Page 200 of Sky’s Edge

“Fuck,” he muttered to his shoes.

Yes. He was avoiding me.

“Tanyn,” I snapped.

He finished with his shoes, straightened and turned to me, taking my hand.

Not a good sign.

“We had to draft another request to present to a magistrate because we need to take bloods from these males and determine if they’re under the influence of the control drug Tatra used.”

Oh shit.

“Or if there’s something else at play. And”—he squeezed my hand—“Aleksei has instigated the same in Night’s Fall in order to take Arnaud’s blood.”

“Can this drug circumvent even truth serum?”

“No, we don’t believe so. But we’re checking. And there might have been some other drug developed that can.”

My blood turned to ice at what this might mean regarding our current situation, but also in broader terms.

If you could beat truth serum, you could literally get away with murder.

“This Space Junkies bullshit is not a good lie,” Tanyn said. “However, truth serum is irrefutable. That said, the knowledge that we know my father was drugged has been kept in the strictest of secret. Even his and Mom’s exhumations have. We made the decision not to go public about any of this until we had a good deal more information on all of it. In fact, there isn’t a single member of the Assembly who knows any of it has happened.”

Yowza.

But, good call, as some of them could be in Tatra’s camp.

Tanyn kept going.

“It’s proving a good decision that we’ve not. They’ve no idea we know what Tatra did. We’re beginning to get an understanding of the extent of her resources. If we did not know this, not only would the Space Junkies get the blame for their actions, our investigations would be deflected down a road that would perhaps force us to target innocents but not take us where we need to go. Now, for the first time, I feel some relief because I think we’re making the right moves that will take us down a road to understanding what the fuck is going on, and who’s behind it.”

“How long is it going to take to get this warrant?”

“We’ll have it by morning. They’ll take the bloods and process them immediately. In other words, we’ll know more, also by morning.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Now, you said you had news too?”

I turned into him and lifted both legs (my skirt was so tight it wouldn’t allow me to do just one) so I could rest them bent at the knees against his thigh, and I asked, “Have you ever seen a pic of Selediel?”

His brows inched together. “The celebrated fae beauty?”

I nodded.

“No.”

“There’s one under a cover in the citadel.”

“Okay,” he said slowly.

“I asked Zyra to send me some snaps of the items in the rooms not in use, just in case there might be something salvageable, including the paintings on the walls.”

With that, I took my knees from his thigh, got up, went to my dressing table and nabbed my Palm.

I brought it back and resumed my position while pulling up the pic Zyra sent to me.