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Chapter 44

August

He sensed her before he saw her.

Like a snap of energy in the air before a lightning storm as she took the seat at the bar next to him.

“Are you going to offer to buy me a drink?” The rasp in Nora’s voice drew his gaze up from the glass in his hand.

She was wearing her own face. No glamour, no disguise. She looked like Nora. Except not like he had ever seen her.

Her clothes were torn and singed. Her skin was riddled with bloody scratches. Her hair was caked in ash and grime.

And then there were her eyes.

All it took was one look at her for all of August’s anger at her to evaporate.

He fought the impulse to reach for the bloody scratches across her face. “Nora…” One of the gouges was dangerously close to her eye. He clenched his fist on the bar. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I wish I knew.” One of the cuts in Nora’s hands had reopened, and August watched her wipe away the blood absently. “But I can tell you for sure it wasn’t the Grims, no matter what the papers say tomorrow. And that it must be something terrible if my grandmother would rather give our enemies an invented victory than have us know the truth.”

Just yesterday, she’d sworn up and down he’d never see her again. August had imagined her coming back. He’d practiced smug satisfaction and a smart comment for her when she did. But the only thing that he felt now was a deep pit of fear of whatever had done this to Nora.

“Fine, if you’re not going to be a gentleman, I can get my own drink.” Nora leaned over the bar, grabbing a bottle and a grimy-looking glass. The barman turned, a reproach on his lips that died the moment he caught sight of her. August waited as Nora uncorked the bottle and poured. Her hand shook, just for a second. He thought about reaching out, closing his hand around hers. But she steadied the lip of the bottle on the rim of the glass to hide her trembling.

“You didn’t come a dozen circles out of your way for a cheap glass of whiskey,” he said when she’d snapped the drink back.

“I had a thought.” Nora poured herself a second glass.

August couldn’t help himself. “You were bound to have one eventually.”

Her mouth quirked up, a bit painfully. “There would be no Veritaz if my mother hadn’t died.”

“Insightful.” August turned his glass thoughtfully against the bar. “You know, it reminds me of something I said days ago at the Veritaz Ceremony.”

Standing in the garden on the first day they’d met, he’d told her that people besides the Grims had reasons to want her mother dead. People closer to her.

Finally, Nora looked up and said the last thing he expected to hear. “You were right. About my family.”

Somehow he knew she didn’t just mean about how the Heiress’s death might benefit them. She meant about the fight they’d had on the river embankment. She meant about the accusations he had thrown at her about choosing to do nothing when she could do everything. She meant that she had been wrong. “I thought there were lines my family wouldn’t cross. But my family did something terrible today that they don’t want me to know about. I want the truth, no matter what it is. If it’s Isengrim, then I will hunt him down. But if someone in my family killed my mother in order to trigger a new Veritaz and take the heirship…then I need to know.”

Just hours ago, Mr.Vargene had made clear a story pointing fingers at the Grims for Verity’s death would never see the light of day at the Bullhorn .

The murder of Verity Holtzfall was a story that might make August’s name. He couldn’t afford to be chasing unprintable stories. But the Heiress dying by the hand of another Holtzfall…August pushed his drink away. “Who are you accusing, exactly?”

“Aunt Patience,” Nora said, not hesitating. “Uncle Prosper needs the money more, but he isn’t smart enough. He’s still at gambling tables every night, sure the next hand is going to pull him out of the hole. Aunt Patience, though…she gets things done. She pulled strings to get Modesty into the movies. And she’s hated my mother since I can remember.”

“What about Grace Holtzfall?”

“She hates Aunt Grace too,” Nora said.

“No, I mean…” August tapped his fingers against the glass. Someone might go a long way to bring their exiled daughter back into the picture. To set her up to snatch back the victory that had eluded them seventeen years ago.

Nora was smart. She would be thinking the same thing. But she pressed her lips together. “Aunt Patience is more likely.”

“And you’re sure you’re not just saying that because her daughter is currently winning the Veritaz?”

“Modesty will not be Heiress.” Nora’s eyes shot up, locking onto him so fast that for a second, August stopped breathing. And in that moment, for the first time, August saw all of her.

He had seen Nora, the girl who was brighter and funnier and more beautiful than anyone who saw her photograph from afar could possibly understand. But now she was showing him the dangerous side of Honora Holtzfall, unguarded.

The Honora Holtzfall he had first met…she wore diamonds and an unintimidating facade so that she didn’t scare anyone.

But this Honora Holtzfall was pure power.

She was the intangible force that came from a family that had stood for centuries while kings and queens toppled around them. The heiress of two bloodlines that traced back centuries on either side. Deep into the roots of the enchanted woods and the blistering dunes of the desert. The power of someone whose blood overflowed with sheer magic.

Honora Holtzfall wasn’t just a girl, she was a descendant of inventors, desert sultans, and honorable woodcutters. Of rulers and warriors and of survivors in a deadly game played generation after generation.

She pulled a paper napkin from over the bar, quickly scribbling a few words on it.

“This is the answer Oskar Wallen wanted. Who Lotte’s father is.”

The pull of the story was like a fishhook drawing August forward, back into Nora’s game, but even he stopped at this. “You’re sure you want to give him this?”

“I’m done being loyal to a family that has never been loyal to me. Give Oskar my message, and tell him a deal is a deal. I want the name of the cop who framed Lukas Schuld. And then you and I will be having a word with him.”