He was going to need it if he wanted to help the princess.
He’d have to be ruthless. Lethal. Unflinching.
He’d have to be like his father.
Before that thought could eat away at him, he shrugged into his coat and got to his feet as the sun blazed through the morning fog and the streets came to life. The princess needed him. It was time to get started.
A haze of pipe weed hung over the streets and the stench of rotten garbage baked beneath the morning sun. Apodrasi users dotted the street corners, their bodies thin, their eyes desperate as they begged for money to buy their next dose. A crowd had already gathered in front of the building as Sebastian stepped away from the front door.
“Look who got thrown back where he belongs.”
“Still think you’re better than us?”
“Gone soft now, look at him. We could take him.”
The calls followed Sebastian as he left his mother’s building.
Last night he’d made sure that the runners and plenty of others made note of his arrival. He’d taken his time walking to his mother’s place and had informed one of the children who was clinging to the doorstep of the building to spread the word that Sebastian Vaughn was looking for a job. And then he’d gone upstairs and slept against the wall outside his mother’s door. When he’d left after Parrish’s burial, he’d promised himself he’d never spend another night in that apartment again.
It was a promise he planned on keeping.
Judging by the crowd waiting for him on the street, everyone knew that Sebastian had moved back. It wouldn’t be long before a runner would come looking for him, sent by a street boss who would expect Sebastian to take whatever job he planned to offer.
His face grim, Sebastian faced the crowd of onlookers. Which-ever street boss took the bait first was going to regret it.
The youths surrounding him fell silent as he stared them down one by one, letting the desperate fury that drove him cool into the kind of dangerous calm that made it hard to meet his gaze.
“Who wants to see if I’ve gone soft?” he asked quietly. “Take your best shot. I dare you to.”
A few murmurs swept the crowd, and a pair of boys, both younger than Sebastian, pushed forward.
“Bet you’ve got coin from your job at the palace,” the shorter one said, raising his fists and rocking forward onto the balls of his feet.
“You can give it to us, or we can take it from you.” The other boy flicked his wrist and a homemade knife slid out from under his sleeve and into his palm.
Sebastian rolled his head from side to side and flexed his shoulders. “No one is taking anything from me.”
The reputation for winning every fight that he’d built before he’d left the district had protected him when he was just returning for the occasional brief visit. The news that he’d come back to stay was another matter entirely. Now he was a threat to the established pecking order. He didn’t know how many challenges he’d have to face to climb back to the top, but he was more than ready.
The two boys lunged for him at the same time. Sebastian pivoted, letting the shorter one stumble past him. Stepping into the taller one’s charge, he turned his body to the side, slammed the flat of his palm into the arm that held the knife, and then jerked his elbow up to smash it into the boy’s face. Stepping between the boy’s feet, Sebastian held the assailant’s knife arm and twisted the boy sharply to block the shorter one’s renewed attack. Three punches and one well-aimed kick later, and both boys were on the ground, bleeding and cursing him.
“Anyone else?” Sebastian turned slowly, staring down the motley collection of boys who had the hard, weary eyes of old men, girls with weapons in their hands and defiance on their faces, and the occasional young child tagging along with an older sibling because their parents were either working, using apodrasi, or dead.
A few met his gaze and held it. Most found something else to look at. Sebastian set a course toward the northern end of the district where two of Teague’s bosses lived, and started walking. The crowd parted to let him through.
He’d gone three blocks and won two more fights when a runner found him.
“Sebastian Vaughn?” the girl asked, taking a dagger out of the small arsenal of weapons she wore around her waist and aiming it at him. “Felman wants to see you.”
For one sickening moment, the truth of what he was about to do sent a dizzying wave of fear and loathing through him, but he swallowed it down and kept his expression blank as he followed the girl through the warren of streets and alleys that led to Felman’s headquarters.
He was doing what he had to do to gain Teague’s trust and protect Ari.
If that meant he had to walk a few steps in his father’s shadow, he’d endure it.
Felman, a thick-necked, thick-bellied man who was at least ten years older than Sebastian, ran his corner of east Kosim Thalas from the sagging remains of a building that decades ago had been a respectable mercantile. Guards stood at the doorway, swords drawn, as they scanned the streets. Sebastian clenched his jaw and rode out the wild urge to strike as the guards roughly ran their hands over him, searching for weapons. They found his cudgel immediately, and set it aside for him to pick up as he left.
It didn’t matter. He was the true weapon, and they wouldn’t see him coming until it was too late.
It was time to play the role that would get him close to the princess. He gathered up his memories of the last month—the way Ari smiled at him, the way he could stand close to her without his instincts screaming at him to fight or flee, the peace he’d known when he’d sat beside her for hours staring at the sea—and locked them away where they wouldn’t be touched by the filth of the life he was stepping into. In their place, he focused on one single thought: get close enough to destroy Teague.
He was ready.
When one of the guards found his bag of coin and tried to remove it from Sebastian’s boot, he leaned down and said softly, “If you take a single coin from me, there won’t be enough of you left to bury.”
