She looked barely conscious, eyes glazed from the drugs they shoved up their noses to keep them compliant, lips parted in a dazed smile that didn’t reach her eyes. And still, she worked, even as the king lounged on his gilded throne, eyes half-lidded in pleasure.
He noticed us then.
“My boys!” King Ashton bellowed, grinning like a man too used to getting his way. “Come in, come in!”
With a careless shove, he pushed the girl aside. She tumbled from his lap, landing hard on the marble floor with a sharp cry.
I took an instinctive step forward, hand halfway outstretched.
But Leo grabbed a fistful of my shirt from behind and yanked me back, his voice low and steady against my ear. “Don’t. You’ll only make it worse.”
The girl didn’t look back as she scrambled to her knees, gathering what was left of her dignity and her silks as she crawled from the room.
“Such fragile things,” Ashton chuckled, as if she were nothing more than a pet that had disappointed him. “Now. What treasure have you brought me, hmm?”
His smile widened with anticipation, eyes glittering with the kind of hunger that made my skin crawl. The kind of hunger that didn’t care what something was—only that it was his to devour.
Thorne stepped forward, slow and deliberate. His spine was straight, his expression schooled into icy calm, but I saw the flicker of hesitation in the set of his jaw. A half-second pause too long. A breath he didn’t take.
“We’ve found something,” he said at last, voice low and cool. “Something rare.”
The atmosphere shifted like a dagger sliding free of its sheath.
The king leaned forward, eyes narrowing, all pretence of drunken amusement slipping away. Beneath the silks and laughter and wine, he was a predator, and he smelled blood.
“Well then,” Ashton purred, the syllables curling around his tongue like smoke. “You’d best show me.”
Thorne didn’t move.
“She’s safe… for now,” he said, carefully.
That flicker again—something close to protectiveness, quickly smothered.
The king’s gaze sharpened, and then his mouth curved in a grin that made my blood run cold. “She?” he echoed, like the very idea was delicious.
Thorne gave a small nod. “We have found a shadowmancer, sire.”
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Then Ashton sat back in his throne, blinking slowly as the weight of it settled. “You found a shadowmancer… inmycity?”
His voice wasn’t loud, but something in it cracked like thunder.
“Not a whisper of her,” he continued, more to himself now. “No scent. No sightings. Nothing in the reports. And yet… you bring me this now?”
Thorne stood his ground, though I saw his fingers twitch at his side.
“She’s wild,” he said. “And lucky. Possibly both. But she’s alive. And potentially very powerful.”
Ashton’s grin returned, sharp as broken glass.
“Then why,” he said softly, “haven’t you brought her to me already?”
The silence that followed was brittle—thin ice over deep water.
Thorne’s jaw tightened. He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. The hesitation was its own betrayal.
I stepped forward before the pause could stretch into danger. I kept my tone calm, but firm. “With respect, sire. Whatever power she has, she’s not trained. Not yet. If you want touseher, you’ll need her alive—and willing.”
