I sigh, then do as she ordered, loathing the spark of satisfaction in her eye.
“Why don’t you want me to kill him?” I ask past clenched teeth. “That’s what I do. I take out the trash nobody else wants to muddy their hands with, sweeping the path clear of any filth that might prevent the Ath from completing its missions. Rekk is in the path, Sereme. He’s endangering other members—most of whom I respect.”
She gives me a bland look that doesn’t so much as pinch, though perhaps it would if she’d ever done anything to gain my respect.
“Let. Me. At him.”
“No.”
That fucking word again.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s well-watched bait.”
“Then I’m perfect for the job.”
“No,” she chides for the third time. “Your instructions are to lie low until he’s gone. That means no random slaughterings when you find someone doing something they shouldn’t, or hear someone crying out for help. No jobs. Nothing until I say otherwise. You will only leave your home to purchase produce or to come to me if I call on you.”
I frown, thoughts churning hard and fast, whisking into a snowstorm caught beneath my ribs. There’s not a single hit Rekk Zharos has failed to bring down, so he’s not leaving this city without blood on the tip of his barbed whip.
“If we don’t eliminate him, he’ll take one of us down, and it won’t be pretty.”
“I’m aware,” she says through tight lips, a stern finality to her tone that strikes my nerves with that Sereme-serpent bite.
Meaning …
She’s going to toss somebody considered less useful at him. A sacrifice to the ravenous Crown.
Something inside me splinters, bowing beneath an immense weight pressing against my ribs, my upper lip curling. “You feed the monster and more will slip from the shadows. Once the smell of blood taints the air, they don’t … stop … coming.”
Sereme sighs, reaching across the desk to straighten her quill collection. “Are you going to tell me how to do my job again, Raeve?”
It’s getting old for me, too.
“Every time we intercept a transport carriage full of young elemental conscripts, it’s a bandage on a much bigger problem. So long as the King continues to rule, there will be more carriages. More bounty hunters. More death and suffering.”
Still, her eyes are cast on her quills, like she values the task more than she values everything the Fíur du Ath is supposed to stand for.
I snarl, slashing my hand across the table, littering the floor with feathers. “What about the sick? The starving? The nulls?”
Slowly, she pulls her hand back, scouring me with a wide-eyed stare. “We spent all slumber saving fifty-seven nulls. At your bidding—”
“An operation I funded myself,” I snip, brow raised. “Or perhaps you thought I wouldn’t notice, since I don’t often check my reserves?”
“Of course I docked your reserves,” she sneers. “Running such a large-scale operation is costly in ways you’ll never understand. We risked our entire cause to keep you happy. Hindered political progress. Someone had to pay.”
To keep me happy.
Right.
“You know what that tells me?” I say with a humorless laugh. “That the Ath doesn’t value the nulls as much as it values the elementals. I don’t go down to the Undercity just to scatter bloodstone, Sereme. I go down there to see if anybody needs help, because nobody else seems to give a fuck.”
She snatches the vial dangling between her breasts.
Shit.
I brace myself as she scrapes the tip of her tailored nail down the groove of my rune—
My entire body jolts, the same scratching sensation scoring one of my ribs like a filleting blade.
“Why can’t you just be happy?” she snips while my breaths come short and sharp, eyes narrowed on the poisonous female. “You have the Elding’s favor. He does more for you than he’s ever done for anyone else. Isn’t that enough?”
I bind my side with a trembling hand, struggling to wrap my mind around the jealous taint to her tone. Not only have I never met the Elding, but being his favorite is swiftly tumbling to the bottom of my priority list.
She lifts her nail, brows hiked up her forehead, finger poised to mess me up all over again.
Creators, I loathe this female.
“Hard to be happy when the King’s mincing young elemental minds until they’re brainless killing monsters. When thousands of less valued folk are rotting in the Undercity, failing to scratch out an existence in the mines—slaves to the kingdom’s well-oiled cogs.” Wiping beads of sweat from my brow, I reach into my pocket, unscrunch the notice I ripped off the wall, and slap it on the desk, though Sereme merely glances at it. “If we don’t usurp the King, I’m convinced things are going to get much, much worse.”