So I lie there, fists closed, breath shallow, heart pounding like I just took a spear to the chest.
And I don’t touch her.
But I don’t look away either.
The vampire meetsus in the shadow of a half-collapsed clocktower, where the gears still creak like ghosts turning in their sleep.
He leans against a weathered pillar, arms crossed, one boot kicked up on a broken stone. There’s something lazy about him, like a cat sunning itself right before it pounces. His dark hair’s a mess—deliberate, I think—and his grin cuts clean through the morning fog. Too many teeth. Too sharp.
He wears silk like he mugged a noble and rolled in the clothes afterward. His coat hangs open, wrinkled and stained, a splash of wine—or blood—on the cuff. Boots scuffed. Fingers ringed in tarnished silver and greenish gold, a different story etched into each. He smells like rosewater gone bitter and something metallic under it. Old blood and older sins.
“Darling,” he says, eyes flicking over River with obvious interest. “You brought a chaperone.”
River doesn't flinch. “We brought coin.”
“Even better.”
His voice is smooth—too smooth—and it slips between words like oil, clinging and cloying. Every syllable says I know something you don’t. Every smile says and I’ll charge you for it.
He pushes off the wall and stalks toward us, slow and easy like he’s not in any hurry to live. Or die.
Kragna doesn’t move. I let him get close enough to count the freckles on his throat. He stops short, smirk never slipping, gaze flicking to my tusks like he’s sizing up furniture.
“You’re a big one,” he says.
I grunt. “You’re talkative.”
He laughs, a bright sound that doesn't match the dead look in his eyes.
“Fair,” he says. “You want rumors or leads? Coin buys both. Chaos buys better.”
River folds her arms. “We’ll pay in whatever currency works. Long as it gets us close to Laertiez.”
Cervantes arches a brow. “Careful. You say things like that too loud in Kyrdonis, and you’ll wake up shorter.”
“Let them try,” she says.
He whistles low, then looks to me. “She’s got bite.”
“She’s got more than that,” I mutter.
The vampire chuckles, fingers tapping against his jaw as he walks a lazy circle around us. The city moves on around the square, wagons creaking by, hawkers shouting about bruised fruit and boiled rat, but none of it touches this moment. Just the three of us in a cocoon of sharpened words and old hunger.
“There’s chatter,” he says finally. “One of the highborn. Elven, of course. Pale and perfect, like they poured her from moonlight. Word is, she’s looking to cut ties with her current benefactor. Quietly.”
River’s eyes narrow. “She close to him?”
“Close enough to know where he sleeps. Where he bleeds.”
She nods once. “Set the meeting.”
He lifts his hand in mock salute. “You got it, blade-baby.”
“And none of your games,” she snaps.
His grin returns. “But games are the only thing that makes this pit worth crawling through.”
I step in close. He tenses just enough for me to notice, but not enough for anyone else.
