Page 40

I finally had Garroway Kuffich alone. No Skartovius or Vallan to lead the way, which meant I could ask my myriad questions.

I held off for a while, trying to time it so I didn’t sound desperate for knowledge. Plus, I marveled at the way he slipped effortlessly between Olhav and Nuhav, which only added more questions to my list.

Once Vallan departed from the safehouse with the sack of silver, leaving us with the firebombs, Garroway stuffed the pots carefully into a bag and we headed out.

We descended the southern side of the Olhavian Peaks by keeping to the fringes of the steep road, avoiding detection from any guard processions or merchant carriages.

Not that he would have been in trouble if we’d been seen—he was allowed to be in both cities, evidently.

But I got the sense he preferred to sneak around rather than make himself known.

Toward the bottom of the winding road, I asked, “Do the guards we keep seeing make you nervous, Garro?”

I felt comfortable enough with him at this point to shorten his name without feeling self-conscious or flustered.

“Not in so many words, lass. Guards keep tallies. Every sighting is possible gossip for the rumor mill. Possible information that can be used against me.”

I grunted, sounding awfully like Vallan when the sound left my lips. “Makes sense. Stay elusive and hidden and you create limitless alibis for yourself.”

“Exactly.”

“Who are we meeting in Nuhav to give these firebombs to?” I asked, trudging alongside him. We were nearing the gate with the black-cloaked vampiric sentinel who had allowed Lukain’s carriages entry into Olhav in the past.

“One of the many street gangs. It’s a peace offering.”

When he said nothing more and pulled his cloak tight around his wiry frame, I shut up.

Garro kept low to the ground along the last bit of road leading to the gates.

Trees and hedges lined the roads and he seemed to make a decision, grabbing my arm with a nod and skirting off into the darkness of the trees.

We walked west through thin woodland, twenty feet out from the massive wall that encircled Nuhav. An owl hooted nearby. Various other animals surrounded us, rustling in the bushes and trees the further in we went.

At a certain point, the wall noticeably dipped because the ground itself lowered into a valley crevice.

Garroway nodded up to the wall, which only stood about fifteen feet high here, rather than thirty. “Can you get up there if I give you a boost?”

I nodded, furrowing my brow. “Why did we avoid the gate?”

“I don’t like the guard on duty,” he answered with a shrug. “Nosy and talks too much.”

I snorted a laugh. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

Garroway’s mouth popped open with faux injury. “Surely you aren’t speaking about any charming, bald bloodthralls you know.”

My smile widened. He matched my grin with a wink and then dashed to the wall.

I hurried over once he kneeled and put his hands out as a stepping stool.

When I stepped on and put my body flush against the stone wall, Garroway stood to his full height and showed his supernatural strength.

He easily lifted all of my substantial weight with his two hands then pushed me further up over his head without so much as a grunt of exertion.

My fingers grasped for purchase at the lip of the wall. It was still a foot or two away. So Garroway . . . tossed me.

I inhaled sharply, caught the edge with both hands as my body felt weightless for a split second. My feet kicked wildly at the wall as I scrambled, latched on, and hauled myself up and over onto the battlement.

Garroway was beside me before I could even catch my breath and roll from my back onto my hands and knees. He climbed the smooth wall with unnerving speed and skill, putting my skills to shame.

“Sorry,” he said, helping me to my feet. “Thought you might have been better at that after watching you repel from the third-story window at Manor Marquin.”

I dusted myself off, staring down to hide my blush. “You saw that?”

He shot me a crooked smile. “The whole clumsy event.”

“Shit. That’s embarrassing.”

He laughed lightly and tapped me on the shoulder. “No one ever said honey badgers were graceful, lass. Just tenacious.”

His compliment, as backhanded as it was, made me feel a foreign tumbling sensation in my belly. Before I could focus on it, he was already slinking down the other side of the wall into Nuhav, forcing my mind to stuff away the tingling, giddy feeling.

There was no doubting I felt freer with Skartovius, Vallan, and Garroway than I ever had while living in Nuhav. It was odd, since Olhav was the home of our vampire overlords and the cause of so much death, misery, and slavery to my kind.

I hadn’t spent enough time in Olhav to give myself a proper opinion of the place, other than to say the contrast between it and Nuhav was startling.

I was used to fighting and confronting obstacles head-on. I’d been trained for it. But Garroway took a different, subtler approach. He snaked through the streets and alleyways I knew so well, heading ever southward through the grimy, walled city.

The late hour meant few people were up and about roaming the streets. With horror stories of nightcrawling vampires and boogeymen wandering the roads and backalleys prevalent in every tavern and bedroom across Nuhav, people gave themselves a self-imposed curfew.

