by Wren Weston
Tristan sat on the side of the bed. “You still don’t trust me. Even after all this time. I don’t even know what to say to that.”
A wave of nausea rolled over Lila. She gripped the basin, but refused to throw up in front of Tristan and give him the pleasure. “You shot Peter?” she asked through gritted teeth, changing the subject.
“Peter? Peter who?”
“Peter Kruger.”
“That was Peter Kruger?” Tristan whipped out his palm and swiped at the screen. “I didn’t shoot him. I just thought he’d make a good scapegoat. I didn’t care who he was. The asshole tried to kill you. We thought he’d likely die anyway. I had no idea…”
“If you didn’t shoot him, who did?”
Tristan slipped his palm back into his pocket. “Dixon. I didn’t know that he followed me. He was on the next roof, waiting for us to finish our…discussion. He’s the one who saw Peter. I tried to get down there in time—”
“Seems like you did.”
“No. Dixon stayed on the roof to cover me. He was too far away for a dart, though. I pinned the flyer on you, and we took Peter with us. Doc’s trying to save him. I hope he fails.”
“I owe Dixon my life. Tell him I said thanks, will you? It might be days before I see him again.” Lila pushed the basin away, dizziness fading, and finished the rest of her water. Things made more sense now. Perhaps she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion, but it wasn’t her fault. Tristan brought it on himself, over and over.
He took the empty cup from her lap. “So who do you think sent Peter?” he asked as he refilled it from a pitcher beside her Colt.
“Chairwoman Wilson. She called a hacker named Zephyr to deal with me.”
“Are you sure it’s Zephyr?”
“Yes. What do you know of him?”
“Enough to know that he doesn’t kill people—at least, not in any of the stories I’ve heard. Why would Peter Kruger take orders from a hacker?”
“Not from him. From the chairwoman. Zephyr just told her how to fix the problem.”
“Okay, so why would Peter Kruger commit murder for her? He could win his freedom for blowing the whistle on a highborn, German citizen or not.”
“If he wins. If he trusted Bullstow to protect him during the process, to protect him once it was over. Tristan, he didn’t do this for Chairwoman Wilson, and she’s not running to Burgundy. She’s heading to Germany. Tomorrow morning, the chairwoman will board a flight with Oskar Kruger and use the boy to gain safe haven, either from King Lucas or from his enemies. No one in the commonwealth will be able to touch her there, and Oskar will no longer be a slave. Peter was doing it for his children.”
Tristan’s eyes widened as he gave her back the cup. “Are you sure? What of the daughter? What of Maria Kruger?”
“I suspect the chairwoman promised she’d take the whole family. She might have kept her vow, too, but I spooked her. She wasn’t ready. She told Valandra Schreiber not to even bother with the other two visas. She’ll take the only person who really matters.”
“That’s what you meant before when you said the chairwoman would have something more damning with her. You knew what she was planning all along, even when you spoke to me on that roof, and you didn’t even tell me.”
“I had my suspicions after we broke into Liberté,” Lila said, and sipped her water. “I didn’t know for sure, though. All I knew was that she was liquidating assets. Oskar Kruger is an asset, one she could sell or use to her advantage. If I had told you, would you have believed me?”
“Of course I would have.”
Lila raised an eyebrow, and he looked away. “If the chairwoman is caught with the boy and fake visas, it’ll be clear what she’s doing. Come tomorrow, she’ll be arrested for treason. They’ll look into her records, and they’ll see how she paid off Slack & Roberts as well as Muller and Davies. They’ll all be punished enough, even for you. Let Bullstow do its job. Sometimes the system does work.”
“Sometimes. Other times it fails miserably. How many people from the poorer classes have to pay for the occasional win? How much injustice is acceptable?”
“How much injustice pays for another bomb? What happens when you hit innocents in the crossfire? Will you justify a few casualties the same way I justify the current system? Do you even care about justifying it at all?” she asked. “You know, I think most of the time, you’re so angry about your past that you want to destroy the world, rather than build it slowly into something new. You want people to pay, people who had nothing to do with whatever happened to you and Dixon, and fuck improving anything for anyone.”
“That’s not true. I just want everyone to be free. What’s wrong with that?”
“Abracadabra,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “All slaves are free. Now what do they eat? How do they put a roof over their heads? How do they school their children? Broader still, how will we grow our food when we have no slaves to harvest the crops? How do we run our manufacturing plants, our oil platforms? What do we do with our criminals? Half the world runs on slave labor, Tristan. Disrupt that, and you’re left with anarchy. You can’t destroy the world, shake it up, and expect it to change all at once. It takes time, time that’s better spent building than cleaning up after an implosion.”
“You don’t give people enough credit.”
“So that’s your way of saying you have absolutely no idea what to do after everyone is free? That we’ll just figure it all out later?” she asked. “You should change your focus to piecemeal victories, Tristan. Changing the world is a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s a lot less dangerous than bombing a city. I don’t want someone’s death on your conscience, Tristan. You couldn’t bear it if you hurt someone.”
“How do you know what I can and can’t bear? You don’t know me.”
