Page 5 of The Crimson Throne (Spy and Guardian #1)

Or before, when I was younger and Ma had just died, so I ended up scraping my fingers to the bone alongside other kids in a workhouse.

The man running the place was a sadistic bastard.

I was small, but I came to and he was bent over me, blood dripping from his crushed-in nose, which was satisfying, but he was pinning me to the floor and screaming about me attacking him.

He left me to hang by my wrists for two full days as punishment for something I couldn’t even remember doing.

For the past few months, I’ve carved out a home with others who’re products of the brothels that dot Southwark. While some, like Oskar and Hal, immediately got this camaraderie, my curse keeps me on the outskirts for fear I’ll turn on ’em all.

I thought I could control it. Thought if I had proper incentive, I could surmount it.

This is as close to a home as I’ve gotten. As close to family as I’ve come since Ma.

And I’m losing it.

I clench my jaw, panic and sorrow and grief and a whole herd of emotions barreling into me. Beneath it, anger comes on determined legs, galloping up my throat and kicking debris out through my mind in a building fog.

Shit. Shit. Not now.

Trembling arms wrap tight around my chest, holding me together, and I take deep breaths of London-caustic air, choking on it.

A horse whinnies close by. It startles me enough to shock me out of my spiral, and when I glance over, I stiffen.

Shoulda known he’d be set on me getting it to him fast.

There’s a carriage attached to the horse, not two paces back from where I’m standing with Oskar and Hal. Must’ve pulled up while we were talking.

Instantly, Oskar knows it, and he lurches toward me, fury reignited.

“What’d you do?” he snaps.

It’s really over, living with them, fooling myself into thinking I was part of their little found family. Didn’t stop me from pretending I was one of them.

God, did I pretend.

What a dumbass thing to do.

“I needed the money to get you out,” I say, take a breath, then add, “and he wanted something the baron had.”

I can feel Oskar’s shock on the air. It gushes out of him. “He sent us after that baron? It was a setup. That job. Your father had us rob him?”

“He wanted it. You wanted it. I figured I could do the two together.” And that’s the truth.

None of the others like doing jobs for my father; they don’t trust him.

Rightly so—I don’t trust him either. I’m not the only one of us to know their father is a rich royal, but I am the only one whose father claimed him.

Not enough to give me any sort of station or even his last name. Just enough to use me on occasion.

But rat bastard or not, he pays well. The kind of well that gets food on our table. That keeps our roof from leaking.

Oskar’s glare is a brand on the side of my face as the carriage door groans open.

Leaning out the door is William Cecil, Baron Burghley, a lord and a secretary of Queen Elizabeth herself and a right piece of shit.

I got all my looks from my ma. Red hair, pale skin, tall stature. Cecil’s short and forgettable, balding brown hair and dull eyes. He blends into the edges wherever he is, which he prefers; makes it easier for him to be the head of the queen’s spy network.

Without another word, Oskar starts to pull Hal away—

But I hold out my hand. “I need it, Oskar.”

He freezes. Glares at me anew, this time in disgust. “That’s why you freed us?”

“No. ’Course not.”

He doesn’t believe me.

I’m not sure I do either.

Oskar’d been the one to grab the damn thing, and he works his hand into a compartment a lot of us have hidden on the backs of our shirts, a small gap stitched under our doublets. Keeps treasures hidden, and most people who’d search us assume it’s just a stiff part of our clothing.

But he wiggles out the object and tosses it to me in one careless flick.

I catch it. It’s wrapped up in a cloth still, thank God; Oskar hasn’t touched it. But I know it’s a brooch, no bigger than my palm, that lets off a faint magenta glow.

I tuck it to my side quick.

Oskar looks more tired than anything now. He shakes his head slowly, deliberately, letting that be enough. Don’t come back.

My eyes fall to the mud beneath my boots.

Maybe a minute or two passes.

By the time I look back up, Oskar and Hal are gone.

Cecil, though, is still watching me from the carriage, his beady eyes focused and intent.

“You have it?” he asks in a dull, flat voice.

My posture stiffens. Solidifies. No sorrow, no grief.

Around Cecil, I don’t have tells. Don’t have weaknesses.

I make for the carriage and hand the brooch to him. I’m not sure what it does; it’s vile fae crap, and I want nothing to do with it.

But I’m not a fool. I know when Cecil gets word of fae magic in Southwark and sends me trotting off to retrieve it for him that he keeps the nasty little glowing objects for his own use.

