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He swivels his blade to tap the flat against my throat. “And that’s where you’d be dead.”
I smile back at him. “And you’d be rutting with a stump.”
Stavros’s gaze snaps downward—to where my knife is poised just above his groin. Nothing but the fabric of his trousers lies between his dick and myverysharp blade.
If he’s honest with himself, he’ll have to recognize that I could have cut off one very important appendage before he managed to get his sword into my neck.
There’s a moment of silence as he takes in our pose. Benedikt breaks it with a whoop and a round of applause. “You two should start putting on shows. I’d pay good money to watch that again.”
With a dismissive sound, Stavros pushes away from me. He rams his sword into its scabbard and rakes his fingers through his dark hair, his expression gone coolly implacable again.
I like him better when he looks like a madman.
The thought shakes me as if I’ve been slapped. In the middle of revealing Julita’s death and sparring with the man both verbally and physically, I started to forget he’s the same smug general who smiled while a riven sorcerer like me swung from a noose.
I shouldn’tlikehim any which way. He really would slit my throat if he knew of the power I’m hiding.
Julita has gotten a little breathless.Oh, that was brilliant. He’s never going to live that down. Nicely played, Ivy.
Before I can decide how to feel about her eager praise, Casimir eases toward us again, his head tilted to the side with an amused air. “Well, I think we’ve seen that Ivy is at least fully capable of acting as your assistant. Unless you had duties that require sluggishness.”
“No,” Stavros says noncommittally. “She’ll do. But arewereally going to do this? Send a petty criminal to mingle with your peers?”
I’d bristle all over again at the remark if he hadn’t reminded me what the whole challenge was supposedly about in the first place. “Just a second—”
“We need Julita,” Alek says firmly before I can go on. “And she comes with Ivy. That’s all there is to it.”
I cross my arms. “There is more to it. I get some say. Who says Iwantto ‘mingle’ with the lot of you?”
Alek stares at me. “But you just— What was the fight for, if you aren’t planning on staying?”
I wave my knife toward Stavros before tucking it back into my boot and reaching for my discarded petticoat. “For reminding him not to assume he can judge someone based on knowing a whole three things about them.”
Casimir makes his protest in a gentler fashion. “You said you wanted to help—that you don’t want to see the scourge sorcerers succeed. There’s no better way you can do that than by helping our investigations right here.”
“You mean by doing way more than any ofyouhave had to. Would you toss aside your whole life to spy on people who hate you?”
“None of us hate you,” Casimir says.
At the same moment, Stavros guffaws. “So eager to get back to thieving?”
I cast my gaze toward the former general and give the courtesan a pointed look. Stavros rolls his eyes skyward. “I don’t hate you. I will think less of you if all that showing off was only for your ego.”
I wrinkle my nose at him. “And why wereyoudoing it, exactly?”
Before he has to answer, Alek speaks up again. “But it’ll affect you too if the scourge sorcerers get bolder. If they draw more people into their cult without being checked. You must know about the Great Retribution—”
“Yes,” I snap. “We do hear the stories even in the gutter.”
But his comment hits on the reason I came here in the first place, the reason I listened to Julita at all. All the people these four men don’t care about, who’ll suffer more than they could conceive of if the godlen burn the continent in punishment all over again.
Julita remains unusually silent. Maybe she’s giving me space to make my own decision.
It’s not as if it’s any secret what course of action she’d prefer.
If she insisted, I think I’d put my foot down and march right out of there. But faced with nothing but the turmoil of my own thoughts in my head, I hesitate.
“I’m not saying no. I just—it’s a lot. You could at least give me a chance to think about it before you start building plans around me.”
