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“Of course, my friend,” the woman said, her smile sharp as a blade. She grabbed Auberon’s cloak from the peg and swept it around his shoulders, all but strangling him as she tied the laces at the neck. “Nothin’ like this will ever happen again, I swear it. I would not tarnish my name by housin’ unclean girls.”
“I should hope not. Word of this gets out, men’ll be cursin’ ye from here to the Abraxas Sea.” Auberon laughed at the outraged look on her face and took another long swig of whiskey. “Don’t ye worry. I’ll speak none of this to the men at the warehouse. What they do with their coin don’t matter to me.”
Riona crept along the edge of the room as the mistress of the brothel ushered Auberon out, and she quickly donned her cloak and slipped out behind them. The storm had eased to a soft rain, and she walked at a leisurely pace along the street as Auberon reassured the mistress of the brothel of his silence one final time. A few moments later, he jogged up to Riona’s side with a bright, smug grin on his lips.
“That was fun,” he said, dropping the Rivosi accent. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Enough for tonight, at least. I think you were right about Cathal loving Faylen. He’d been visiting her for months and paying extra so she would see no one but him. He wouldn’t do that if he had just wanted someone to warm his bed.”
“Well, I do know a lot about the subject.”
Riona shot him a sidelong glance. “Love?”
“Brothels.”
She rolled her eyes, then nodded to the decanter of whiskey he was holding. “Where did you get that?”
“From the owner. A gift to mollify me, or a bribe to keep my silence. Take your pick.”
“And how much have you had to drink?”
He lifted the decanter and squinted at the amber liquid inside. “Enough to ease the sting of the cruel words you said to me earlier this evening. Not enough to dull the pain from that damned poison. Perhaps I should have listened to the healer and rested.” They passed a streetlamp, and in its soft glow, Riona saw Auberon grimace as he rubbed his chest. “Too late to do anything about it now. Come, I’ll walk you home.”
“That’s not necessary. We’ll part ways when we reach the King’s Road, and you can spend the remainder of the night resting.”
He scoffed. “Nonsense. Haven’t you heard the news, my lady? There are murderers about.”
As they neared the King’s Road, the streets grew brighter, lit with lanterns that made the wet cobblestones glisten. In the distance, the Royal Theater’s gilded dome reflected the nighttime sky, distorting the moon and stars along the curve of the metal. The scents of rain and earth hung heavily in the air—the scents of Innislee. The scents ofhome.
When they finally arrived at her father’s estate, she was relieved to find that all the windows were dark. Thank the Creator, neither her father nor Amaris had awoken and discovered her missing. Before leaving, she had dosed their tea with Oil of Ienna, a sleeping aid. The last thing she needed was one of them sounding the alarm that she’d vanished.
Before she could open the gate, Prince Auberon caught her hand. She turned back, and her breath caught at how close he stood, only a few inches separating them. She could smell the scent of the storm on his clothes. “I want you to know that I understand why you hate us for what happened to your mother,” he murmured, a hint of whiskey on his breath. “She should have been protected. She should have beensafe.”
Riona reached up with her free hand and grasped her mother’s eudorite pendant. Grief buried its claws into her heart as she said, “Thank you. And…I am grateful for your help tonight, Prince Auberon.”
Auberon squeezed her hand once before letting go and starting back the way they’d come. “We are both children of war, my lady,” he said over his shoulder. “We must help each other when we can.”
ChapterTwenty-Three
The Liar
Auberon kept his gaze fixed straight ahead until he reached the street corner, and then his resolve failed him. He turned back just as one of the second-floor windows in Lord Lachlan’s manor grew bright, the room beyond filled with soft candlelight. As he watched, a silhouette moved to the window and started to close the curtains, then paused. From the distance, he couldn’t make out her face, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to see his. Even so, he knew Riona was staring at him.
His hand flexed at his side, remembering the feel of her palm against his. He hadn’t intended to reach for her hand; he had acted on impulse. Auberon took a long swig from the whiskey decanter and told himself it was a combination of the alcohol and the desire to gain her trust that had driven him to do it.
He gazed at her until she snapped the curtains shut, breaking the spell, then returned to the Royal Theater to collect his guards. As he walked, he considered all that Riona had told him. Most of the courtiers had accepted the story that the prostitute was responsible for Cathal’s death, but a murder born of passion or rage did not explain the poisoning and missing documents. Somehow, the mines were tied to the Treasurer’s death.
The morning of his murder, Cathal had realized that the poison was meant for him, burned most of the records in his office, and smuggled the missing documents out of the castle. If they held information about the mines, what had the Treasurer achieved by destroying the rest of his records? He would have known that the guards would search his office following his abrupt flight, so perhaps he had sought to protect the king from scrutiny. With four foreign royals in the castle, he wouldn’t have wanted the guards to be gossiping about the state of the kingdom’s finances. But still,burning?
Questions nagged at him as he and his guards continued toward the castle, walking along the rain-soaked streets. Puddles had collected in the depressions in the road, and they reflected the imposing façades of the manors surrounding him. He was careful to stick close to the buildings and keep his head low. No one who happened to look out at the street would recognize him, of course, but it was a force of habit. Cities like Innislee and Torch never slept. The fewer people who knew an Erdurian prince was wandering about late at night, the better.
When the castle’s portcullis came into view before him, he let his grip on the decanter slacken and stumbled toward the gate. A half-dozen guards stood outside. He felt their eyes follow him across the forecourt, assessing whether he would be a threat or a mere nuisance.
“Play along,” he told his guards.
“Identify yourself,” one of the men at the gate called.
“The greatest player of Seven Deadly Kings in the world,” he responded with an elaborate bow, the whiskey sloshing against the glass.
