student. I am, and now everyone will know the difference. Do you have money? Do you even have clothes other than mine? And where are you going to put your cut-up mother? You’re a mongrel bitch feeding on the scraps of your betters, and now you’re going to starve.”
She laughed, viciously. “You may have all the magic, you may have sucked the right dicks, but I’m the one with a Great House as my birthright. After dawn tomorrow, I’ll be sitting pretty in Redbriar Manor with tea and croquet. Mother will hug me and apologize and pile gifts on me so I’ll forgive her for sending me to school, and any one of them would pay your tuition for a semester. Despite everything you’ve done, my life’s going to improve after this. How do you like that?”
The plane was eerily quiet. I heard my own breathing, the hot roar of my pulse in my ears.
Because she was right. She and her mother were going to get away scot-free.
At most, the prisoner exchange would punish them for being historical enemies of the Nightfelds. They’d have to give up a few claims, a few things. All part of the Great House game.
But what about Darshan’s bruises? My mother’s captivity and mutilation? Where was the justice for them?
Even in chains, Cly sneered up at me. She was Great House, after all. Untouchable.
“What are you going to do, you half-blood trash?”
I walked out.
I followed the double row of lights, and Arcturus sat at its end. He looked up, a star-eyed god on a throne of shadows.
“Give me an Everblade,” I said.
He slowly unfolded himself from his seat. “I thought we’d just discussed their unsuitability with prisoners.”
“I don’t care about maximizing pain or prisoner value,” I said. “Unless you absolutely need a mint-condition hostage to get everything you asked for?”
“I trust my ability to negotiate,” he said.
“Good. In that case, an Everblade would work just fine. I’d like to teach a lesson on consequences.”
Arcturus had come to stand in front of me. I looked up, my eyes meeting his, and a spark of recognition crossed between us through the darkness. In that moment, we weren’t lord and supplicant, full Nightfeld and half Redbriar. We were driven by a matching pair of avenging furies.
He turned and went to the table. “This one,” he said, selecting a slim, sharp blade. “For precision.”
My naked fingers brushed his gloved ones as I took it. “Thank you,” I said. He gave the smallest incline of his head in acknowledgement.
I again went down to the holding area. The guard stirred, but subsided when she saw the sword in my hand. An Everblade could only have come directly from Arcturus. It was permission in and of itself.
“I’ll be out of your way shortly,” I said.
Cly saw me coming. “You—” Her eyes widened. “What are you doing? You’re not really going to—You wouldn’t dare! You wouldn’t dare!”
Her voice rose to a shriek. She tried to scramble away, but I hooked the toe of my shoe in the chain between her ankles and dragged her back toward me. She struggled; I fed my strength with magic.
I turned to Aegis. “You might want to close your eyes,” I said.
He looked at me wearily. “If you think I’m going to, then you don’t know me very well either.”
Chapter 28
“You hypocrites,” muttered Acubens, emerging squinting and tousle-haired from his sleeping compartment. “You persuaded me to toddle off at nine PM, but neither of you went to bed at all.”
“Guilty as charged,” I mumbled around a borrowed toothbrush.
I hadn’t been able to sleep at all last night, not with blood on my hands and Mom ahead of me. The toll the day had taken on me had felt strangely distant, as if the plane had outraced it, and it was still in the process of catching up.
I’d cleaned the sword and wiped my hands and sat down next to Arcturus. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. Together, wordlessly, we’d watched the black night fade to blue at its edges.
The plane was landing, as unnaturally quiet and smooth during its descent as before. Arcturus stood in front of the mirror, adjusting the long, black coat he’d put on. On his lapel gleamed a delicate silver pin in the shape of the constellation Ursa Major.
“Wait, no, don’t wear those gloves with that coat.” Acubens ran off and came back with a very slightly different pair of black leather gloves. Arcturus humored him, stripping off the pair he had