The only people we saw were the homeless and beggars sitting beside trash-fires and huddling for warmth. We passed dozens on our trek into the southern district.

My sympathy flared at seeing so many destitute souls on the streets like vampires hiding at daybreak. It filled me with anger and sadness, knowing how the bloodsucker Buvers lived in Olhav in their ivory towers and golden manors.

The further south we got, the more I recognized every curving road, broken cobblestone, and dilapidated structure. I decided it was good a time as any to ask my burning question, now that it was fueled by visions of poverty and rage. “What is the cause you three are fighting for, Garroway?”

He paused at the mouth of an alley, head swiveling left and right to scan for danger. We had stayed quiet during our trek through town, and he looked startled to hear my voice as he turned.

There was a sadness there, a hesitance. Wincing, he turned back to the street. “I can’t speak on that, lass. I’m sorry. You’ll have to ask Skartovius.”

Damn. I thought the most talkative of the trio would be the most open to answering.

“Fine,” I said, clenching my jaw in frustration.

I lowered my voice due to the natural quietness of the area.

“Then tell me what we’re doing here. It seems your cause, whatever it is, is two-pronged, if it’s taking place in both Nuhav and Olhav. ”

“Astute. You’ll figure it out by deduction soon enough, I reckon.

” His fangs shone as he smiled in the darkness.

He pointed out into the street and up to the horizon of the northern mountains hidden from view.

“Don’t tell my master I told you this, lass, but one cannot survive without the other.

The fullbloods may look down on the humans as nothing more than inconvenient bloodsacks, but they know better . . .”

I waited for more, understanding where he was going with this. It was a gloomy subject to be speaking about to a human, and I felt his trailing voice made him realize that.

“They keep us fed,” he said at last.

“Fed with more than blood?” I asked with darkness in my tone.

“The human gangs provide us with information. The Grimsons were useful before Lukain’s ill-advised attempt on my master’s life. There are many other human groups itching to take their place.”

My heart squeezed as I thought of my lost Holdmates. Rirth, Culiar, Imis, Helget, Palacia, Antones, Jinneth, Aelin. So many more over the years. And of course there was Lukain Pierken himself, who always seemed to dominate my mind at the worst possible moments.

For the sake of my own conscience and peace, I couldn’t believe he had simply betrayed me because he had learned my blood was some special concoction.

I’ll never know, I thought dourly.

Garroway tapped my arm. “You’re getting that faraway look, lass. Come on. They’re here.”

We snuck out of the alley. “Information is all the humans give you in exchange for these, uh, firebombs?”

I recognized the closed cart in front of a shuttered shop—the store Antones would examine and purchase dresses for the girls in the Firehold during our monthly walks.

Garroway said nothing until we crossed the street. Then, “You remember the boy stolen from the alleyway that evening?”

My arms prickled from the memory. I hadn’t been there, but Jinneth’s story had been so lifelike and detailed, my mind had created a vision of its own. “Layson,” I said. “Of course I remember.”

“Well.”

He cleared his throat and said nothing more as we came to a ramshackle building tucked away from the street. I recognized the building, vaguely at first, my brow threading.

Then it came to me. The auction house where Lukain bid for fresh slaves. What were their names—the two brothers Antones “saved”?

Genth, I recalled the older boy. Faidy was the younger one. He talked like Jinneth. A smile came to me, quickly dashed away once three men walked out past the rickety front door.

A frown twisted my face. I recognized all three of them—older and taller now than when I’d known them. My body went rigid, all thoughts of empathy and kind memories dashed against the cobbles like shattered glass.

Koylen , I thought of the young man on the right. Jeffrith’s friend. Another of Jeffrith’s minions stood on the left. Taclo.

But it was the man between them that made my heart hammer against my ribs. He was a former Grimson—the one accused of raping Helget when I first arrived—who Lukain allowed me to teach a painful lesson as a way of building my character.

For years now, I’d thought Peltos was dead. Truehearts flog me, I hadn’t thought of the rapist at all, after Lukain told Antones to bring his unconscious body to the surface so their grayskin friend could feed on him.

They had been talking about feeding him to Garroway. But Garro didn’t drain Peltos and now he’s standing right in front of me with a shitty smirk that says “I’ve won.”

His jaw was crooked and his nose was misshapen from the damage I’d given him. Judging by the two young men flanking him, he was clearly no longer a Grimson. The truth of who my vampire captors were conniving with, “making a peace offering with,” struck me like a punch to the gut.

These are Diplomats.