For the queen’s own use. He’s told me what some of them do if I need to be warned before I interact with ’em: one could set fires without a spark or tinder; another could knock a person into a deep sleep with a prick of their finger.

Cecil tucks the wrapped brooch within his cloak somewhere I can’t see.

I expect him to leave. But he doesn’t, and I got nowhere else to go, so I stand there, staring at him, hoping for…something. A job, maybe. It’s the only way I can get money now.

No home.

No better prospects.

I’ve got nothing. Truly, deeply. Nothing but this wretched curse wreaking havoc on my body.

I rub my chest, every bit of me aching.

“Come along.”

I blink up, and Cecil’s sliding back in the carriage.

“Samson,” he snaps.

But I hesitate, my skin prickling in a cold breeze. “I—”

“Now.”

Jaw leveling, I haul myself up into the carriage. Cecil tugs the door shut, encases us in shadowy coolness—this’d be awful during the summer months.

A moment later, the carriage starts to move at a steady, swaying pace.

Cecil sends me letters when he’s got a job for me—my ma made sure I could read.

Before she was a working girl, she was a lady’s maid, and she wanted me to have a chance of getting out of Southwark.

Cecil writes his letters in a code of his, one of the few things he taught me, and when I get whatever item he orders me after, I send a similar letter back.

He shows up in Southwark, collects the fae magic, tosses me a payment, then he’s gone.

So sitting in silence, the carriage taking us God knows where, is more unnerving than waiting in the Clink was.

I don’t ask where we’re going though. Don’t so much as drop eye contact.

Cecil’s pale gaze glints at my motionlessness.

My nonreactive state. I don’t break for him, and it reminds me with a stab that I got all my lying and manipulating from him.

Lord knows my ma, rest her soul, couldn’t have lied her way to a mouthful of water in a downpour.

But from the moment I met Cecil, it’s been painfully clear we’re cut from the same cloth.

Every time I lie, every time I hurt people.

It’s all Cecil.

With the luxury of someone who’s soaked in self-importance, he tips his head and, at last, speaks. “Your curse is still causing trouble for you, is it?”

It’s not a question that needs answering.

He nods like I spoke. “How desperate are you to break it?”

My mouth opens, confusion muddling my thoughts, but—

Hope.

Hope makes a sudden firm grip around my throat.

Because if he’s asking that…

I came into contact with one of these damned fae items as a child, just before Ma died.

These bloody awful bits of magic are the reason I’ve been floundering to survive even more than normal people in Southwark, the reason I’ve not been able to keep control of myself, the reason I can’t trust myself.

Because some sneaky little fae imbued magic in an item, and I don’t even know what the item was, and now I’ve got this rage in me that takes over, and I gotta live with it for the rest of my days.

Because that’s how fae magic works. It’s nasty and volatile, digs in like a jagged sword and leaves a scar on your soul. Fae items are rare, so most people don’t know about them, and with good reason; the fewer people interact with fae shit, the better.

“There’s no way to break it,” I say, testing.

Cecil’s lips quirk, but his eyes stay deadened, bored almost. “My contacts have received reports of a fae item that causes people to lose consciousness and attack those around them.”

Heat rises up the back of my neck, spreads out across my face, and I know I’m flushing red; it’s a trigger response, one I always try to keep a tight lid on.

“Where? In Southwark?” Immediately, I recoil. “What’s it matter if we find it though? How could it break what it did to me?”

I’d take some perverse joy in destroying the damned thing. In getting to crush whatever the item is beneath my boot.

Cecil hums. “You do not understand the full breadth of fae magic, Samson. If we have the item that cursed you, I have people who work for me who could study it, learn the magic used to enchant it, and break it. The magic on the item as well as the curse on you.”

My spine goes straighter as the carriage rocks. “You said fae curses can’t be broken.”

“No. I said it was unlikely that your curse would be broken. And it was, given you had lost the item. But now?” His eyes spark, the first sign of life, but I don’t trust it. Can’t let myself.

I lost the item because I was a child, a scared kid, you prick.

My hands curl, knuckles burning still. “Where is it?”

“Ah.” Cecil leisurely parts a curtain on the window. We’re rolling over a bridge now. I don’t know which one. Still in London. “That is where this differs from my usual tasks for you.”

My insides cramp with agitation, but I don’t let it show.

“How so?” He’s making me ask. Drawing it out.