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My mouth goes dry, my mind racing.
If she knew I was the one setting the fires, I would surely be in the dungeons by now.Or dead, if she’s feeling merciful.
“So I heard.” I don’t bother to act surprised since she’ll see through any attempt. “I went to the scene in case there were survivors to question, but there were none.”
Lie.But at least that will account for the lingering smell of smoke clinging stubbornly to my dress.
Her eyes narrow before she nods.
“It was one of our newly acquired establishments, one you visited earlier this week.” It’s not a question, but I respond anyway.
“Fires, when your primary enforcer is known as The Flame. Do you think whoever is doing this is mocking us?” I inject a bit of offense into my tone.
“If they are, they will not be doing so for long.” Her voice is like a thousand shards of jagged ice, the threat lingering in the air as though she’s willing it into reality. “Paolo, here, was watching the building in question, since thisvigilantehas gone after every other slaver in the city, and yet, he managed to see nothing.”
She looks disdainfully at the corpse. I glance down at his face again and recognize him as the man she assigned to investigate the fires.My fires.
There is a slight tug in the back of my mind that recognizes that his death is my fault, but I shrug it off. No one in Madame’s organization is innocent. We all deserve whatever end we meet.
A shadow moves in the pitch-black corner behind her. My hand goes automatically to one of my false pockets, pulling out the throwing stars strapped to my thigh. Mother’s eyes glow with satisfaction.
She loves when her children are protective of her.
The person who steps from the darkness catches me by surprise, and I look to Mother for confirmation.
When she nods, I reluctantly return the stars to their holster.
“Brother.I see you’re back from your holiday.”
He doesn’t flinch at the reminder of his time in the dungeons, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed by his lack of reaction.
Any sane person would be terrified right now, standing here in the lair of the most feared woman in all of Corentin and her blood-hungry pet psychopath. Especially when I am the one causing her all of this trouble. But I can’t seem to dredge up an ounce of emotion, even with Paolo’s rapidly cooling corpse at my feet.
She would do worse to me if she knew I was the people’svigilante.
But, right now, she doesn’t know. And I intend to keep it that way.
She turns her stare on me, so like her only biological daughter’s. But where Mel is pure kindness and light, Mother’s eyes are empty. I have stared death in the face more times than I care to think about, have watched the light and life bleed from someone’s face until their body is little more than an empty husk.
Mother’s eyes are even emptier than that, an endless abyss where no sound or life or light dares to penetrate.
“This has to end, before every halfwit in the city believes they can undermine my operation,” she says evenly.
“Would you like me to investigate them before I go back to Delphine?” I ask in an effort to cover for myself, as well as see when she plans to send me back to the Chateau.
The seas around Delphine aren’t traversable in the winter months. If I stay in Bondé much longer, I’ll be stuck here until the spring.
Mother purses her lips, and she orders Damian from the room, demanding he remove the body on the way out. He grimaces, the motion pulling at the oozing wounds on his face.
All the while, my heart beats an unsteady staccato in my ears, reminding me that Zaina was not the first of Madame’sdaughterswho was sacrificed for her cause.
I was chosen as a replacement for Rose, and it is in my best interest, always, to remain useful to Mother.
Lest she find a replacement for me.
