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Not just an image. A memory. Her memory of meeting with them here, before.
I should have realized after I recognized the college building.
I shouldn’t be standing here gaping like an idiot.
But before I can work a single word from my throat, the man with the dark red hair takes a step toward me, the brawn flexing across his broad shoulders beneath his gilded tunic.
His baritone reverberates through the room, smooth and cool but with a tang of menace. “And who the fuck are you?”
Six
You don’t survive for eight years on the streets without a swift set of wits. The second the massive man’s question rings through the air, my mind snaps out of shock and locks on to my story.
I take a small step forward, confident but not imposing, ignoring the stutter of my pulse. I shift my usual wording into the formal phrasing typical of the upper class. “I’m a friend of Julita’s. She asked me to attend this meeting in her place.”
The man cocks his head to the side with a subtle twitch of his head. It’s difficult to look away from his stunningly chiseled features.
He crosses his muscular arms over his equally muscular chest in a pose that sends a different twinge of familiarity through me. As if I’ve seen this man somewhere other than in that flash of Julita’s memories.
“Interesting,” he says in a drawl too cool to be totally casual. “And where would Julita be?”
In my head, adding to the conversation with an amused lilt to her voice.
Don’t mind him. Stavros has to indulge his bossing-people-around inclinations somewhere now that he’s not commanding entire armies anymore.
Her tone is dismissive, but my entire body stiffens. Stavros? Armies?
My gaze flicks over the looming man again and snags on one of his hands, tucked under his elbow. The hand that’s a little too stiff, a little too even in color to be actual flesh, as well as it matches his light brown skin.
With a sickening lurch of my gut, I realize why I recognize his stance.
I’m looking at General Stavros, military genius and leader of a quarter of the Crown’s soldiers… or at least, he was until an injury in battle last year knocked him from his pedestal.
Other than the prosthetic hand, which he’s needed since his sacrifice to the warrior godlen, Sabrelle, at his twelfth-year dedication, he appears hale and hearty enough. I had no idea he was slumming it with college students.
But that’s not what turns my blood to ice. No, the real problem is that the one time I saw him before, two years ago—in a helm that hid his distinctive blood-red hair and with a muchmoredistinctive metal prosthetic—he was presiding over the execution of the last riven sorcerer to be brought to justice before last night.
A riven sorcerer he personally hunted down and dragged to the capital.
When I blink, an image flickers behind my eyes: his tightly satisfied smile as the drugged woman jerked in the noose.
Great God filet and fry me, I might as well have draped myself on a chopping block by coming here.
The former general looks younger than I’d have imagined, late twenties at most, but that’s hardly a comfort. My fingers have curled toward my palms, my left hand itching to snatch up the knife hidden in my boot.
Of course, I’ve got nowhere to run to, andstabbingthe former General Stavros is only going to land me in deeper shit than I’ve already stumbled into.
My magic prickles through my ribs, but I resist its demanding pinches. There’s no immediate danger because he doesn’t know what I am—but he sure as shit will if I start throwing my power around.
There’s nothing to do but continue the ruse until I can walk away. And fast, because all four of the men are looking sterner with every passing second of my silence.
“She couldn’t make it,” I spit out hastily, and manage to gather myself enough to even out my voice.
The plan, the explanation we worked out, it’s there in my head along with the woman’s blasted ghost.
“We met for dinner last night,” I go on. “We know each other from back home—from Nikodi—I’m in Florian visiting my uncle. She told me about your investigation, and that there was an urgent lead she intended to follow that would take her out of the city for a day or two, but she didn’t want you to worry. So she explained how to find the meeting and asked me to come in her place.”
By the desk, the masked man shifts his weight. He’s tall but much slimmer than Stavros, his lean frame covered in a moss-green tunic and brown trousers that are less flashy than the former general’s clothes but still clearly well-made.
