meet tonight?” By some stupidity on our employer’s part, we were competing for the same contract, and my feelings for Elián did not eclipse my desire towin.
His expression remained impassive, but there was no controlling the flare of red amongst the orange. “We were never enemies. And we will meet tonight because I do not want to sleep in a bed without you.”
Dammit. “And if I use the proximity to foil whatever plans you were concocting with your brother to fulfill the contract before us?”
El raised his brow. He ducked closer, stubbled cheek brushing against mine as he whispered in my ear, “You know that I am a better Shadow than that. You should also know that if anyone will be fucked senseless, it will be you, my queen.”
My fingertips tingled beneath my leather gloves, and I gasped before I could suck the urge back down. But, just as I was able to draw letters into syllables into words, he was pulling away.
“There is a tavern I frequent when I must come here. It is called The Crow’s Nest. We will meet you there for supper.”
I threw my hands up in the air, exasperated. “Why does being together again give you free rein to tell me what to do?”
Neither Shadow responded to that. They simply wove off into the crowd. And when I whirled around to Tana, she snorted.“Come on, we’ll find an inn that’s more…presentable.” Then meet with our employer, she left unspoken. Vharas was not a place I wanted to be longer than I had to, and with any luck, we’d be traveling somewhere else by this time tomorrow.
Tana and I started in the direction I remembered being most promising, hope tentatively beating against my heart and wonder twining with my thoughts.
A few hours later, we found a suitable inn, one where we paid for two separate rooms and settled in with our things. It was not the airy lodging homes of Rhaestras, nor the fashionable rooms of Nethras. But the beds that were ours for the night were clean, and a small bathing room connected to both mine and Tana’s rooms. In these three years of starting over—again—a private bathing room was worth its weight in gold coin. And then some.
Our employer made no mention of Elián or Tomás in the letter we received at the designated pharmacy, but we hadn’t mentioned them in our last message when we left Morova. Either way, we weregoingto make certain we got to Paschal first. No telling what Blackwood wanted to do with our mark after we delivered the merchant to him.
But, as blades for hire, we weren’t concerned with what happened after our contract was ended. No, we just needed some candid moments with Paschal on the journey to the man who wanted him kidnapped.
Tana and I took turns washing the nautical voyage off of our skin, and while I combed the short, wet curls on my head, I ran through the conclusion of our chase. Paschal wasn’t hard to find, as wealthy as he was in a town like this, it took nothing but following the whispers of guards and riches. He had his own Vharan apartment, apparently, and if I’d dared to wonder if it was the correct building, the guards out front and back were evidence enough.
After supper with Elián and Tomás, Tana and I would wait until the late hours of the evening, when the most nocturnal of street creatures would be fully engrossed in their debauchery. Then, she would use a sleeping powder, something to incapacitate the guards without drawing the alarm of outright killing them. From the bit we’d observed, they had checked each and every tenant who emerged from and entered the building, and we’d no time to falsify the records.
From there, we would dispatch the guards in the corridor as discreetly as possible. And Paschal, hopefully none the wiser, would fall victim to the same sleeping spell of Tana’s, and we would stroll out the back with him wrapped in a rug.
We would then meet Blackwood outside of the city. It would give us space to restrain Von Herron, question him, and hopefully get closer to locating Francie. At least some contact with these ‘Folk’ who took her.
With the sticky hair cream Tana made for me, I used a smaller brush to tame my curls into neat, swirling rows. There wasn’t much to do with hair this short, so I worked quickly to leave it in swimming waves, setting them with a length of silk while I dressed for supper.
And if Von Herron were to offer us a pretty penny and some information in exchange for protection from our employer?
Now, that would be even better.
Chapter Twenty-Three
TOMÁS
“No,please—” The man begged, cries ringing in the darkened alleyway until cutting off into a despairing gurgle. The blade of my shamshir sliced him from clavicle to hip, and the rich scent of blood deepened even more.
The last three, it turned out, had come to us.
