by Kaylin Lee
It took all my strength not to flinch. I certainly hoped that wasn’t the case. I waited without replying, rather than digging myself deeper.
“The reward. You’re wondering when I’ll cough it up.”
“The … what?” I didn’t have to fake my confused frown.
“You saved my nephew’s life.” He steepled his hands. “Problem is, he went and stabbed one of our chosen sons a moment later. If I gave you a reward for warning Lucien of Andrei’s knife, I’d be picking sides. Showing favoritism. The Wolves don’t like that kind of thing.”
I shook my head slowly, needing a moment to process his words. “I don’t need a reward.” I paused, but the Praetor didn’t seem to mind my contradicting him. “If I may ask, Praetor, what is a chosen son?”
“Andrei wasn’t born into the clan.” Praetor Demetrius’ clear, intelligent gaze rested on me like a focused ray of light. “My cousin adopted him off the streets as a child. We have a way of adopting new clan members—a test then a ceremony—and we call them chosen sons.” He gestured toward me and smiled benevolently. “And daughters, of course.”
He was right. Their ruling families were nothing like the Procus patriarchs in Asylia. “Why?”
Instead of offending him, my question seemed to please him. “Fresh energy. Competition. The clan-born children are raised in luxury, and they get lazy and fat. We take the best we find who wish to join the clan. I like to keep everyone hungry.”
And violent. “I see.” I hesitated for a moment. “Why did Andrei attack Lucien? From the other students’ reactions, the attack seemed commonplace.”
“Clan rules. The native clan-born get to claim their birthright when they want something, but the chosen can challenge them in reprisal at any point the next day. Knives, crossbows, all allowed.” Demetrius waved his hand, as though bored with the gruesome topic. “It evens things out.”
“Thank you,” I managed.
He nodded slowly, his gaze growing distant. “It is I who must thank you, little Western Asylian. Kata, is it?”
I nodded.
“I can’t pick sides. I can’t give you a reward. But I can thank you.” His lips twitched. “Lucien’s my favorite nephew. Just don’t spread the word.” He winked.
A sick feeling pooled in my stomach. “I won’t.” Did he have any idea that his favorite nephew was plotting to betray him?
There was a sudden, muffled screech. Demetrius stiffened. I couldn’t tell where the chilling noise had come from. Had someone just screamed outside the office? Then why had it sounded like—
“That will be all.” Demetrius glared at me. “Get out. NOW,” he barked when I hesitated.
The sudden fury on his face startled me. I tripped backward until I hit the door, then I darted outside and shut it behind me, my heart pounding at the sudden, disorienting change in the Praetor’s demeanor. What had just happened?
I stood with my back against the door and tried to get my breathing under control. From the other side of the door, I heard what sounded like a drawer opening and closing.
Leila and the guard were nowhere in sight. I’d assumed she’d be waiting for me. I started to push myself away from the door, but a strange noise from inside the office made me freeze. Was that a woman’s voice? I thought I’d been alone in the office with him.
“—not supposed to kill them, you fool.” The female voice was shrill and angry, with an odd echo, like it was coming from a long distance away.
Was that Leila? Or someone else? I glanced down the hallway. Seeing no one, I pressed closer to the door and strained to hear Praetor Demetrius’s reply.
“It wasn’t my fault,” the Praetor grumbled. “It’s our partner in Asylia. He learned we were planning to approach the Asylian government, which was your idea.” He sounded defensive, completely unlike the bold, authoritarian leader I’d just spoken to. “He’s trying to unload it while he’s still the sole supplier.”
“I don’t care why it’s happening,” she screeched. “You know you’re not supposed to kill them. That’s the whole point.” There was a long pause, and I could hear a roaring noise, like the rushing of water. “We chose you because you had control of the city. If you can’t even control your own partners …” The voice let out a furious, wordless growl that raised the hair on my arms. “Idiot. You’re just as worthless as that old fool Drusilla. I don’t know why we still put up with you and your silly demands.”
Impossibly, Praetor Demetrius was silent for a long moment. I couldn’t believe that such a powerful man would allow this person to berate him without argument.
