“The Long Dark Night is still weeks away,” he said, emptying the bottle. “If you insist on celebrating, we better find the Hand.”
Rhy swung his arm out, gesturing at the sprawling city and the untold thousands who filled its buildings and flooded its streets. “How hard could it be?”
* * *
Their footsteps echoed on the stairs.
“I don’t suppose you could ask every citizen to strip,” mused Lila, “so you can search their skin for brands.”
The guards bowed as she and Alucard passed. Not as deeply as they did to Kell, she noticed, but at least none pulled a weapon on her.
“And drive a hundred more to their cause?” Alucard shook his head. “I think not.”
“They have a leader,” she said. “They must. All hands need arms, and all arms need a head. Do you have no suspicions?”
“I have many—but that is all they are.”
“Care to share your strongest angle?”
“That for all their talk, they’re not Arnesian at all.”
Lila’s steps didn’t slow. It had occurred to her already, of course. “You think they’re being funded by a foreign power.”
“The best war is the one your enemy fights with itself.”
They walked in silence to the bottom of the stairs. There, Lila rounded on him.
“Don’t make the Hand more than they are. They are still bodies, and bodies can be found. They can be stopped.”
Alucard gave a thoughtful hum. In this light, he didn’t just look tired—he looked ill. Hollowed out. Drawn far past taut, a bowstring on the edge of breaking.
“If you were wound any tighter, you would snap,” she said. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“Lately, I’ve found it hard to rest.” He flashed his teeth, more a grimace than a grin. “I can’t imagine why.”
Lila flicked her fingers, felt the cool steel of a blade skate into her palm. “I could try to kill you, if you like.”
Alucard managed a thin, startled laugh. “And that would help me how?”
She shrugged. “It gets the blood flowing,” she said. “How long has it been since you had a proper fight?”
“I spar with the soldiers every day,” he said, a little indignant. “And if that is the only way you unwind before bed, I pity Kell.”
He started down the hall again, and Lila fell in step beside him, the knife vanishing back into her sleeve. “I suppose there are other ways to burn off energy.”
Alucard raised a brow. “Is that an offer?”
“Sadly, I have no desire to bed you. But I’m sure the king would happily oblige if—”
Just then, a small shape darted out from under a chair into their path. Lila stopped, and looked down. It was, of all things, a rabbit. Floppy and golden-hued, with large black eyes and a twitching nose.
“Looks like dinner got out of the kitchen,” she said, but Alucard only sighed and hoisted the little beast under one arm.
“Miros,” he said grimly. “And where there’s a pet, there’s—”
As if on cue, a child came bounding around the corner, singing a bedtime song.
“Gentle, gentle, hissed the snake,” she sang, dancing between the patterned lines of the lush hall rug. “Quiet, quiet, barked the dog. Careful, careful, purred the cat, right before it pounced!” On these last words, she leapt as far as she could, landing in a crouch on one of the rug’s golden circles. Right in front of them.
Ren had grown since Lila last saw her, morphed from a stumbling toddler into a small girl with a pointed chin and a mop of black curls. Perhaps, thought Lila, the child wouldn’t remember her. After all, a year was a long time, when you’d only lived four. But Ren straightened, and looked up, and her face bloomed in delight.
“Hello, Delilah Bard!”
“Hello, Ren Maresh,” she said evenly.
Lila did not like children, and she had decided long ago that Rhy’s daughter would be no exception. She would not coddle the girl, would not fawn, would not make her words small and lace her voice with syrup and indulge the child’s every whim. Unfortunately, Ren Maresh didn’t just like Lila—she adored her, and nothing Lila did seemed to dampen that joy. The child was always so damned happy to see her.
“We talked about this, Ren,” said Alucard, holding out the rabbit. “Put him away.”
Ren took the pet, and then turned and promptly set it down again facing the other direction, watching as it bounced away down the hall. Alucard tipped his head back and sighed, the long-suffering sound of a parent who couldn’t be bothered.