AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I jerked the T-shirt back on, not bothering with underwear, grabbed my jacket and followed him through a door on the far side of the room. We passed down a long corridor, which gave me a moment to get my breathing under control and remind myself that I wasn’t allowed to kill him. Yet.
We eventually stopped at an office. Or, at least, I guess it was supposed to serve that function. It was so stuffed with weaponry that it was a little difficult to tell. I shoved an antique shield off a chair and sat down, as Geminus got behind the desk.
“What is this princess going to do for me?”
“Her name is Claire, and she’s half- human,” I told him shortly. “She grew up here and only recently claimed her heritage when she agreed to marry a Blarestri prince. But she’s never really gotten used to the way the fey do certain things. She’s a vegetarian pacifist, for instance; she hates unnecessary violence.”
“I’m fascinated.”
“You should be. Anyone else would have just turned you over to her family for punishment.”
“I don’t recall angering any fey. Not of the royal kind, at any rate.”
“They tend not to like it much when you steal from them.”
“Then I am fortunate, for I have stolen nothing.”
“You were seen at the club, right before the fey ended up dead and the rune went missing.”
It was a lie, but I thought it was worth a shot. But he didn’t take the bait. “Was I?”
“And you’re certainly strong enough to take out a fey warrior.”
“You flatter me.”
I glanced up at the wooden sword mounted over the fireplace. It was old and crumbling, barely held together by some stained twine, but carefully preserved behind a glass case. Two thousand years ago, Geminus had gotten his start as a gladiator, one of the few ways for poor young men of the time to rise to fame and fortune. He was rumored to have been fearless, despite a seer prophesying that he would die on the arena sands. He hadn’t, instead winning the sword and his freedom after successfully defeating numerous opponents.
By all accounts, he’d been doing the same thing ever since.
“I don’t think so,” I said simply.
He laughed. “Strong enough but not stupid enough. No relic is worth that kind of trouble.”
“Not even if it gets you control of the Senate?”
“But I do not wish to control the Senate,” he told me easily. “Let them bicker and squabble and plot and plan. My interests lie elsewhere.”
“You expect my employer to believe that you just shrugged off what happened at the auction? Come on, Geminus. That’s not your style.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Then what did you do?”
He sighed and kicked back against the wall, one foot propped up on the desk.
“After Cheung did his fiddle with the auction, I was… annoyed. It was obvious that he’d never intended to give the stone to anyone but Ming-de. I don’t like being played, so I had my servants to do some checking. They discovered who the sellers usually used for authentication. And fortunately for me, the little bastard was swimming in debt.”
“You’re talking about the luduan.”
“Yes. I offered him a deal. I’d pay his debts if he switched the rune for a fake when he examined it.”
“And once the fey found out and tracked him down?”
“That was his problem. But he could always deny it. There was no way anyone was going to know where, exactly, it went missing.”
“Why were you at Ray’s, if you already had a plan in place?”
This time, he didn’t budge. “I wanted to make sure he didn’t double-cross me. The stone was worth considerably more than I was paying on his debts. I didn’t trust him.”
