Page 106 of You Only Love Twice
Except he'd always wondered what Richter had programmed into him during his conditioning sessions. A single word might resurrect the Wraith, stopping him in his tracks and turning him into a weapon—for their own use.
How he hated the fucking implant in his head.
Pacing in front of the window in the tower, Obsidian peered into the still night as the sudden hiss of a steam carriage barreling down the street caught his attention. The Duke of Malloryn leapt down from it before it had even finished moving, and launched himself up the steps to the door of the safe house and through it.
Something was wrong.
A chill ran down his spine. No one emerged. Lights flickered in the windows, and he could hear raised voices.
A whisper of dread curled through his veins.
He had no reason to believe Gemma lay at the heart of this sudden disturbance, but she hadn't come.
Stepping up onto the window ledge, Obsidian launched himself into the night, the tails of his coat whistling up around his arms. He landed, knees braced, on the roof below him, and then sprinted across the edge of it and leaped onto the roof beside it.
Three seconds later, he was hovering on Malloryn's roof, squatting down by the man's study window to listen.
Sharp words echoed within. Three, four voices perhaps. Despite his exceptional hearing, there was a faint undercurrent of static vibration that squealed through his ears. One of those high-pitched devices that made it difficult to listen to conversations, no doubt.
Nothing to be learned here.
He strode along the gutter, grabbing the edge of it just over Gemma's room, and then swinging down onto her open windowsill. The room within was dark, but he froze there for a second, listening.
Nothing moved within. The argument in Malloryn's study obliterated all other noise, but when his gaze shot to her bed, he saw the faint indentation where his letter had lain.
It was gone.
Slipping through the window, he paused again, the hairs prickling along the back of his neck at the risk he took.Are you trying to get yourself killed?Gemma's voice echoed in his ears. Drawing the pistol from its holster, he laid it flat along his thigh as he scanned the room.
Everything lay exactly as he'd last seen it when he'd been delivering his note. The note that was now missing.
"Looking for this?" said a voice behind him.
Obsidian spun, pistol raised upon the man who stepped out of the shadows behind the immense wardrobe.
Malloryn.
Dressed strictly in an unadorned black leather outfit he'd never seen the duke wear before, Malloryn glared at him menacingly over the top of what appeared to be a dartgun. Obsidian stilled. His pistol was trained right between the duke's eyes, but it didn't matter where Malloryn hit him if those darts contained the Black Vein serum.
The duke held something up between two fingers. A note written in Russian. He was possibly the only one in the house who could read it, besides Gemma.
"Same time," the duke murmured, disapproval stark in his voice. "'Same place.' She's been meeting with you again."
And keeping it secret.
The pair of them stared at each other over the length of their weapons in silence, and he knew some part of this man itched to pull the trigger.
"Where is she?" Obsidian asked softly.
A muscle ticked in the duke's jaw. "Give me one damned good reason to tell you anything."
He'd spent months studying this man.
Watching his every movement, helping to plan his downfall.
He had no love of Malloryn—no true emotion, either way—but he'd heard Gemma's voice soften when she spoke of the duke.Family, she'd called him. He couldn't imagine the icy duke returning the sentiment, but that wasn't merely rage blanking the duke's expression. Obsidian saw the reflection of his own concern in the man's eyes.
And Malloryn was the one who'd saved her life in Russia when he nearly ended it.
