“Absolutely not.” Gabriel loomed in the center of the dank alleyway, voice stony, expression stonier. “This was a stupid plan from the start.”
Bastian looked back over his shoulder, the streetlights catching the gleam of his teeth. Lore recalled the last time she was in an alley with the Sun Prince, how he’d changed so quickly from layabout royal to something sharp-edged and angry.
“Do you have a better plan?” he asked, his voice a match for Gabriel’s blade-tones.
“There has to be one,” Gabe replied. “We can talk to—”
“That’s not going to work,” Lore said softly. “You know it’s not, Gabe. The only way we can find out who’s doing the hiring is to find them ourselves.” She gestured to the mouth of the alley. “A raid happening tonight is a sign. We’re on the right track, and someone knew we were coming.”
Gabe turned on her, one blue eye blazing through his domino mask. “You don’t know how dangerous it is to keep doing this. To keep coming here—”
“I’m from here.” She managed to straighten, despite the pain in her middle, and glare up at him. “Has it occurred to you that you might be taking your role as protector a bit too far?”
She hadn’t planned to say it, didn’t know what shape her anger and fear and irritation would take until the words were forged and thrown. All three of them froze, staring, knowing that this was a door opening onto something much bigger than they had time to deal with right now.
Gabe took a step forward, blue eye glittering. “Would you rather I throw you to the wolves over and over to further my own plans?” He didn’t look at Bastian, but he didn’t have to. The accusation was an arrow, and its target was obvious.
Bastian’s gaze weighed heavy on Lore’s shoulders. He knew what she was, where she’d come from, that she could survive a few wolves. He knew that if she were made of glass, she’d have shattered long ago.
Gabe didn’t know all those details like Bastian did.
Maybe it was time to fix that.
Lore took a deep breath. “Gabe, there’s something—”
But she was interrupted by a shape flying from the shadows and knocking her backward.
Her already-aching stomach felt like it was catching fire as her skull cracked against the dirty wall. Through the high-pitched ring in her ears, she heard Gabe shout, heard the sound of fists meeting flesh, a snarl that could only be Bastian.
The blow to the head made her vision blurry, but Lore pried her eyes open.
“You didn’t learn your lesson, huh?” There was something familiar about the voice; she’d heard it before. But there was an almost desiccated quality to it, now, as if the throat she’d heard it from the first time had been scoured out. “Doesn’t matter you’re a prince. Doesn’t matter you’re a lady. I need more money, and I know you fuckers have it.”
Lore’s vision stopped swimming gradually, making sense of the figure blocking the gas lamp’s light. He looked far worse than he had before—his large frame sagged, like he lacked the strength to hold it up, and lines of gray rock crisscrossed where his veins should be—but she recognized him. Milo, the bruiser who’d tried to shake Bastian down for more than his bet the last time they’d come to the ring.
Gabe was crumpled against the dirty brick, conscious but dazed, dark purple spreading over his temple. The handle of Bastian’s dagger stuck out of Milo’s shoulder, but the man didn’t seem to feel it at all. His veins were so full of stone, it was a miracle the blade struck through his skin at all. The man had dosed himself halfway to a revenant.
Bastian slumped in the center of the alley, arms crossed over his middle. Milo had landed a knife-blow, too. Crimson seeped through Bastian’s shirt, night-black in the dim light, pattering softly to the trash-strewn ground.
Milo turned the bloody knife in his hand. “Don’t care who you are,” he murmured in that stony, graveled voice. An unsound smile lifted his lips, slowly, his eyes unfocused and glassy with a euphoric poison high. “This time, you die.”
Time slowed. Something crystallized in Lore’s mind, fully formed, instinct she knew how to follow.
“Move,” she said to Bastian, her voice somehow strong despite her aching stomach and ringing head.
Whatever deep knowledge she followed, it seemed he knew it, too. Bastian pressed his hand harder against his middle and stumbled down the alley in the opposite direction, as far away from Lore and Milo as he could get, much faster than he should be able to run with a stomach wound.