Pene grunted. “Are you the new boss?”
“No—”
“Yes,” cut in her father. “He’ll be overseeing the exports of the M-Mods.”
Pene grunted. She turned her attention to Tiana. “Well, we have the newest shipment mostly packed and ready to go out on the ships in the next week or so, mister de Rossi. We’re sending them to the Ork kingdom across the sea, where they’re paying with raw resources of their own magic rocks for this load of our magic rocks.”
Tiana raised a brow. “We’re doing trade with those inbred swine?”
Her father shrugged. “They’ve got money, we’ve got product.”
“And with their exotic rocks, we can create new product with different qualities, at a fraction of the price of actually securing our own resources. They only expect half back of whatever we make.”
“Why do they want our shit so badly?”
“I sell to Orks. I don't ask them questions,” said her father.
Tiana wasn’t entirely sure that was wise. The Ork kingdom was not the nicest place in the world. Their kingdom spent nine months of the year in near darkness, and they were entirely uninterested in any other species than their own. Tiana had met an Ork or two and she couldn’t say she cared for the racist snobs.
“Well, sounds great, thanks Pene,” Tiana said to the dwarf, who looked relieved to be dismissed. She went hurrying back to yell at her workers. “And goodnight to you, Pops. Best be off. You know, drinks to drink and women to deflower.”
“Killian,” said de Rossi, disapproval coloring his tone. “I don’t think you understand what this responsibility means. It means I need you here more often now. This is a real job, a real in. Not just an operation in the darkness where you go and beat on people.”
Tiana’s heart clenched. “What about my studies at the University?”
It was where she’d been pretending she was to keep her father off her back during the daylight hours. They all thought she had a dorm there and a different set of friends and a pile of essays. Which, of course, was a bold lie. If any of them ever once bothered to check on it, she’d be screwed. The only reason her father didn’t look deeper into it was the fact she still produced a report card every semester and an essay every once and again. Both paid for to actual students, only too happy and too poor to care if they were selling their academic integrity for coin.
She liked to, on her worst days, pretend it wasn’t so bad of a lie. She really did spend her entire day in a library. Or she did before she signed on to become a glorified babysitter to a spoiled, handsome, muscular prince whom she’d poisoned in the first place.
Of course, she could just give him the antidote and he’d be right as rain in no time, but the antidote was expensive, and well...he was fine. He’d be fine. And she didn’t all that mind taking a break from lifting heavy tomes all day, and fighting droopy eyes as she tried to study the books Master Phineas chucked across her desk.
Days with the prince, if she had anything to say about, consisted of him in his bed.
The image hit her hard of him doing something else in that sprawling king sized bed. One which included the naked muscles she’d caught a glimpse of and an equally as bare her trapped beneath him. She’d felt his arm on her throat, and thinking about it now, she wouldn’t argue if he did it again.
Now was not the time.
Sleep. She needed sleep.
“You’ve been there for four years,” her father said, moving them away from Asha and the bulky guards he came with. “I’m sure by now you can graduate if you wish. I can put in a bribe cross the Dean’s desk if necessary.”
“No!” she hissed in her panic, though quickly swallowed the rest as her father’s eyebrows went up. “I just mean, it’ll be fine. I’ll work something else. I’ll be here in the evenings and it’ll go off without a hitch. On my word. If not, I’ll do what you want and be here in the day.”
“As your boss, I accept this deal, of course. But as your father...Killian, my boy, that doesn’t seem healthy.”
Tiana almost wanted to cry, she agreed so viciously.
But…
“I can do it,” she said and then a quick Killian grin. “If I can’t, you can always ground me? Or sick Tiana on me?”
De Rossi smiled back a bit, but lost it to a sigh.
Tiana forced herself to ask, “Any news of her lately?”
“I got word from Phineas a few weeks back. She’s doing well. Snappy as ever and headstrong as...well, always. I thought it would make me happy to know, but it only makes me miss her.”
“You still won’t bring her home.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
“I can’t,” he said. “This is a life for you and me, my boy. Not for your sister.”
Tiana knew his heart was in the right place, but her teeth clenched all the same. “She grew up in this world too, Pops. She's a Red League as much as the rest of us.”
“No,” his father said viciously. “She is not.”
“So it’s fine for me to be a lowlife gangster, running around beating people’s faces in, but not alright for her?” Tiana snapped. Knowing it was foolish to be arguing about this and knowing it was ridiculous in the first place because it wasn’t even about her, but about Killian. Yet, she could still see her twin’s face all those years ago when her father said the same thing to him...and it still hurt her now to be reminded he didn’t think she was strong enough either merely because of her sex.
“I am not having this argument, Killian,” he said coldly. “This discussion is over. You’ve done well the past couple of nights, hell, the past weeks, and we aren’t going to ruin it now over a pointless debate.”
“Whatever you say, my Don,” said Tiana, barely keeping the bite from her voice. She saluted her father and didn’t give him time to get angrier as she stalked out of the room, Asha hot on her heels.
“Don’t talk to me just right now,” she ordered as they went back the long hallway to join the rest of Blood Alley.
Asha, wisely, said nothing at all.
