Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
“I’ll check in tomorrow.” Yet he lingered, still as a statue, disapproval radiating from him.
She sighed. As with any partnership, there were highs and lows, pros and cons. “Just spit it out, incubus.”
“You do not feel as if tonight’s job was beneath us?”
“Matchmaking a near-extinct species? I’m feeling like a model Skeinian right now!” But when she caught the tightness of his jaw, she groaned. “You’re still brooding about the warlock.” Inkletter refused to let the transaction with Baelor go, his resentment simmering like that lava. “Again, if we hadn’t done that job, someone else would have.”
“That kind of facile reasoning excuses anything.”
She took another slug of mead, rolling her head on her neck. “Why can’t you just enjoy yet more successful missions where no one died and everything turned out well? We’re in a put up or shut up situation. And I can always find another partner.”
“Put up or shut up? Those are my parameters?”
“Yes. Maybe tonight should be your last job.” If they did dissolve their partnership…she could coax him into one volatile, goodbye tumble first. Dinner and dessert. Her fangs ached at the thought.
Two times in the arms of an incubus though? With his fluids affecting her even more? Dinner, dessert, disaster.
And the thought of never working beside him again made her stomach churn. He was dependable, steady. When he said he’d do something, he did it.
She wasn’t alone anymore, and that knowledge comforted her. Especially now.
Lately, Bloodreach felt unsettled, the air charged like a fault line before it split. She’d felt this before, when the Badlands trembled and the sand itself lifted, whispering of catastrophes.
Did some massive force gather energy to wreck everything? Talk about changing market conditions!
Prince Coștin was the epicenter, she knew it. Though he’d raged at first about Lia, he’d since grown quiet, setting out regularly from Bloodreach. Why?
Crawling anxiety skittered inside her chest. Her breath caught, shallow and fast. Like when she’d breathed her mother’s ashes…when they’d coated her skin, camouflaging her from the strigoi and the sun.
That memory always came with suffocation.
She recalled days before her death, Mamă saying, “The strigoi used to be vampires like us. These Badlands changed them, morphed them into monsters. Something in the sand, maybe.”
Nadje had blinked, her eight-year-old mind making quick connections. “Then if we stay here, won’t we turn too?” It was like when Mamă had explained that eventually, even immortals died. The unspoken words: As will we.
Mamă’s smile was forced. “We’ll save up some gold and buy passage out of here. One night, we’ll be free.”
One night? One night? That hadn’t been good enough for Nadje. She’d needed a plan. Gold. Passage. Now.
She’d had no patience to wait idly, still didn’t. Her mother had run out of time and paid with her life…
Inkletter’s voice drew Nadje back to the present. “Tonight is not my last job, because I doubt any others could match this one’s idiocy.”
She laughed, too sharp. “You’d be surprised.” Did he think she was an idiot? Though she usually preferred others to underestimate her intelligence, she didn’t want Inkletter to believe her intellectually beneath him.
He parted his lips to speak, then closed them.
“Something else on your mind?”
After long moments, he said, “Have you fed recently?”
She frowned. “Not in a while. I’ve been surviving on blood mead.” Nadje was no royal, couldn’t simply order up a blood source. She and other servants usually hitched a demon ride to Umber every couple of weeks to hunt shifters or seduce pub-goers with a bite fetish. She’d been too busy. “What about you?”
“Between my research and our work, I’ve little time for sustenance.” Seduction. His eyes softened slightly. “Nevertheless, I am pleased we chose to remain platonic.”
So he had thought about it too. She opened her mouth to agree with him—platonic is preferred!—but her throat burned from a potential lie. She finally said, “We make a good team.”
“Yes. I will see you at sunset tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget the Lykae king,” she reminded. “Tease him with the Queen of Questions.”
He inclined his head and vanished.
Nadje stood for a moment in the quiet, the room too still.
They would make a fortune with King Thane. But even that won’t be enough, she thought, while acknowledging there might never be enough. The heft of her bag of gold felt too light.
She pried open a new wall cubby and pulled out her fourth chest. Counting coins usually soothed her—the rhythm, the shine, the promise of freedom—but tonight, the pieces felt dead and cold.
She found herself glancing toward the shadows, hoping Inkletter would reappear.
Nadje did trust him, and she genuinely enjoyed spending time on jobs with him. Still, if it came down to business or friendship, she would always put business first.
She would now as well. Right? The coins slipped through her suddenly limp fingers to go clink clink clink in the chest. Right?? She tried to reassure herself, whispering, “I’d choose this gold over more time with Inkletter,” and her throat burned and burned…