Sereme spins, impaling me with her cool silver stare, her angular face perfectly painted—as always. Never a hair out of place or a blemish to be seen, white Runi bead hanging from her lobe. She’s donning a thick purple coat that melds with her body, snowy tufts of fur spilling between each seam that match the color of her coiffed hair.
My eyes narrow on the chain around her neck, threaded with a silver vial that’s etched in luminous runes, every cell in my body screaming for me to lunge forward and rip it free.
Tip its contents down a drain.
Instead, I move toward the huge desk that dominates the space, everything on it perfectly squared. Setting my bag on the floor, I drop into the boxy chair reserved for visitors and kick my legs up over the armrest. “I bite my tongue everywhere else; I refuse to bite it here. Feel free to cut me loose if it bothers you so,” I say, batting my lashes. “Promise I won’t complain. Quite the opposite. I might even do the odd side assassination for the cause in between hunting folk I choose to hunt.”
Murderers.
Child abusers.
Incompetent kings.
The muscle in Sereme’s jaw pops, her eyes hardening like molten ore dropped in a bed of snow. “You’d struggle without the Ath’s unlimited support were you forced to live like the masses, Raeve. Don’t forget how well we pad your pockets. There would be no more dragon bloodstone to scatter throughout the Undercity and give you that false sense of importance you can’t seem to live without.”
I see neither of us are in the mood to play nice.
Sliding a blade from my bodice, I thump my boots on her desk, nudging a few of her perfectly lined up quills. “Don’t act like you care about my well-being. You don’t,” I say, flipping the weapon between my fingers. “You’re just the bitch who clamped a shackle around my wrist and called it mercy.”
The vein in Sereme’s temple swells so much I quietly hope it’ll burst. “It’s surprising you speak to me with such disrespect, given said shackle.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, using the blade to dig some of Tarik’s dried blood from beneath my nails. “To what do I owe the honor of being summoned into your den, Sereme?”
She glares at me, watching me flick curls of hardened blood upon her plush purple rug. It’s always interesting to see how far I can push her before she sweeps me from her space like a long-legged bug she can’t eradicate fast enough, hoping she’ll eventually decide my presence is more hassle than it’s worth.
She paces toward me, lowering into the plump purple throne on her side of what I consider our makeshift barricade, folding her hands together atop the desk. “I wanted to make sure you received my parchment lark.”
“Is the mission complete?” I ask, brow arched.
“No confirmation yet. I mean the one I sent last cycle, just before the aurora fell.”
Fresh orders.
Lovely.
My interest dissolves, stare cast on my nails again, digging out more filth. “Must’ve gotten lost. Perhaps it’ll circle back ’round once I’ve slept, as they often do. So considerate. You should take notes.”
I sense her simmering frustration like a welling storm cloud that clots up the air with a static charge.
Still, I flick.
Flick.
Flick.
“Funny how you’re the only one who has trouble receiving my larks.”
“One of the world’s great phenomena.”
“Doubtful.” A brief pause, then, “Rekk’s Moonplume is in the city hutch.”
My heart drops, gaze whipping up, plunging into Sereme’s stony stare. “Who’s he hunting?”
“Us.”
My responding curse is as sharp as the blade in my hand.
“He’s been hired by The Crown, and he’s here to put a pin in our rebellion. To stop us from draining the kingdom of its fresh-faced conscripts.”
Well, he needs to die.
I swing my boots off the table and sheathe my blade. “I’ll take care of him,” I say, an eager hitch to my voice. Every time I’ve seen the bounty hunter, the metal spurs on the back of his boots have been caked in blood. Don’t need a grand imagination to work out who the blood belongs to. Likely the poor Moonplume he apparently charmed after slaughtering its former rider, if the rumors are true.
I’ll take a vast amount of pleasure in his assassination.
I rise from my seat—
“No,” Sereme bites out, and I frown.
“What do you mean, no?”
“Sit, Raeve.”