The man started to laugh, caught sight of Sebastian’s expression, and fell silent as he backed away to let Sebastian and the runner through.
“You’re going to make enemies, talking to people like that,” the girl said as they entered a long hallway lined with doors that led to rooms full of whatever stolen goods Felman’s network of thieves had scooped up within the last week.
“I’m not here to make friends.”
She shrugged and knocked at the last door on the right. When it swung open, she motioned him inside, but didn’t follow.
He let the door shut behind him while he swept his gaze over the room, taking stock. A box of an office, one desk in the center, three chairs against the west wall, one chair behind the desk. Two men standing slightly behind Sebastian on either side of the door. One woman standing on the far side of the desk swinging a mace back and forth like a pendulum. Felman in the desk chair, studying Sebastian with a smug little smile on his face.
Four to one. All of them armed.
They weren’t the best odds, but he hadn’t survived east Kosim Thalas—hadn’t survived his father—without knowing how to take a beating and still reach his goal.
“The prodigal returns,” Felman said. “Couldn’t hold on to your fancy palace job, eh?”
Sebastian pivoted, drove his fist into the man to his right, and then hung on him for balance as he snapped a kick into the face of the man on his left. The man on the left went down hard and rolled on the floor, holding his face, but the man in front of Sebastian came up swinging.
His first blow landed on Sebastian’s jaw. The second grazed his stomach. Behind them, Felman was shouting for his guards to beat the boy to a bloody pulp, and Sebastian heard the woman with the mace run toward them.
The mace struck his back, and the pain lit a blinding inferno of rage inside Sebastian.
He was six, huddled on the kitchen floor beneath the pounding of his father’s fists, screaming fo
r help that wasn’t coming. He was nine, trying desperately not to cry as his father hit him with a stick while his mother turned her back. He was sixteen, jaw clenched, eyes dry, as the whip flayed strips of flesh from his back and the rage boiled inside him, the only antidote he had to the unending pain.
The woman struck again, and something inside him broke.
With a primal roar, he spun toward her, grabbed the mace midair, and twisted it from her grasp. As the man behind him attacked, Sebastian whirled, smashing the mace into the man’s throat and then spinning back toward the woman as the man fell.
She launched herself at him, a dagger glinting in her hand. He lowered his shoulder and met her halfway, sending both of them to the floor. The blade scraped his arm, but he barely felt it. Using the mace to block her next blow, he gripped the pressure point in her neck. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and he was on his feet and moving toward Felman before she’d finished losing consciousness.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Felman’s face was red as he came around the desk for Sebastian. “You’ve declared war. You’re going to rue the day—”
Sebastian swung the mace and knocked Felman onto the desk. The man kicked, catching Sebastian in the thigh, but the fire burning inside him swallowed the pain and fed him rage instead. He kept coming. Taking the blows. Boxing Felman in. Absorbing the beating like he’d absorbed so many before.
Felman made one final lunge, and Sebastian ducked the blow, shoved the handle of the mace beneath Felman’s chin, and slammed him, back first, onto the desk.
Leaning over the man, Sebastian said, “Where is the list?”
Felman’s face turned red and he gasped for air, but Sebastian didn’t let up. “I know you have it. With Daan dead, every street boss will have a list so debts don’t go unpaid. Where is it?”
Felman spat in Sebastian’s face.
Sebastian leaned closer, holding Felman’s gaze. “You know what my father is capable of doing. There’s a reason he’s the collector for the most dangerous city in Balavata. What do you think he’d do to you if he wanted that list and you refused to give it to him?”
Felman blanched. Sebastian swallowed hard and forced himself to say with conviction, “Like father, like son. Give me the list.”
Felman’s eyes darted toward the right corner of the desk. Sebastian eased off the man’s neck but kept the mace handy as Felman doubled over, coughing and gasping for air.
Walking around to the far side of the desk, Sebastian tried the drawer. It was locked. “Open it.”
Felman’s hands shook as he fished a key out of his vest pocket and threw it toward Sebastian. The lock opened with a faint snick, and then Sebastian was holding a roll of parchment in his hands with the names, addresses, and debts owed of everyone who’d been foolish enough to do business with Teague. Sebastian glanced at the parchment to be sure Felman had given him the real thing. He was sure Teague’s soul debts weren’t on this list, but that didn’t matter. There were enough uncollected debts coming due to give Sebastian the leverage he needed to get close to the princess.
Taking a handful of coin from his boot, he tossed it onto the desk. “Take your family and get out of the city. Once Teague learns that you gave up the list, there won’t be anywhere in Kosim Thalas that is safe for you.”
Felman gave Sebastian a hard stare and said between coughs, “Your father would’ve killed me once he had what he wanted, not paid for my freedom. You said you were just like him.”
Sebastian pocketed the list, his scars burning as he forced his rage back under control and headed for the door. “I lied.”
Wishing he could leave the bitter residue of his actions behind as easily as Felman’s headquarters, Sebastian headed toward the first person on the list.
