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Walking forward, I kept a hand on my blade, unwilling to trust what I didn’t see with my own eyes, but it was only Paesha standing at the top of the steps, leaning on the frame in full performance attire, including a white feathered headdress. Likely an excuse to be in the warehouse if she needed it. With a corset and glimmering earrings, the glamor against the softness of her curvy body was stunning. She’d left the snaps at her thighs hanging loose but still worked in the dark stockings and high heels. No wonder the Maestro gave her the stage to command. She deserved it.
“You two playing nice, or do you need a few more hours down here?”
Orin shoved past her. “Took you long enough.”
“It’s only been a day. Calm down. I knew where you were the whole time.” She followed behind him, then turned over her shoulder. “Coming?”
I hustled, though her watchful eyes didn’t miss the way I held onto Chaos’s hilt. We stepped into the soggy night air, jogging over the streets to leap into the waiting carriage. Hollis snapped the reins up front, and we tore off down the street.
Of all the scenarios Orin had given, he never once mentioned Paesha. And truly, I thought it was because she would never come for me. Maybe for him, but then, if he’d fallen to my blade, she would have been the one to find his body, and maybe that was a trauma she wasn’t ready to face.
But as she and Orin bickered with each other in the carriage I’d once been kidnapped in, I couldn’t help but look at the floor and think of how far we’d come in just a few short weeks.
“There’s something you need to see,” Paesha said, nudging Orin with her knee. Her eyes flashed to me. “You too, Maiden.”
I held my breath as she reached into her cleavage and pulled out a piece of parchment she’d folded and hidden away.
“Why now?” I asked, snatching the wanted poster from her hands. “Surely he didn’t care for those soldiers.”
“He cares that you didn’t marry him,” she said, voice low. “He didn’t give a shit about those guards, but he does want you captured.”
I rolled my eyes. “No one is going to be foolish enough to?—”
“It’s a lot of money, Nightmare,” Orin cut in, taking the poster. “Money makes desperate people dangerous.”
“It also makes them foolish,” I said, slumping back in the bench seat to stare out the window as the final traces of the city faded away.
“Even still, it’s best if you stay?—”
“I will not be held prisoner. I don’t give a damn what he does.”
“Why does it feel like it’s taking them so much longer tonight?” I asked Hollis, who sat dutifully on the front step, watching the tree line with Elowen.
Hollis pulled at the red thread he was using to sew a button onto the Maestro’s jacket. “Because it is. And you’re making it worse, Little Dove. Come hold this.”
“Careful, Dey. Someone will think you care,” Elowen said with a forced smile.
I sighed and pushed away from the door, moving to the stoop to hold the string while Hollis snipped it. Without needing direction, I wrapped it around a spool and hooked it into the notch, just as he’d shown me weeks ago, after Orin and I were trapped in the tunnel for a night.
“There!” Elowen shouted, standing to squint through the darkness.
“It’s bad,” Althea said when they got close enough, her red hair a beacon as they ran for us. “So bad, Paesha sent Quill home with Jarek.”
“She can’t stay with strangers,” I protested. “If the king comes for her…”
Thea stepped into my view, grabbing my hands with her soot-tipped fingers. “The Maestro decided that Orin will be the closing act for the rest of the season. Every night of the performance, he’s to fight until only one man is standing.”
I shook my head. “He’s a decent fighter.”
“Tonight was Cassius, and he was allowed weapons, but Orin wasn’t.”
I blew out a steady breath and started for the cart he’d been brought home on. “Why is he doing this?” I demanded of Paesha. “If this is about me, why doesn’t the Maestro just make him turn me over?”
The two women shared a glance as Elowen and Hollis joined us.
“What?” I asked, unwilling to look down at the broken and battered body I was sure to find.
“Orin made a deal with the Maestro the night after he married you.”
