Page 10

The day passed, finally. He managed to sleep a little, but by the time night fell, Gabe and Malcolm both loitered by the door, their nervous energy cracking like sparks in the small room.

Val and Mari had gone to bed, but Michal lingered in the office, picking up papers and putting them down again just for something to do with his hands. “Did he give a time?”

“Night.” Malcolm shifted on his feet, wearing a long, dark cloak. He kept fiddling with the hem. “Just night.”

And then—four knocks on the door.

Gabe strode toward it, ready to wrench it open, but Michal stopped him. “Wait.” He walked over to Malcolm and took his hand. “Please, please be careful.”

Malcolm just nodded. He laced his fingers with the other man’s, squeezed.

Gabe looked away.

After a moment, giving Michal time to let go, he opened the door.

Finn stood on the other side, hands in his pockets and a small smile on his face. “Ready to plead for asylum?”

Gabe didn’t respond, pushing past the pirate and into the night. He didn’t wait for Finn or Malcolm, striding purposefully down the street, his hood up over his face.

So when the blow came to the side of his head, he didn’t even see who struck it.

Stupid.

He wasn’t sure if the voice was Hestraon’s or his own. Both, maybe.

So fucking stupid.

He should have known this was a trap. Nothing had ever been easy, and everything that was only led them deeper into the tangled web of the gods—of course this wouldn’t be any different.

He should have shot Finn the moment he appeared in Malcolm’s slum office.

Desperation made him blind, grasping at increasingly thin straws.

There hadn’t even been a chance for him to fight back, to kill Finn or his accomplices like he and Malcolm had planned.

It happened too quickly. For a moment, he entertained the possibility that Malcolm had escaped, but when he opened his aching eye, the former head librarian was right beside him, shackles around his wrists.

Surrounded by bloodcoats.

Gabe blinked, trying to orient himself. His head still smarted from the blow, his vision swimmy, but it appeared they stood on a dais at the bottom of an amphitheater, rings of seats working their way down, a square of light from a door at the top of the stairs. A lectern stood before them, empty.

He turned his head slightly. Behind the stone-faced bloodcoats, a statue stood, one that looked familiar.

Apollius Avenging, one hand stretched out to the side holding a moon-marked rock, the other over His head.

But the rock He held in that hand was different, not the sun-carved piece like in the same statue back at the Church.

The stone here had other markings—a wave, a wind gust, a leaf.

No flame.

In his head, a sense of something turning away, as if ashamed.

Gods dead and dying. Well, they’d found a Fount piece.

Figured it would be right before they were shipped back to Apollius to die.

“Gentlemen.” A new voice, crisp and polite, its owner coming into Gabe’s still-blurred vision. “What brings you here at this hour?”

The bloodcoat behind Gabe jerked at his shackles, pulling him upright. “We found who the Sainted King is looking for, but since they were in Caldien, we need dispensation for them to be extradited. It’s simple paperwork; once we have your signature, we can be on our way.”

Slowly, Gabe’s vision cleared as the man before them dipped his chin. Tall but spare, with salt-and-pepper hair and a short beard just showing the first laces of gray. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “And how did you come to find your fugitives so quickly?”

“Finn Lucais,” the guard answered, saying the name with a bit of pride. Talking to the pirate-turned-naval-officer had probably been one of the highlights of his life.

“Ah.” The man—whom Gabe assumed was Eoin Iomare—smiled. “He does have an uncanny ability for giving gifts.”

Next to Gabe, Malcolm hung limp in the bloodcoat’s grip. He’d always traveled with a dagger since they left Auverraine, but it’d been taken, the sheath hanging empty. Not that it’d do them much good.

You have other weapons.

No , Gabe snarled at Hestraon. No.

Eoin Iomare’s eyes turned to him, sharp and searching, like a hawk spotting a mouse. He grinned. “Now, about that extradition. I must say, I am conflicted on the matter.”

The leader of the bloodcoats jerked Gabe again. “Beg pardon?”

“I believe I was clear.” Eoin shrugged gracefully. “Though, honestly, it’s not up to either of us. It’s up to them .”

Gabe looked up, brow furrowed. Malcolm’s mouth hung in a confused gape.

Eoin, nonplussed, gestured expansively and stepped back. “Gabriel,” he said, nodding. “Malcolm. Who are you, really?”

It took Gabe a moment to realize it was actually a question and not some trick. “What do you mean?”

“Shut up .” The bloodcoat behind him dug the heel of his boot into the back of Gabe’s calf; Gabe fell to one knee, biting his lip bloody but refusing to cry out. “This is a matter of Auverrani justice, Iomare. No games will be played—”

The Prime Minister twitched a finger.

Behind the Citadel guards, figures melted out of the shadows. A sea of dark cloaks, all holding pistols.

All pointing those pistols at the bloodcoats.

The guard holding Gabe slackened his grip, reaching for his own gun, but Eoin wagged a finger.

“Touch your weapon and you’re dead. Now, as I was saying.

” He turned his attention back to Gabe, and then Malcolm, as if they were the only men in the room.

“Who are you? Or, should I say, who have you become?”

The question made sense now. Between the double ambush and Finn’s information about Eoin’s fascination with the elemental gods—that’s what he wanted to know. Somehow, he’d put together the dregs of the truth from rumors out of Auverraine, and wanted to hear it from the source.

Malcolm spoke first, his voice hoarse and defeated. “Braxtos.”

The guard holding him backed up a step, his grip loosening as if he wanted to drop Malcolm to the ground. He didn’t, but it was a close thing.

“Excellent.” Eoin looked to Gabe. “And you?”

“Hestraon.” The name scoured his mouth. He didn’t want to play this sick game, but once again, he found himself with little choice. It was becoming a pattern.

“Ah.” The Prime Minister’s eyes glinted. “Of course.”

He gestured once more, a wave of his hand as if beckoning on a reluctant child.

It happened fast. The cloaked figures fell on the bloodcoats, outnumbering them two to one.

Most were shot in the head in seconds, some uncanny device attached to the muzzles muffling the sound.

Gabe fell backward when his guard was shot before letting go of his shackles, pulled over into a pile of still-warm corpses.

Panicking, he tried to wrench out of his bonds, cutting his wrists against metal. Then, a hand on his arm, a soothing voice. “Gabriel. Gabriel, calm down.”

Malcolm, somehow freed, pulling him up from the dead men. He’d gotten the key to the chains; with shivering hands, he unlocked them, helped Gabe shake them off his wrists.

They both faced the Prime Minister.

He smiled at them, warm as a father. “Finn truly knows his way around a gift. Come now, we have much to discuss, and the Brothers have much to clean up.”