“Don’t I?”
“Apparently not. You thought I might have hired Peter.”
“I was shaken up.” Lila said, knowing that wasn’t the only problem. Her shell had not softened while Tristan spoke to her. Indeed, it had just grown harder and harder. The sting of it, her feelings of stupidity, of anger. It didn’t seem to matter that he had explained his intentions.
She just didn’t care anymore. His intentions were sloppy. His intentions had absolutely nothing to do with her, and everything to do with himself.
“What will you do with Peter?”
“If he dies, I’ll leave his body in the old hotel with a few spare bombs. Bullstow will find him eventually. If Doc heals him, I’ll think of something else. It’s hard to have sympathy for someone who tried to murder one of my—”
“I’m not—”
“One of my people?”
There it was. That was what had bothered her the most. That was what hurt her the most. She had been a tool to him at her most vulnerable.
Just like Peter.
He had intended to use her just like he would soon use her would-be murderer.
Dying or unconscious, leaving them both as evidence for Bullstow and Chief Shaw, all to take the heat away from himself and his friends.
His real friends. His family.
What would he have done with her body if she had died?
She shivered, not wanting to know.
“I was worried,” he said at last.
“So you didn’t just come to yell at me again?”
“I was worried,” he repeated, sitting next to her. “Lila, I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
But Tristan didn’t say anything at all. He cupped her cheek and leaned toward her.
His lips slid in between hers.
She tasted whiskey. Her stomach rolled, but she calmed it by force of will.
Tristan scooted closer and wrapped his arms around her. The smell of his soap filled her mind. Skin met skin as his hands slipped under her blouse and jacket, calmly strokin
g her spine, lips pulling on hers, swallowing them up, tugging gently, tongue tracing.
His heart thumped in his chest.
Hers thumped too, but for a different reason. It was the thump thump thump of outrage and anger. This was her chance. This was her chance to get the idiot out of her mind, to finish it once and for all, so that she’d never have to regret him the next time someone like Peter tried to put an extra hole in her head.
Screw Tristan. If he could use her as a tool, she could use him like one too. She didn’t have time for a vacation, anyway.
She wound her fingers around the back his neck, threading through his hair, grazing the scar where his slave’s chip had been cut out. Pulling him to her harshly.
Tristan moaned at the contact, and she flicked her tongue.
His eyes closed, lashes dark against his cheek. His lips crooked into a small smile before meeting her lips for another kiss.
The smile rubbed at her, hit her the wrong way.
She ignored it.
The thin blue scrubs offered little cover, but it was too much for Lila to bear. She recalled the glimpse of him the night before, his chest bared to her, and her arousal deepened.
She closed her eyes tight, only wanting to feel. She wanted him pressed against her, hard, wanting to be lost in his warmth, those hands stroking all over her body. Any hands, any at all would have done the job.
At least his voice was finally silent, their anger spent in other ways.
She yanked the top of his scrubs over his head, and Tristan complied, pushing her back onto the bed, still kissing, moving atop her. His hands, such soft, quick hands, snaked over her blouse as he undid each button one by one by one, his lips never leaving hers.
He undid the clasp of her bra, and she shoved it and her blouse over her shoulders.
When her breasts met the cool air, she wrapped her legs around him, felt his erection against her trousers, watched his face pull back as her thighs squeezed. He chuckled at the pressure and kissed her nose.
She took his lips, hard, hating him for his easy mood. She rocked her hips to meet him, tugging at the drawstring around his waist.
He dug his face into her neck. “Lila,” he murmured, his voice soft, accent heavy on his lips.
He left a trail of kisses across her skin while his hand slid over her hard nipples, warming them.
His mouth moved to her chest. He sucked on her breasts while his hands dipped lower and lower, unbuttoning her trousers.
Every part of her wanted him to touch deeper. To feed her.
His fingers slipped inside her trousers, grazed her, found her clit. “I’ve wanted you for so long.” He kissed her neck as he rubbed her, warmth spreading, gasping.
She nearly came at the first stroke.
Her back arched, knocking his hand free.
Her eyes snapped open as she processed his words.
He wanted her.
She pushed his hands away, pushed at his chest to roll him off her.
Tristan would not roll easily. “Don’t. What’s wrong? You feel for me. You’re wet for me.”
“I’d be wet for anyone right now.” She shoved him away again, but Tristan wouldn’t be shoved. He would not let go. He held her tightly, stroking her back with his fingers as though calming some wild thing, his cheek resting against hers.
He smelled too nice. He arms were too warm, too inviting. He was the warm bed in the morning that kept you trapped when work was waiting.
And this bed was far too confusing.
“Stop it,” she said, stiff in his arms. “Let go of me now, or so help me, I will shove my Colt straight up your ass.”
The mattress dipped. Tristan stalked around the room, sneaking peeks of her body while she clasped her bra and buttoned her blouse and trousers. “I don’t understand. I know you feel for me. Even Dixon noticed,” he said as she fastened the last button. “For a long time, I thought there was something going on between—”
“There’s nothing going on between Dixon and me. There never was.”
