Page 82

I fight the urge to scoot closer to Daxeel and his warm presence, how he brushes his fingers through my loose hair, strokes down the nape of my neck.

On the other side of the bench, Samick keeps his movements slow and quiet as he starts stacking the frying pans on the small flames atop the stove. But his gaze shifts around the kitchens, waiting, anticipating.

Eamon thins his lips to bite down on a smirk. He meets my gaze for a moment before he delicately asks, “What did you lose? A few gold pieces, maybe?”

Amazement steals me as Dare’s eyes flash. Then they darken from gold-crafted daggers into lumps of pure coal. The black of his pupils spreads over his irises like spilled ink, until black is all that’s left.

His lips twitch around a silent snarl. “A whole pouch.”

The creak of a chair comes as Rune braces his forearms on the edge of the table. His yellow paint-stroked eyes are hooked on Eamon across the kitchens, like Eamon has suddenly become a mouthpiece of Mother herself and holds all the secrets to life and death.

But the secret he reveals is much more to my liking.

Eamon runs his teeth over his bottom lip before he lets the coy smile slip. “She tricked you.”

Dare slowly turns his chin to his shoulder. His lashes lower over pitch-black eyes, but the gesture is a command for Eamon to explain.

And so he does.

“Bee is something of atrickster,” he decides on the word, carefully. “She played you—took you home, didn’t bed you, but gave you enough of herself to keep you in a daze with her. Then she fed you some powder, you passed out, she robbed you, woke you up, got you out of her home, and you left, thinking you had a great night, so crazy a night that of course you lost an entire pouch of gold pieces. That,” and his grin flashes like a light source, “is Bee.”

Dare’s blink casts shadows down his marble-toned cheeks. He is entirely unflinching, and his stony face gives nothing away.

That silence hangs over us for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, then—

Rune throws his head back with a booming laugh.

The bass of it is fast accompanied by Samick who, doubled over, only supports himself by smacking a hand down on the edge of the bench.

My face is hot with a flush, torn between a laugh of my own and running to safety.

But Daxeel’s choked, chesty chuckle is enough to soothe my anxieties in the sudden dangerous turn of Dare’s presence.

Aleana bites out her words with just a grin, because I doubt her energy can support much more than that, “You might have met your match.”

I don’t think Dare heard her.

At least, he doesn’t acknowledge her tease as a dark storm steals him.

His growled voice matches the brewing wrath, “Is she a whore?”

Eamon shakes his head and runs his hands down his light expression. “Tricksters in the human lands, they call themselvesconmen or hustlers. But they are all the same.” He leans his shoulder against a hutch and folds his arms over his chest. “She asked me about you in the club. I told her you were signed to the Sacrament. Guess she thought you will die in it, so she risked taking all she found in your pockets, rather than just a few pieces you wouldn’t have noticed.”

Rune’s laughs have turned wheezing.

Daxeel wipes away a stray tear from his eye.

“That’s why she booted you,” Aleana says. “She got what she wanted—and you wouldn’t have even figured it out without Eamon.”

Rune chokes on his words, “A kinta tricked you.”

Samick clears his throat. Rosy patches are smeared over his high cheekbones. “It’s the first time you’ve ever been booted, right?”

Dare’s eyes flash.

On instinct, I recoil into my chair.

Daxeel firms his grip on the back of my neck through the shudder that rattles me.