“Mistress Vasrin sends her regards, and wishes me to pass on a message.”
“And what message is that?” he asked, taking another drag.
She smiled, and then before he could do anything—before he could even exhale—she reached out, took Kell’s face in her hand, and kissed him. The breath caught in Kell’s chest, heat flushed his body, and when the girl pulled back—not far, just enough to meet his gaze—she blew out a breath of smoke. He almost laughed. Her lips curled into a feline smile, and her eyes searched his, not with fear or even surprise, but with something like excitement. Awe. And Kell knew this was the part where he should feel like an impostor … but he didn’t.
He looked past her to the prince, still standing at the bar.
“Was that all she said?” asked Kell.
Her mouth twitched. “Her instructions were vague, mas aven vares.”
My blessed prince.
“No,” he said, frowning. “Not a prince.”
“What, then?”
He swallowed. “Just Kell.”
She blushed. It was too intimate—societal norms dictated that even if he shed the royal title, he should be addressed as Master Kell. But he didn’t want to be that, either. He just wanted to be himself.
“Kell,” she said, testing the word on her lips.
“And your name?” he asked.
“Asana,” she whispered, the word escaping like a sound of pleasure. She guided him back against the bench, the gesture somehow forward and shy at the same time. And then her mouth was upon his. Her clothes were cinched at the waist in the current fashion, and he tangled his fingers in the bodice lacings at the small of her back.
“Kell,” someone whispered in his ear.
Only it wasn’t Asana, but Delilah Bard. She did that, crept into his thoughts and robbed him of focus, like a thief. Which was exactly what she was. What she’d been, before he let her out of her world, and into his. Saints knew what—or where—she was these days, but in his mind she would always be the thief, stealing through at the most inopportune moments. Get out, he thought, his grip tightening on the girl’s dress. Asana kissed him again, but he was being dragged somewhere else, outside, on the path in the cool October night, and another set of lips was pressing against his, there and then gone, a ghost of a kiss.
“What was that for?”
A knife’s edge smile. “For luck.”
He groaned in frustration, and pulled Asana against him, kissing her deeply, desperately, trying to smother Lila’s intrusion as Asana’s lips brushed his throat.
“Mas vares,” she breathed against his skin.
“I’m not …” he began, but then her mouth was on his again, stealing the argument along with his air. His hand had vanished somewhere in her mane of hair. There it was now, at the nape of her neck. Her own hand splayed against his chest, and then her fingers were running down over his stomach and—
Pain.
It glanced across jaw, sudden and bright.
“What is it?” asked Asana. “What’s wrong?”
Kell ground his teeth. “Nothing.” I am going to kill my brother.
He turned his thoughts from Rhy to Asana, but just as his mouth found hers again, the pain returned, raking over his hip.
For a single, hazy moment, Kell wondered if Rhy had simply found himself another enthusiastic conquest. But then the pain came a third time, this time against his ribs, sharp enough to knock his breath away, and the possibility withered.
“Sanct,” he swore, dragging himself from Asana’s embrace and out of the booth with murmured apologies. The room swayed as he stood too fast, and he braced himself against the booth and searched the room, wondering what kind of trouble Rhy had gotten himself into now.
And then he saw the table near the bar, where the three men had sat talking. They were gone. Two doors to the Blessed Waters: the front and the back. He chose the second set, and guessed right, bursting out into the night with a speed that quite frankly surprised him, given how much he—and Rhy—had had to drink. But pain and cold were sobering things, and as he skidded to a stop in an alley dusted with snow, he could feel the magic already rushing hotly through his veins, ready for the fight.
The first thing Kell saw was the blood.
Then the prince’s knife on the cobblestones.
The three men had Rhy cornered at the end of the alley. One of them had a gash on his forearm. Another along his cheek. Rhy must have gotten in a few slashes before he’d lost the weapon,