“I know. We had a discussion last night. It cleared up a lot of things.”
“A discussion gave you that black eye?”
“There were words involved, too.” He stopped and backed toward the counter. “Am I not good enough for you? Just because I’m not one of those highborn assholes—”
“Tristan, look at me. I am one of those highborn assholes. I’m those people you hate so much, who you can’t shut up about hating every single day. You hate my mother, my sister, my brothers. You even hate Alex, regardless of whether or not she’s a slave now, and I think sometimes you hate me even though—”
“I don’t hate you. I just want…”
Lila frowned as soon as Tristan trailed off. One minute the man was wrapping her up with a bow, ready for the militia to carry away in his place, the next he was making claims on her. She squeezed her hands into fists until her voice calmed. “What? What do you want, Tristan? Because right now, I don’t understand you.”
“You do understand me, or you wouldn’t have kissed me back like that. You wouldn’t have gotten so…” Tristan snatched up the top to his scrubs and slipped it over his head.
“Wouldn’t have gotten so what, Tristan? I’m highborn. Sex doesn’t mean the same thing to us that it does to you. I’m trying to be responsible.”
A sliver of guilt overcame her earlier anger.
She’d taken it too far. He was a slave—an escaped slave, but still a slave.
She was a highborn. No matter how annoyed she’d been, she was the one who was supposed to fence in her temper, to remain moral and calm and temperate.
Besides, sleeping with him was what he’d wanted for a long time. She had no intention of giving that to him now, not after what he’d pulled.
“Don’t try and be responsible on my account.”
“Do you even remember that I kissed Dixon too? Judging from the bruise on your eye, you didn’t take it well. That’s why I can’t go any further with you. None of this is personal for me. It’s just sex.”
“If that kiss wasn’t personal then you need to look up the word personal.”
“Did it look personal with Dixon?”
Tristan wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“I haven’t gotten any in a while. That’s all. It’s something that I will rectify soon, before it gets me into any more trouble.”
“I’m trouble? I’m standing right here, Lila. How much sooner can you get? We both want it. I don’t understand why you’re holding back.”
“Yes, I want sex, Tristan. I’m starved. But you’re definitely not asking for sex. You’re asking for more than that.”
“Is that so wrong?” Hunched near the sink, he seemed so much smaller than she had ever seen him before. “I’m not asking for marriage, Lila. I just want to be with you. I want it so much that it hurts. I don’t understand what’s wrong. You highborns have relationships all the time. Why not with me?”
“I don’t have relationships with people I don’t trust. You want to know why I thought you might have been involved with Peter? How about the fact that you try and steal from me every chance you get? How about the fact that you tried to break into my palm—”
“Not this again. I told you, I never asked Reaper to break into it.”
“Then why did you have it?”
Tristan opened his mouth, then shut it again. “Forget it.” He reached out to turn the lock on the door.
“Don’t contact me—”
Tristan whipped around. “Screw you, Lila. You want to know why I took your stupid palm? I wanted something of yours. That’s all it ever was. It was an idiotic, pathetic snap decision that I wish I could take back, but I never even turned the damn thing on. If I could do it all over again, I’d take your scarf. It was just a palm. You’re rich. I figured you’d ju
st buy a new one. How could I have known you’d be so attached to the damn thing?”
“You expect me to believe that? When you can’t stop taking my jammer every time—”
“I’m a better thief than that, chief. If I wanted your jammer, I could have had it.”
“Then why do you do it?”
He shrugged. “It’s funny.”
Lila stood up and slipped on her red jacket. “Funny? I’m so glad that I entertain you.” She whipped her blackcoat around her shoulders. “I find you funny too, you know. Funny that you’d use my unconscious body as bait for Bullstow, and just a few hours later, you want to use it for something else entirely. Who does that? Who looks down at someone they claim to care about and does something like that?”
She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, hadn’t wanted to admit to it.
Her Colt and short sword lay on the counter in the back of the room, but before she could get to them, two arms circled her, pinning hers to her sides. “It wasn’t like that,” Tristan said, laying his head on her shoulder. “Don’t go. Talk to me.”
Lila shook him off and slipped her Colt and short sword into her holsters. “We’re not talking. We’re fighting. We’re always fighting, and I’m exhausted by it.”
Lila marched out into the hallway and let the door swing closed.
Chapter 22
It was the knock that finally woke her, dimly echoing in her bedroom like a splitting maul against a stump, hacking away at log after log after log. The room was warm, too warm for blankets and sheets. They had twisted around her legs in a sweaty mess as she slept, evidence of her second conversation with the ancient battle queen. The woman had stolen into Lila’s dreams again, demanding she cast her worldly concerns aside and visit the New Bristol oracle.
Chef would enjoy that. She’d had labored her whole life to bring Lila and her siblings to the gods. If Lila but mentioned her dream, Chef would switch off her music and oven, then drag her to the temple, likely taking along a thousand cookies along as an offering.
Lila’s stomach rolled at the thought of food, and the pounding came again. She turned her head, squeezing a pillow atop it, hoping the incessant beating would go away. Soon.