Chapter 6
“You look like hell,” Nik whistled as she approached the doors to the prince’s suites.
“Sorry, do we know one another well enough that you can say that to me?”
He grinned broadly, unperturbed by her rudeness. Though, since she was feeling particularly childish, he had started it.
“Terrific, so you’re both in moods. You match.”
Tiana sighed. “What’s wrong today?”
“He’s throwing a fit because it’s the first day of the training the new recruits and you still have him on bedrest.”
“Well, too bad. And shouldn’t you be down there being, I don’t know, useful?” she asked warily to the man who was meant to be the head trainer, a step below Roland himself.
“I like to show up late and scare the shit out of them. I let the other men make em terrified of me before I even step one enormous foot onto the training grounds.”
“Tell me, does an ego of this size come with the uniform?”
“‘Fraid not. This one comes from years of sheer will and blatant arrogance. And the hair. I hide my insecurities behind it.”
“Ah, well perhaps it’s time for a trim then. In more ways than one.” She eyed his beard and hair pointedly. Today the hair was up in a bun, but the corkscrews had the habit of falling out of the leather thong exposing Nik’s rounded ears, heavily lobed with metal. She’d noticed it a few days ago; an odd set of accessories for a man of the king’s staff. Usually piercings were something seen and done in the Sludge. And while she thought about asking him about it, she could tell he was waiting for that, and well, she liked to keep people on their toes.
“So, are you going to open the door?” she asked, shooting him a sideways glance.
Nik grinned widely and obliged, flinging it open harder than strictly necessary. She would’ve laughed loudly if Roland wasn’t blowing steam through his nose on the other side.
“I need
to get out of this room,” he snapped.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“You’ve kept me bedridden long enough. The only damn reason I’m still in here is because you reported directly to Marius to make sure I can’t leave.”
“Oh, did I do that?” asked Tiana, flitting past him and dumping her medkit on the table. She could see the cane she’d given him two days ago abandoned underneath the couch. The idiot refused to use it, even though she’d caught him twice now in a heap on the floor, swearing. Or, what she liked to call, whingeing.
The sight of it gave her an idea.
Strolling around to the other side of the couch, she caught the wood with her toe and rolled the cane into her hand.
She looked at him coyly, in a way which sent his nostrils flaring.
Some part of her wished Nik wasn’t still at the open door, smirking, because a part of her was screaming and fanning herself at the look. Of course, she was annoyed too. She didn’t like her orders to go on ignored. He may be a prince, but his authority, in her opinion, had hardly ever affected her.
Sure, she was a smiling, cheerful citizen of Adalin. However, her Don came first and he held her respect before any king...and while she was well aware her idiocy was only being allowed because for some reason the man seemed to find it charming, there might be a day when he did not.
Which, of course, was precisely what Phineas had spent the morning hissing at her over his spectacles, recovered greatly from his bout with age and sickness. The Master Librarian may have been dying, but as if it could stop his little spiders from muttering in his ear. He dealt in whispers as much as he demanded them. He knew all within the castle, all the time. Which was precisely why he had been so good at his job when he’d worked underneath Tiana’s grandfather. Or, that was what he’d been trained for. Her father gave him clemency on the behalf of their being good friends, despite their age difference. The mercy did not come without ties, for he was born a Red League and when the time came around, would die one. The sole condition of his standing apart from the movements of the gang was Tiana.
If she was Roland’s babysitter, Phineas seemed to be under the impression he was hers. And her nursemaid. And a governess. And whatever else title he could stash under his robes.
She tested the weight of the stick against her palm, slapping it tauntingly against the skin. “You want to go outside, do you? Lots of stairs up and down, highness. Lots of uneven ground. How embarrassing would it be if you happened to fall when you were monitoring your troops, hmm?”
“I’m not walking around like a bloody invalid in front of my own men,” he snarled.
She smiled. “I see. Then I thought I might read aloud to you an ancient text I’ve been set to decipher. I find it helps, reading out loud. Slowly. Repeating paragraphs over and over again to really glean their full meaning.”
Roland’s right eye twitched.
She thought he might go for the I am the prince and you, peasant, cannot presume to control my speech! but he seemed to be biting it back. Which appeared to be much to Nik’s amusement and helped raise her own eyebrows quite high.
If she didn’t know any better, she might think he was trying to bed her by holding onto his words. As if that were all it would take.
Well, he wasn’t entirely wrong.
That was the frustrating thing.
“How long do I have to use the stick?” he finally managed to bite out.
“The cane?” Tiana prompted innocently.
“The stick,” he hissed.
“I would say about another week and a half. Then we can talk about some walks about the grounds. It’ll be a few more before you can start fighting again.”
“Not good enough.”
“Pardon me?”
He advanced toward her, holding the couch for support, though it did not make him any less daunting. She’d forgotten a bit, being around him, how tall he was. She could almost feel the ghost of him at her back, his axe to her throat and his heart beating against her spine.
A shiver went through her legs. Her heart beat a bit faster as he came up before her and stood to his full enormity.
