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Chapter 55

August

Prisons were meant to be hard to break out of.

Which made walking in fairly easy.

Whatever barriers had once been here were gone with the blackout. The only light in the prison came from the moon shining through into the open-air courtyard, illuminating the chaos of the prison break in progress.

With the magimek locks gone, some brave but stupid guards were trying to lock the cells the old-fashioned way, but they were too late. Prisoners were already overwhelming them, uniforms being dragged to the ground. Cries of pain echoed around the yard as men grabbed their chance at freedom.

August was the only one pushing the other way, his heart racing as he fought against the flow. He wasn’t sure if it was fear or anticipation. He tried to make out faces in the crowd, looking for Lukas Schuld. The mug shot that had been plastered over every front page.

He found a different face he knew instead.

“Edvard!” The shock startled his name out of August. The hulking man’s head shot up from the crowd, as he stood a foot taller than most of them. August had known Eddie Dahl since he was a boy. He and his father had come up on the streets together. He’d most recently been an enforcer for Oskar Wallen before he went down for…well, enforcing.

Eddie cracked a wide grin. “Little Wolffe,” he called. “What are you doing here? I thought you were staying out of the business.”

“I’m looking for someone.” August pressed toward Eddie through the crowd. The large man squeezed his shoulder in greeting, as if they were just running into each other on the streets, not in the middle of a prison break. “Lukas Schuld.”

“The Heiress killer?” Eddie’s grin widened. “Oh yeah, I know where he sleeps. Come with me.”

Eddie’s considerable size made fighting the current of escaping prisoners almost easy. August followed him to a cell far down the block as Eddie elbowed men out of the way. It was unlocked, but a figure still lingered inside.

Lukas Schuld looked gaunter than he had in his mug shot from just a few weeks ago, but it was still unmistakably him. There was a hollow, haunted expression in his eyes as he pressed against the wall, watching the other prisoners race past his cell.

“Bit of a strange one, if you ask me,” Eddie said in a carrying whisper before giving August one more sturdy clap on the back. “Good luck to you, boy. I’ll see you on the other side.”

Lukas Schuld’s haggard eyes came up as August stepped into the cell. “Who are you?”

It was a fair question. In a prison of men either wearing guards’ uniforms or prisoners’ stripes, August was conspicuous in his rumpled white shirt and charcoal trousers.

August thought fast. “You know who sent me.” He hedged. “It was the same person who paid you to be here.”

Lukas’s attention snapped to August, suddenly sharp. “He sent you to kill me.”

He.

August knew the makeup of the Holtzfall family as well as anyone else in the city. The weak-chinned uncle always skulking in the back was the only living man in the Holtzfall line. Whatever his name was. Profit? Progress? Prosper, that was it. But he didn’t strike August as the sort of figure who would inspire this kind of terror from Lukas Schuld.

Had Nora been right from the beginning?

Isengrim.

She would be insufferable if she’d been right all this time.

“He didn’t send me to kill you.” August needed more from Lukas, he needed to push just a little harder. “He sent me to get you out of here.”

August saw his mistake written all over Lukas Schuld’s face the moment he said it. “No, he didn’t. He wants me to die in here.”

Damn. August had overplayed his hand.

Lukas Schuld made to move past August. They might be about the same height, but Lukas had a desperation that August couldn’t match if it came to it. Besides, he hadn’t been in a fight since he was six years old, and that ended with two black eyes.

But he couldn’t just let Lukas go. Not after he’d come so desperately close to an answer. To the end of this story.

As Lukas Schuld pushed past him, August pulled the small diamond earring from his pocket. Nora’s. The one she had planted on him the night of the Veritaz Ceremony. He’d kept it on him ever since. Just in case she needed to find him.

He dropped it into Lukas Schuld’s pocket as the man fled, merging into the crowd.