Page 18

From the outside, the pub looked like any seedy bar Kierse had ever been to in the city. It had a wooden sign out front proclaiming it Ye Olde Pilgrim.

Kierse glanced down at the sign and back up to Graves. “Seriously?”

“This place is older than the pilgrims, actually. Puritans rename everything,” he said with an exasperated sigh.

“The market had settled in the New York space before the Americas were even colonized. It only began to reshape itself around the Manhattan entrance after the area was taken from the indigenous people.”

“Know-it-all,” Niamh mumbled under her breath.

Graves smirked, taking it as a compliment, before pushing the door open. A little bell jingled overhead announcing their arrival, but inside was loud enough that their entrance was lost in the cacophony.

And while the outside had reminded her of her city, the inside could have been a medieval pub.

A dirt floor covered in straw opened up to a hard wooden bar and a bunch of wooden tables and benches.

A goblin band was playing a collection of old string instruments and singing a bawdy tavern tune.

Mugs of ale were thrust into the air as most of the occupants—a mix of monsters, predominantly goblins—sang along.

“It has a certain je ne sais quoi,” Niamh said.

“Feels like old times,” Graves agreed.

They grabbed a table with their backs to the wall, and then Graves went off to grab drinks. Kierse didn’t trust the ale in this place not to knock her on her ass, but they needed the disguise.

A barmaid in a knee-length brown dress dropped off a plate of crusty bread and cheese. “Drinks are at the bar, babes.”

“Thank you,” Niamh said properly.

The woman winked at her. “Love your accent.”

Niamh beamed. “Thanks, love.”

“Find me if you need anything .” The implication was clear as she bustled off to another table.

“Making friends with the locals, I see,” Graves said as he dropped three pints in front of them.

“I can hardly help that I’m irresistible.”

Kierse ignored them as she surveyed the room.

She’d spent many an evening trapped in a dive bar waiting for an informant or a contact.

It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d honed her skills on the backs of billionaires to scrounge enough of a living.

Now she had millions in the bank from the spear heist, but she still felt like that same girl who had to be hyper-independent to survive.

“When is your contact showing?”

“He should be here any minute,” Graves assured her.

“What do I need to know about him?” She met his gaze. “And don’t give me any shit about how it’s ‘need to know.’ I need and I want to know. Dish.”

Niamh barely covered a laugh. “She has you there.”

“His name’s Vale. He’s a sort of mercenary around these parts. He knows enough magic to be dangerous, but there’s no one who knows the inner workings of the market better than he does.”

“So he’s a warlock?”

“He’s the child of a warlock,” Graves corrected. “Managed to get some magic of his own. Otherwise human.”

“Okay. And does he hate you?”

Niamh snorted. “I really like her, Graves. You should keep her around.”

“I intend to,” he said, holding her dark eyes. “We have a complicated relationship.”

“You and I? Or you and Vale?”

“He has a complicated relationship with everyone ,” Niamh said.

“Is he your kid?” Kierse asked bluntly.

Niamh went still, either shocked that Kierse would ask or surprised she hadn’t considered it herself.

“No,” Graves said flatly.

He glanced down to his phone and sent out another message, clearly done with the interrogation. Kierse was tempted to press her luck. He was actually giving her information, and that was so unlike him that she wanted to see how far she could go.

But before she could open her mouth, a man in black leather lumbered over to their table. He had to be at least part troll, because he towered over them. His skin was a green-gray, and he had so many muscles that he looked part rock.

“Graves?” he grunted.

Graves came slowly to his feet. “Can I help you?”

“This you?”

He dropped a tablet down with a fuzzy picture of Graves on the screen. Underneath the image was an identification number of some sort and a price of two million goblin marks.

“Fuck, is that a bounty?” Kierse asked, scrambling to her feet. “A for-real bounty?”

“What did you do ?” Niamh asked. She rose to stand as the rest of the bar turned to stare at them. Real inconspicuous.

“I didn’t do anything.”

Kierse shot him an exasperated look.

“We can do this nice and easy,” the man said, producing particularly ancient-looking metal shackles. “You come with me.”

Graves plucked his gloves off one finger at time.

The fact that the gesture didn’t terrify the bounty hunter meant that the bounty didn’t include information on Graves’s particular power.

The guy saw an easy score, probably assuming he was a human who had done something bad to someone important. Not a magic-wielding warlock.

“This is inconvenient,” Graves said. “Does it even say who wants me dead?”

Niamh shot him an exasperated look. “As if it isn’t your life mission.”

“Don’t care who is paying as long as I’m paid,” the bounty hunter grunted.

“An entrepreneur,” Kierse said. “You have to appreciate the gall.”

“Sounds like your kind of business strategy,” Graves said.

