brave enough to enter the speaker’s chamber without invitation.
A fellow had to be quite stupid for that.
He raised the knuckles at his shadows, then slammed the door in their faces.
Adonai stood, dragging one bloody hand back through his hair and pulling his head up with it, as if it was too heavy for his neck. His robe had slipped off his shoulders, and Mercurio could see the troughs and valleys of muscle beneath. He looked a statue on a plinth outside the Senate House. Chiseled out of stone by the hands of the Everseeing himself. But Mercurio knew it was his sister’s hands, not Aa’s, that bestowed the blood speaker’s impossible perfection. And despite the power the siblings wielded, he found that thought just about as fucked up as he’d always done.
Adonai finally rediscovered his powers of speech, eyes glinting red. “Desperate thy plight or absent thy wits must be, Bishop, to interrupt a blood speaker at his meal.”
Mercurio stood at the base of the triangle, staring across the blood at Adonai.
“Well?” the speaker demanded. “Nothing to say, hast thou?”
Mercurio waved his cane in the direction of the speaker’s crotch. “Just waiting for the tumescence to diminish a bit. The bulge is impressive, but a touch distracting.”
“Seek ye quarrel with us, good Mercurio?” Marielle rose from her chair and stood beside her brother. “So weary of life’s burden, art thou? For I swear it sure and true, more weary could I make thee afore I lifted burden from thy shoulders.”
“Already thou hast ire well-earned from the Lady of Blades,” Adonai said. “So common are thine enemies, thou art in need of quality? ’Pon the blood of the aged I may sup to fuel my magiks, as easily as upon the young. And I am still hungry, old man.”
“Maw’s teeth, you two talk a lot of shit,” Mercurio growled.
Adonai curled his fingers. The pool surged, and bloody tendrils of liquid gore rose up from the surface, slick and gleaming scarlet. They were pointed like spears, semisolid, sharp as needles. They snaked slowly around the bishop of Godsgrave, blood-stink thick in the air, quivering with anticipation.
“Blood is owed thee, little Crow,” Mercurio said. “And blood shall be repaid.”
The tendrils fell still, poised a few inches from the old man’s skin.
Adonai’s red eyes narrowed to razor cuts in his beautiful face.
“Speak ye those words again?”
“You fucking heard me,” Mercurio said. “That’s what you told Mia, isn’t it? Last time you saw her here in the Mountain? ‘Two lives ye saved, the turn the Luminatii pressed their sunsteel to the Mountain’s throat. Mine, and my sister love’s. Know this, in nevernights to come. As deep and dark as the waters ye swim might turn, on matters of blood, count upon a speaker’s vow, ye may.’”
Adonai glanced at his sister. Back to Mercurio.
“Such words spake I for her ear alone,” he breathed, enraged.
“None were in my chambers when troth was pledged,” the weaver said. “Save I, my brother love, the darkin, and her passengers. How come ye to speak them by rote, good Mercurio, as if thou were sixth among five alone?”
“Doesn’t matter how I know,” Mercurio said. “But I do. You owe her a debt, Adonai. You owe her your miserable, twisted little life. You made a vow. And the water she swims now is deep and dark as it’s ever been.”
“Well do we know it,” Marielle said.
“How?” Mercurio demanded, pupils narrowing to pinpricks.
Adonai gave a lazy shrug. “Scaeva sent a blood missive ordering the Lady of Blades to unleash every chapel in the Republic upon our little darkin’s trail. A son stolen, desired returned. And for she who stole him…”
“Every chapel,” the old man whispered.
Mercurio’s belly sank, thinking about the sheer number of Blades that would now be hunting Mia. Even after the Luminatii purge and Ashlinn Järnheim’s betrayal, it’d still be dozens. All schooled in the arts of death by the finest killers in the world.
“How the fuck can Scaeva afford that?”
“Poor Mercurio,” Marielle cooed. “So silent thy turns must ring in thy room alone.”
“Title of imperator, Scaeva hath claimed,” Adonai said. “And all the coin in the Republic’s war chests besides. ’Pon a pillow of gold, Drusilla soon shall lay her head.”
The old man clenched his jaw. “That conniving bitch…”
“Not through kindness doth a single Blade become Lady of many, old man.”
Mercurio rubbed at his left arm. His chest was aching abominably.
Mia’s in deeper shit than I ever imagined …
“So,” he finally said, meeting Adonai’s scarlet stare. “Mia has the whole