TWENTY-SEVEN
BY THE TIME Ari woke from her tea-induced sleep, the sunlight was disintegrating across the horizon in spools of crimson and gold, and the breeze that still rushed through her open window chased a chill across her skin. She’d been too exhausted and hurt when she’d arrived to pay attention to anything but the bed and, later, the chair and table where Maarit had given her tea. Blinking away the last bleary dregs of sleep, Ari craned her neck to look around the room.
The furnishings were plain—an armoire, a small sink with a hand pump, the bed, and the chair and table by the open window—but the rest of the room made up for it. The ceiling was painted to look like Ari was lying on her back in a forest, looking up at the sky through a lattice of tree branches. The sky on her ceiling matched the sky outside her window.
The walls looked like a collection of tree trunks lashed together with strips of leather. The texture of the bark—complete with whorls, twigs, and even a few spare leaves—made the trunks look real. A mirror hung over the sink, and a framed picture of a tall, thin man too impossibly beautiful and wild to be human adorned the wall beside the door.
Ari stretched carefully, expecting the bite of pain in her chest and in the lacerations on her arm, but there was nothing. Pressing her hands against her rib cage, she drew in a deep breath. No pain. She ran her fingers over the places where the beast had dug its talons into her, but her skin was smooth and unbroken.
Apparently the tea that Maarit had given her really did heal injuries as promised.
But it was still creepy to remember drinking something that smelled as wild and strange as Teague.
Her stomach growled, and a wave of dizziness hit. She hadn’t eaten since the previous afternoon. Her eyes were gritty from sleep and tears, and loneliness felt like a blanket made of stone pinning her to the bed.
She wanted to curl up beneath the covers and hide from Teague and Maarit.
From the truth that she was stranded in the home of a monster who would destroy everyone she loved if she couldn’t figure out how to stop him.
For one long moment, she gave in to the loneliness and let the ache of missing Thad, Cleo, and Sebastian fill her from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. She breathed in the pain, allowed it to linger for the space of a few heartbeats, and then gently pushed it to the back of her mind.
She couldn’t hide. If she didn’t find a way to stop Teague, he’d destroy Súndraille with violence, which would destroy Thad. And if he moved on to ruin other kingdoms as well, that would be on Ari’s shoulders. She had to get up despite the loneliness and grief that felt like they were woven into her very bones. Had to take the next step and then another step after that.
It was the only way she could try to undo the terrible bargain she’d made with Teague.
The first step she’d take would be to get herself something to eat. Once she’d restored her strength and cleared her head, she’d learn what she could about Teague’s routine and figure out where to start looking for the key to stopping him.
And, stars, she hoped there was a key to stopping him because the alternative was too horrifying to contemplate.
Frowning, she tossed off the covers and stood. The dusty wooden floor creaked, and something soft and damp swept over the bottoms of her feet—something that felt suspiciously like a tongue.
Ari shrieked and jumped onto the bed again, her heart pounding wildly as she stared at the floor.
It was empty of everything but the pair of sandals she’d been wearing the night before.
She huddled in the center of the bed for a moment longer, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Tentatively, she scooted to the edge of the bed and carefully touched one toe to the floor.
Nothing happened.
Maybe she was still suffering the aftereffects of the tea. She’d seen the walls breathing right before she fell asleep, so clearly ingesting fae magic caused hallucinations.
Telling herself this made sense, she slowly put both feet over the edge of the bed and stood.
The floor rippled with a soft shush that sounded like the whisper of the wind through a tree’s leaves and the same damp thing swept over her feet.
Ari leaped for the bed aga
in, her body shuddering. She tucked her feet beneath her, wrapped her arms around her stomach, and rocked back and forth.
Maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe not. Regardless, she had no intention of getting out of bed until either the floor stopped doing whatever it was doing or Maarit came to check on her and explained what was going on.
She huddled on the bed, shivering in the damp sea breeze and staring at the motionless floor, until she gradually became aware of a whisper behind her.
Her heart thudded heavily against her ribs as she turned her head.
The wall was breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Gentle swells lifted and fell, and Ari’s eyes widened in horror as a twig peeled away from the trunk closest to the center of the headboard and stretched toward her.
It chuffed, the two leaves that clung to it flaring like nostrils.
It was sniffing her.
Ari scrambled back until she was at the far edge of the bed. Panic, bright and jagged, raced through her, leaving her trembling in its wake.
Hallucination or not, she needed out of this room before she started screaming.
Without giving herself time to second-guess it, Ari leaped out of bed, skidded across the floor, and shoved her feet into her sandals as the (completely creepy) floor rippled and shuddered beneath her. Then she raced for the door, hauled it open, and hurried into the hall.
Her room was on the second floor, close to the landing on the stairs that connected all three levels of the villa. The hall was covered with a thick green rug, and thankfully the floor remained still as she grabbed the wooden bannister and started down the stairs.
Halfway down, a twig curled out of the underside of the bannister and brushed the back of her hand. She yanked her hand to her chest and stumbled down the rest of the stairs, bracing herself in case something else that shouldn’t be alive reached for her.