“Then just pay the guy.”

Graves arched an eyebrow. “I’m not paying him two million goblin marks to leave me alone.”

“Maybe he’ll settle for half.”

“Cease,” the man rumbled. “I’ll take you in however you prefer. Don’t much care.”

All the back and forth between the three of them had been sufficient distraction for Graves to finally have his gloves off. Kierse’s hand was on a knife at her belt. Niamh had taken a step behind them, muttering something under her breath.

“Now,” Niamh gasped.

She and Graves shot to the sides as the table flew forward with the momentum from Niamh’s spell.

Kierse kicked the bounty hunter in the knee.

It felt like her foot connected with solid rock.

He stumbled forward a step, though, colliding with the wreckage of the table and ale that now covered him from head to toe.

The rest of the bar exploded at the commotion. Fights broke out. Ale was sloshed everywhere. Fists were thrown, and goblins tumbled to the ground in a brawl.

Graves was kneeling beside the guy a second later, placing his hand on the first bit of exposed skin.

Kierse could see the gold of his magic ignite in the millisecond it took him to infiltrate the man’s mind.

The bounty hunter lay on the floor stock still and then turned around, looking confused. Graves winced and removed his hand.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“What did you do?” she asked with wide eyes.

He didn’t get to answer, because the bounty hunter hadn’t come alone.

A handful of his minions crowded at the front door, blocking them in.

Kierse glanced behind her to the other exit she’d clocked when they’d first walked in.

She didn’t know if they could make it in time, let alone survive another chase through the streets of the market.

It seemed as if the market was set out to kill them.

As if it were angry she’d refused to give up her secrets so easily the first time she’d entered its embrace.

It had teeth, and she was being consumed.

But she would not give up—not even with a group of bounty hunter underlings at her front and room full of brawling goblins at her back.

“I got the two in the middle,” Graves said before diving into the melee.

Kierse cursed as she followed him, engaging with a female goblin wearing spiked shoulder pads on her leather uniform like something out of a video game. She brandished a curved knife like someone who knew how to use it. Fuck, Kierse missed stealth missions.

Luckily, her Fae sense helped her meet the strike with a thrust of her own knife. Her already injured arm nearly buckled under the force. She really should have taken Niamh up on that healing now that she was thinking about it.

The goblin pressed her advantage, angling her long knife closer to Kierse’s face, forcing Kierse to retreat just enough to get leverage to kick her in the stomach.

The goblin grunted, falling backward a few steps.

Plenty of space for Kierse to grasp one of the overturned chairs and bring it down onto the goblin’s head.

She cried out as she collapsed to the ground. Kierse kicked her swiftly under the chin, and she went fully down. One down, one to go.

Graves and Niamh were lost in the rest of the fight, but she trusted that both of them could hold their own. All she had left to handle was a pair of goblins, one wielding another massive club and the other with a knife in each hand. Fuck.

Kierse glanced around her immediate vicinity, using the mere seconds she had to find an advantage.

“Come on, bitch,” one said.

Time’s up.

She dashed to the left, using a burst of slow motion to freeze her opponents for the moment it took her to jet past them.

They gaped at her in shock, but she was already jumping onto a bar stool and careening forward onto the bar itself.

From the high ground, she hurled herself forward, grabbing onto the heavy wooden ceiling fan with both hands.

The momentum carried her forward into the goblin with the club.

She kicked him in the face with both of her feet and let go at the top of her swing.

Then she backflipped, landing heavy on her feet to meet her last opponent, who was unfortunately not where he was supposed to be.

He’d recovered enough from his shock to reposition, anticipating her trajectory.

A knife slid between her ribs. She gasped in shock as the white-hot pain lanced through her. It was blinding. Everything else evaporated in the wake of that metal sticking out of her side.

She struggled to breathe as her vision went blurry at the edges.

Was this it? Was she going to die knifed in a bar fight?

After all of this trouble, for her memories?

She wanted to know—God, did she want to know what happened to her, who had done it, why it had been done to her.

And yes, she deserved to remember her family.

To know whether they were dead or not. The world had taken so much.

It owed her that, at least. But she didn’t want to die , either.

A man appeared at her side, slicing casually through the goblin’s throat with a sword. His head clattered to the floor next to his body, and she would have gone down with him if the stranger hadn’t gotten an arm under her.

“This one yours, Graves?”

“Fuck, Wren,” Graves said, assessing the knife still lodged in her side.

“I’m…I’m fine.”

“Vale,” Graves said with a desperation she’d only heard in his voice once before, when he’d thought she was dying.

“We’ll take her to my place,” Vale said.

She was hoisted into Graves’s warm, comforting arms, and darkness beckoned.