Chapter 4 — The Debt of Blood (1)

Kaelen Varga had waited a thousand years of inherited memory for this woman, and the first thing he did with her was lean back against a cold wall and pretend he was bored.

That was the whole problem with him. He had watched his ancestors' memories stack up like centuries of dust. He had tracked the Lumen heir through every generation, through every century of disguises, every near-miss, every time the bloodline almost died out and then, stubbornly, did not. He had known her name before she had known his. And now she was here, on her knees at arm's length from him, green eyes burning, and the only honest sentence in his head was the one he would never say out loud: he was terrified.

He was also, mortifyingly, thrilled.

The memory-keepers of his bloodline had told him what to expect. They had not told him it would feel like this. They had not warned him that her voice would do something to his chest that no blade had ever managed.

A thousand years of other men's memories. A thousand years of watching two bloodlines orbit each other and never meet. And now, in one rain-soaked room, the orbit had finally decayed. She was here. She was furious. She was holding a needle. She was looking at him like he was the only fixed point in a collapsing sky.

He should have felt fear. He did. What surprised him was how little of it was for himself.

He had imagined this reunion a thousand ways across a thousand years of other men's memories. He had imagined himself cool. He had imagined himself in control. He had imagined the precise, devastating thing he would say, and the precise devastating way she would react.

He had not imagined her in a white suit holding a needle to his throat while the sky fell in. He had not imagined loving it.

"Don't look at me like that." He pushed himself upright and let shadow gather over the black crack in his chest, weaving it shut stitch by stitch. "I've had worse tailoring bills. This is a very expensive shirt."

Evelyn stared at the blood soaking through the white of his shirt. "You're bleeding."

"It happens. It's the shirt I'm complaining about. The blood's free." He looked down, made a small displeased sound, and patted the shadow closed over the wound like buttoning a coat. "There. Good as new. Mostly. The tailoring bill is going to be obscene."

"How bad is it really?"

"Bad enough that if you'd touched me, we'd both be seeing stars." He gave her a warning look. "Don't look at me like that. I've taken worse from my own ancestors. They throw things when they're disappointed in me."

"Your ancestors throw things at you?"

"In a manner of speaking. The bloodline remembers, and the bloodline has opinions." He touched the faint black seam over his heart. "This one's temporary. It'll scab over by morning."

She did not laugh. She was already standing, already moving her eyes around the room, already doing what she did best — turning grief into leverage, seconds after the grief hit.

"The kill order," she said.

He blinked. "We have time for this already?"

"It has my name on it." Her voice was flat, clinical, the voice she used on a bad position at the close of trading. "An extermination order against you, signed with my signature. Do you understand what that means, Kaelen?"

"I understand 'signed.'"

"It means they had my signature prepared in advance." She turned to him, and the green in her eyes went sharp and cold. "They had a trap built with my name pre-inked on the bottom. They didn't need me to decide anything. They needed me to walk in, hold the needle, and either kill you — or die trying. Either outcome worked for them."

Kaelen went quiet. Under the boredom, something settled. She was right. It was the kind of neat, two-way trap he respected. It was also the kind of neat, two-way trap that got people killed.

They had built it before she had even boarded the plane. They had filed her away as the murderer of her own grandmother before the grandmother was even cold.

"Then we stop working alone." He pushed off the wall. "My war room. Now."

The war room was a long, low room under the Well, walls lined with maps and screens, the whole place smelling of old paper and rain. Mr. Fluffy followed them in, inspected Evelyn's feet with deep suspicion for about half a second, then decided she was the best thing that had ever happened to him and sat down firmly on her toes.

"Your dog is sitting on me," Evelyn said.

"That's Mr. Fluffy's way of adopting you." Kaelen dropped into a chair and began spreading maps across the table. "He's never sat on me. Consider it a promotion. A hellhound's paw on your foot is worth more than a medal."

"Tell me about the people trying to kill us."

He briefed her fast. The Court Below had its own power brokers. Elder Hollis ran them. Hollis wanted Kaelen dead and the Court to rule without him. The Lumen side had the High Council and a council that had been pretending to grieve for approximately zero minutes. Between the two of them, every dark street in Manhattan was now a firing lane.

"Rowan," Kaelen said, tapping a name on the map. "My second. You'll meet him. He's the one face in this room I'd trust about as far as I can throw him, which is oddly far."

"How reassuring."

"He's loyal to the crown, not to me. The crown and I disagree on policy." Kaelen moved a marker. "Hollis's enforcers use the old bowery tunnels. Your light-sworn use the above-ground streets. We have roughly forty-eight hours before they coordinate."

"Then we have forty-eight hours to find out who actually killed my grandmother."

"Efficient." He looked at her with something that was almost admiration. "Most people would be weeping."

"Most people haven't filed a will for it yet." She tapped the table. "Grief is a luxury I bill later. Right now I bill the people who killed her."

As he talked, Mr. Fluffy rose from Evelyn's feet, crept across the table, and picked up Kaelen's black chess rook in his teeth.

"Rook," Kaelen said, without looking up. "Put the rook down."

The dog's tail thumped. He trotted away with it.

"Your rook." Evelyn nodded at the escaping animal.

"He does this. He's a strategic genius. He wins more games against me than my advisors do." Kaelen finally sighed. "Fluffy. The rook is not a bone. Bring it back. Or I swear to everything dark, I will demote you to guest-relations."

The dog, deaf to demotion policy, hid under the table with his prize.

The first assassin hit the edge of the Well before Kaelen finished the briefing.