She didn’t miss the way his thighs quivered under the strain it took, nor the tick in his jaw, but it hardly stole from the overall effect. His hair was silky smooth, just like his niece’s, though his was of a color much closer to snowfall, a contrast deepened by the dark skin he shared with the king.
“I want this stick for today and not tomorrow. And you are going to do it.”
“Am I?”
“Are you a betting woman, Tiana?” he asked, and he might as well have purred for the impact it had on her body. She used all the years of mastering her features to keep them smooth, tilting her chin up to him, feeling the skin stretch around the pointy bones of her chin.
“I am.”
“Then let’s make a bet. Niki bets it’ll take you several weeks before you can get me out in the city again.”
Tiana didn’t even dare look at Nik to confirm this was true.
Roland grinned. “I bet you can’t do it in two.”
She knew he was baiting her, but her entire spine went up like that of a cat as the odds settled on her. She wasn’t sure how he knew or what weakness he could sense in her, but he’d pinned her alright. Fire flashed in her veins and she took a step closer to him, so close, in fact, she could feel his breath on her face and his scent in each inhale she took. His eyes tracked her hungrily and for a moment, she wondered what would happen indeed if Nik was not there and she put a hand on this man’s chest; right where his buttoned shirt was hanging loose and open.
Her throat had never been drier and other things...wetter.
“I’ll do it in one.”
Chapter 7
The grunt and slams of metal on metal were the cacophony to her ears. It reminded her of her days as a little girl, sitting on upturned barrels beside Killian and watching men do battle in the backyard of the Trough; the home of the Red League.
The Trough was a barn on the edge of her father’s property where the Red League without homes to sleep in or families to go to, lived. Bunks littered the high lofts. Chairs, sofas, and discarded mugs of ale and empty dust packets littered the ground in place of straw.
However, on a hot day in the summer, you’d never find a single man or woman inside. Instead, they’d be bashing each other’s brains to smithereens, drinking in the sunshine and flinging sweat with each movement.
As they got older, Killian would wander off, poking his fingers in all kinds of messes and trouble. And it as Asha who took his place on the ground next to her. Asha hadn’t spoken much then, something dark and haunted in her face which even as a young child. Tiana had understood. Some days she saw it on the faces of her father and his crew. Others, she saw it on her own.
Suffering was at the deep core of every person and once you could read it, you couldn’t unsee it, and while her memories of her mother were vague and unhelpful, no matter how subtle Berna the head stewardess probed, nothing came but the wisps of the ability to truly see.
More often than not for a young girl, it felt like a burden and for Killian, well, he’d run away when it got to be too much. He never quite learned to look for the good parts of a person; the power in happiness and pride and of all things, passion.
Over time, it brightened Tiana’s days to noticed these things. In Killian, who couldn’t see past the dark throb of terrible desires, it haunted him.
She could see that passion now, that simple joy. Roland wore it in the sparkle of his eyes and the approving flick at the corner of his mouth while he surveyed the training. Tiana originally thought to stick to his shadow to observe him and while he gave no indication of annoyance, she much preferred hanging back and watching him among his men.
He still had his cane, which was good, but there were times he’d stand at the edge of sparring circles and brace his legs, cross his arms and survey the match without the slightest tremor.
She dou
bted that he noticed. He was recovering quite quickly and it was all thanks to the fact she was liberally slipping refined Yai Root into his honey wine. Yai Root as a powder? Poison. Yai Root as a distilled liquid...the antidote.
The only thing was it was bloody hard to make and even trickier to get right, but she still had some hoarded from her last purchase of it. She'd most likely use it all up on the prince soon enough.
She was sitting beside Gerod, a book at her elbow unopened, while he ate lunch, talking to his partner Yanner with a mouth full of lettuce. His husband wasn’t quite listening, busy repairing a pair of shorts and humming an answer every once and awhile. They were both taking a break, Gerod from intense training and Yanner from the kitchens were he ordered people about even more efficiently than Nik. In some ways, the taciturn man reminded her of the head stewardess Berna who had never been entirely pleased by her and Killian’s presence in her father’s house. Although quite frankly, there was hardly a presence in the world Berna could be pleased with.
Nik, at Roland’s side, screamed at the recruits panting in the circle. He was mocking one of the men’s stances, telling him how to do it like an able-bodied being and less like a limp dick.
The trainer’s cheeks were burned to a crisp in the sun and sweat licked down the side of his face from the heavy heaping of hair viciously tied back.
Roland, next to him, looked positively civil.
He stood tall, wearing a sleeveless shirt so his arms flexed in the sun, sweat slicking his skin like dew. The afternoon warmth had brought him nothing but good, drawing out his coloring in a way which made her mouth absolutely dry.
She realized she’d been staring at him when he glanced over his shoulder and caught her.
His mouth twitched.
She thought about pretending to look away. She could feign being part of Gerod’s rant, and he’d be none the wiser. Only, she found herself in a slow drawing smile.
His green eyes lit up like fire. Then narrowed. He murmured something to Nik, who waved him off with a disinterested look. He’d fallen into a crouch, observing the men’s footwork and even more elaborating abusing their faults and idiocies.
Deception: Rogues of the Red League, Book 1 Page 6