Moving to the washroom, I kick off my heels and shed my lacy scraps of clothing, using a damp cloth to wipe off most of Rekk’s blood. I redress in leather pants and a soft black tunic that laces tight around my waist, then pull on my boots, stash them with blades, and rebuckle my sheaths.
After donning my cloak, I dash a cloth over my shoulder and scoop the door handle from the sink, frowning when I notice a silver shimmer bound around my wrist. Almost …incorporeal.
Odd.
I’m still studying it as I move toward the exit, slide the handle into place, and open the door. “Welcome,” I mumble, then yank a blade free and toss it backward, hearing another fleshythunk.
There’s a definitive pause before my carter clears his throat again. “I can come back if you like?”
I rip my gaze from the oddity, looking at Utris, arms crossed over his barrel chest.
He scrubs at his thick black beard, a perfect match to his dark leathers and the tone of his skin, contrasting his bright-blue eyes and ruddy Moltenmaw feathers tethered to the end of his many beaded braids. Red and brown. Ignos and Bulder.
My heart squeezes.
Same as Kaan.
I blink. “Huh?”
“The male,” he says in his thick northern accent, brow lifting. “You finished with him, or …”
I snatch another blade from where my Other must’ve plunged it intothe wall, flinging it through the air. It thumps into Rekk’s hollowed chest cavity, right where his heart should be. “Unfortunately.”
All I wanted was to spend an entire cycle flaying Rekk, chipping away at his ribs, then unraveling his intestines until he screamed for me to end it. Bit much to ask, apparently.
“Right.” Utris dips his head, stepping farther into the suite.
I boot the door shut, a parchment lark fluttering through the gap just in time to avoid being crushed. It waggles around, trying to regain its bearings before it darts in my direction.
I pluck it from the air and tuck it in the pocket of my cloak, next to Kaan’s málmr. “Need I remind you that if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you’ll find yourself without the extra bag of gold I stashed in Dhomm.”
Hidden, its location on a prefolded lark in my back pocket, ready to be released to him the moment we part ways. Not that he knows that.
“I’ll probably slaughter you, too.” I shrug. “Loose ends and all that.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” Utris casts an approving glance around the suite, then draws a dagger. He moves closer to the pallet and angles the blade against one of the tethers keeping Rekk suspended, slicing the coil of fibers. “I witnessed thisfuckspurring that poor Moonplume across the plains,” he seethes, severing the bind. The right side of Rekk’s body flops down, now hanging by his left wrist. “Had I known how much you were going to make him pay, I would’ve offered my services for free.”
Well.
Utris slashes through the final tether, releasing Rekk. His mutilated body thumps to the ground.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
One by one, Utris yanks my blades from Rekk’s body and slides them across the floor. I snatch them up, blindly wipe and stuff them in my sheaths, my attention again fixed on the obscure tendril of shimmer coiled around my wrist and tangled through my fingers. I try to wipe it away, but all that does is smear more blood up my arm.
“You still want to feed him to the anthe?”
I look up to see Utris has already wrapped Rekk in a black sheet, now binding him with a length of rope. “No,” I say, letting some of my bubbling bloodlust poison my tone. “Truthfully, I want to leave him trussed in the street for everyone to see, then parade the city with his heart in my fist.”
Utris opens his mouth.
“But,” I interject, snatching the cloth from where it’s draped over my shoulder, using it to clean the blood off my hands, “his heart is nowhere to be seen”—hopefully mulched on the ground and not in a masticated heap in my guts—“and unfortunately, I have too much self-preservation to attempt something so stupid. So let’s get this over with. Did you manage to track down a shroud?”
“I did.” Utris wipes his bloody hands on the sheet. He flips open his satchel, reaches in, and pulls out what looks like nothing. At least until he shakes it out, offering a glimpse of the shroud’s silver underside.
He swaddles Rekk in the heavily runed material, casting him invisible, tucking it in place so it doesn’t come loose.
“Wonderful. How much do I owe you?”
