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“Priceless artifacts stolen and replaced with those from the private collections of White Roaring’s elites, all in a single night. They still haven’t caught the robbers or the relics they stole from the museum that stood where your establishment does now. Such an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”
Whoever infiltrates the notorious society has to have the right connections and knowledge of vampires. That’s you.”
“And if I’m breaking into the Athereum, you’re coming with me,” Arthie said. “Once I get that ledger, you will get me in front of the Ram.”
“Laith Sayaad of Arawiya. I wish I could say it was a pleasure, but I’m not one to lie.”
This sharp-eyed stranger who knew nothing of him suddenly knew him better than anyone else, and because of it, he clung to her. Her fight to survive morphed into his. He became addicted to anything that distracted him from the reminder of his existence.
It was his weapon of choice—elegant, clean, and very him. Knife fight? Jin’s umbrella made an appearance. Confrontation? Umbrella. Stroll down the street? Umbrella. Unless Arthie made him pack a gun too.
Five people. She did like odd numbers.
Slowly her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she saw the face above her. It was him.
It was the kind that was hard to forget and equally hard to stop thinking about. “Jin?” His lips curved. “Hello, Felicity. I’ve missed you.”
“Superbly striking or savagely clever? That boy was a crook. He filches for a smaller gang.”
She didn’t know anything about the job yet or what Arthie and Jin needed from her, but they were bound to give her something
Arthie Casimir was a maestro commanding the room. A queen at her throne. The hangman at the gallows.
She was skilled beyond reason, enough that Arthie could overlook the fact that she was the daughter of one of Ettenia’s vilest women alive.
It wouldn’t do much, really, but when one was young and lost, almost anything made you feel powerful. A new surname promised a new start, a new future they could forge for themselves.
“Indeed,” she agreed, sweet as a bird. “After he declared his love for me, I had him shot in the heart.” Flick’s laugh died in her throat. “He’s—you’re … you’re still alive though.” Jin was enjoying this. “Alive? Matteo here’s been dead a long time.”
“We’re breaking into the Athereum. The Festival of Night is around the corner. We’ll use the auction as cover to find the missing ledger.”
“Laith Sayaad,” he said before Matteo could ask. “Of the Horned Guard,” Arthie added. “And that’s his unnamed kitten, because he’s one of those monsters who doesn’t name his pets.”
“Cursed to remain secluded, are you all not?” Matteo asked. “No longer,” Laith said distantly. “We are now free to access the remainder of the world.” Were they really free, if triumphing over their curse had simply moved them into a new circle of prey?
“You know, I’m not sure I like him,” Matteo said to Arthie. “If I needed to like everyone I worked with, I’d have to do everything myself,” Arthie said.
“I know a thing or two about being recognized for the wrong reasons.” For Arthie, it was her skin tone over her brains. For Matteo, it was his beauty over his talent. Outside of 337 Alms Place, his name was more often associated with titters and temptation than respect.
“You can’t possibly mean that. They’ll stake us through the heart.” “Death by the stake does sound like a fancy way to go,” Jin agreed. “Stake is a type of Ettenian meat, no?” said Laith. “No, the letters would be arranged a little differently,” Flick said.
“The markers aren’t our concern because Flick will be forging them,” Arthie continued. “She’ll create new ones with new identifiers and have them added to the log. We’ll only need one actual marker to get her in.”
“And then there are the whispers. Her skin’s like caramel, they say. Or tea steeped too long and doused in milk.
“You’ll find Arthie’s morals to be quite like the sea. They choose upon whom to enact their wrath,” Jin said as he disappeared inside the coffeehouse.
“Imagine falling in love with someone and learning they make tea the color of bone.”
“Our high captain seems to be keeping a close eye on you,” Jin mumbled. “The way Flick can’t stop staring at you?” Arthie asked.
Words themselves can’t always unfold a person the way their writing can.” It was the most romantic way of looking at the world, which meant it fit Flick and her pastel hues and fierce curls just right.
Flick was even more sheltered than a typical girl of high society.
And yet, there was something to be said about a girl who knew everything about everyone and a boy more mysterious than the moon.
In her hands, the pistol shifted, twisted, and changed
And then he threw himself in front of her and fell to the dirt with a startled hiss, blood blossoming from his side.
Like now, when quick as a trick of the light, Calibore the pistol became Calibore the knife, black filigree scrawling down its hilt, silver blade sharp.
From a knife, Calibore shifted again, this time to a sword, and then finally into what she wanted: a club.
Did it matter? She planned to betray him.
“Except when it’s closed,” Laith said. “It’s a holiday.”
“She’s—she’s not my type.” Jin sounded adorably embarrassed. The Jin Casimir, expert flirt and charmer of anything that moved, made bashful by a girl.
She belonged to no one, she wanted to say, but a little thrill ran through her, and she couldn’t decide if it was from Matteo’s attention or Laith speaking out on her behalf. Matteo didn’t reply with
With Laith, she simply couldn’t think. She couldn’t focus on the desperation in his eyes and the pain set into his features.
She heard the catch in his breath as Calibore the knife became Calibore the hairpin, pretty enough for her hair, sharp enough to kill. It became a pair of scissors, a bladed star, silver dusters, a dagger—always a weapon, always bearing that fine dark filigree that reminded her of Laith in a way.
If anyone were to open up the pistol and look inside, there would be a single bullet in its chamber, despite the fact that she had used it and never once reloaded it. Not only could it shift into any weapon, the pistol could kill anything too. Even vampires.
That last sentence was a lie. Between her parents and Jin, there had been someone else, hadn’t there? Someone who had cared and taken her in and called her his own. Until she’d run away.
“My king was responsible for the death of my sister. She was all I had.
“He vowed that Arawiya would not fall the way the rest of the world did,” Laith said, “and dispatched hashashin to retrieve hilya, artifacts that could be weaponized against us and used to challenge him. My sister’s talents caught the king’s interest, and he sent her here, to Ettenia. One girl, barely of age, out on a quest to save his kingdom.”
When she had left Spindrift for his apartment, she’d been torn about her plan to let him take the fall at the Athereum. Now, she’d never felt so certain.
“Did he hurt you?” Flick didn’t know how to respond to the pure fury in his eyes.
“Did he touch you?” Jin asked again. She shook her head.
But deep down, she knew that wasn’t true.
He had done more than save her life. He’d made her a part of something. For the first time, she felt truly appreciated. Recognized. Needed.
There was a reason for that aggression: the fact that he was in her head before he appeared behind her. The fact that she couldn’t stop thinking of him and how he’d held her, touched her, looked at her. How she planned on getting him killed.
The heist was tonight. There was a chance he might die, but there was also the utmost certainty that he would do so in style.
