Gods, the suit was as wondrous as it’d been that first day she tried it on; the blade cutting as smoothly through the air as it had when she’d plunged it into her targets.
Her footsteps and the drumming of the rain on the warehouse roof were the only sounds as she descended the stairs, then padded between the crates piled high on the main floor.
Left arm angled to hide the blade within the folds of her cloak, she hauled open the giant rolling warehouse door to reveal the veils of rain billowing past.
A cloaked woman waited under the narrow awning, an unmarked hansom cab for hire loitering behind her on the curb. The driver was watching carefully, rain dripping off the broad rim of his hat. Not a trained eye—just looking out for the woman who’d hired him. Even in the rain, her cloak was a deep, rich gray, the fabric clean and heavy enough to suggest lots of money, despite the carriage.
The heavy hood concealed the stranger’s face in shadow, but Aelin glimpsed ivory skin, dark hair, and fine velvet gloves reaching into her cloak—for a weapon?
“Start explaining,” Aelin said, leaning against the door frame, “or you’re rat meat.”
The woman stepped back into the rain—not back, exactly, but toward the carriage, where Aelin noted the small form of a child waiting inside. Cowering.
The woman said, “I came to warn you,” and pulled back her hood just enough to reveal her face.
Large, slightly uptilted green eyes, sensuous lips, sharp cheekbones, and a pert nose combined to create a rare, staggering beauty that caused men to lose all common sense.
Aelin stepped under the narrow awning and drawled, “As far as memory serves me, Lysandra, I warned you that if I ever saw you again, I’d kill you.”
“Please,” Lysandra begged.
That word—and the desperation behind it—made Aelin slide her blade back into its sheath.
In the nine years that she’d known the courtesan, never once had she heard Lysandra say please—or sound desperate for anything at all. Phrases like “thank you,” “may I,” or even “lovely to see you” had never been uttered by Lysandra within Aelin’s hearing.
They could have been friends as easily as enemies—both of them orphaned, both found by Arobynn as children. But Arobynn had handed Lysandra over to Clarisse, his good friend and a successful brothel madam. And though Aelin had been trained for killing fields and Lysandra for bedrooms, they’d somehow grown up rivals, clawing for Arobynn’s favor.
When Lysandra turned seventeen and had her Bidding, it was Arobynn who had won, using the money Aelin had given him to pay off her own debts. The courtesan had then thrown what Arobynn had done with Aelin’s blood money in her face.
So Aelin had thrown something back at her: a dagger. They hadn’t seen each other since.
Aelin figured she was perfectly justified in tugging back her hood to reveal her own face and saying, “It would take me less than a minute to kill you and your driver, and to make sure your little protégée in the carriage doesn’t say a peep about it. She’d probably be happy to see you dead.”
Lysandra stiffened. “She is not my protégée, and she is not in training.”
“So she’s to be used as a shield against me?” Aelin’s smile was razor-sharp.
“Please—please,” Lysandra said over the rain, “I need to talk to you, just for a few minutes, where it’s safe.”
Aelin took in the fine clothes, the hired cab, the rain splashing on the cobblestones. So typical of Arobynn to throw this at her. But she’d let him play this hand; see where it got her.
Aelin squeezed the bridge of her nose with two fingers, then lifted her head. “You know I have to kill your driver.”
“No, you don’t!” the man cried, scrambling to grab the reins. “I swear—swear I won’t breathe a word about this place.”
Aelin stalked to the hansom cab, the rain instantly soaking her cloak. The driver could report the location of the warehouse, could endanger everything, but—
Aelin peered at the rain-flecked cab permit framed by the door, illuminated by the little lantern hanging above. “Well, Kellan Oppel of sixty-three Baker Street, apartment two, I suppose you won’t tell anyone.”
White as death, the driver nodded.
Aelin yanked open the carriage door, saying to the child within, “Get out. Both of you inside, now.”
“Evangeline can wait here,” Lysandra whispered.
Aelin looked over her shoulder, rain splattering her face as her lips pulled back from her teeth. “If you think for one moment that I’m leaving a child alone in a hired carriage in the slums, you can go right back to the cesspit you came from.” She peered into the carriage again and said to the cowering girl, “Come on, you. I won’t bite.”
That seemed to be enough assurance for Evangeline, who scooted closer, the lantern light gilding her tiny porcelain hand before she gripped Aelin’s arm to hop from the cab. No more than eleven, she was delicately built, her red-gold hair braided back to reveal citrine eyes that gobbled up the drenched street and women before her. As stunning as her mistress—or would have been, were it not for the deep, jagged scars on both cheeks. Scars that explained the hideous, branded-out tattoo on the inside of the girl’s wrist. She’d been one of Clarisse’s acolytes—until she’d been marred and lost all value.