“I’m sorry, Master,” he finally ground out. Even through the closed door, I could hear the resentment in his voice. “Please, forgive your servant.”
The humiliating words made me shiver. Who could possibly have more power than Praetor Demetrius?
“I don’t care if you’re sorry or not,” the voice hissed. “Your pathetic Fenra words mean nothing to me. We’ll have to replace aurae with something more suitable for fools like you and your partners.” My stomach plunged. Aurae. She’d said it loud and clear. “Pick it up in five days. Don’t sell anything else in the meantime, or our agreement is through. The entire agreement,” she added ominously. “And get ready to travel. You’ll be taking the new vials to Asylia as soon as they’re ready. We can’t have the Asylians killing off their own people before we’ve made full use of them.”
Chapter 23
I stood stock-still, my ears roaring, as though unable to accept what they’d just heard.
A pair of flirtatious voices, male and female, startled me out of my daze. Leila and the guard were nearby, apparently stealing a few moments alone.
I pushed away from the door. Someone—the owner of that high, chilling voice—was providing the aurae that Demetrius sold in both Draicia and Asylia. You know you’re not supposed to kill them, the voice had said. That’s the whole point. The Wolves were involved, just as Grandmother had always suspected. But they weren’t the only ones.
Someone had a purpose for aurae. The thought was so incomprehensible, it made my head hurt.
Somewhere down the hallway, male voices echoed. Men were coming. What would Demetrius do if he realized I’d still been standing right outside his office door during that conversation?
I padded quickly down the hallway, away from the voices coming from the front entrance. One door farther down the hallway was partially open, and I heard Leila giggle softly. I held my breath and tiptoed past it. The next door was shut. I paused but didn’t hear anyone inside. The male voices sounded closer. They’d be within sight of me any moment now. This was my best chance. I slipped into the room and shut the door as softly as I could.
The unlit room was full of shelves and boxes. Flurries of dust disturbed by my entrance danced in the limited light. Slowly, my eyes adjusted. There were six rows of towering shelves that were so full of boxes they sagged beneath the weight.
I flipped open the nearest box. A stack of paper peeked out. The top sheet was a form covered in meticulous handwriting. A date, a company name, and a list of products and buyers. After a moment, I recognized the company name. It was a record of transactions—what the Wolf clan’s companies had produced and who had purchased it. I flipped to the next sheet. Another list of products from the same day, six years ago. I must have found their records archive.
I put the papers back, closed the box, and pushed it back into place on the shelf, my head spinning. Demetrius was selling aurae through a partner in Draicia, a partner who’d apparently just started dumping his aurae into the market, causing the aurists in Asylia to die from overuse. My throat tightened at the thought. How many would be lost because of aurae? When would it finally end?
The voices in the hallway got louder. I held still and waited as a door opened and shut. It sounded like they’d just entered Demetrius’s office. I could leave the villa now and pretend I’d gotten lost. But how was Demetrius getting aurae into Asylia?
Ever
y single person and crate that entered our gates was inspected by trackers and purifiers for traces of the plague. Surely purifiers and trackers would have caught a shipment at some point in the past two years. And aurae had been trickling through the city for thirteen years, even while the city gates were closed. It didn’t make any sense.
A cold, arrogant voice echoed in my ears. How many of them are aurists? Dukas had claimed to control the quarter guards. What if the same aurae-fueled corruption had spread through the trackers and guards at the city gates?
My heart pounded. I had no way of knowing when the men would leave the Praetor’s office. I had to get out of the villa, but I couldn’t leave quite yet.
Dukas had found vials of aurae in a stolen crate full of imported spirits thirteen years ago. What if Demetrius had used his clan’s official exports to send aurae to Asylia? I flipped open the next box and the next, working my way down the row between shelves with shaky, hurried movements. Eight years ago. Nine. Ten.
“Finally!” I breathed. Thirteen years ago. The stack of papers inside the box was thin. No doubt, the year the plague began had been poor for production. I didn’t dare linger any longer. I folded the records and shoved them into the bodice of my dress, then I loosened my red sweater so it hid the extra bulk. I glanced down. It looked sloppy, but no one would guess what my dress held.
I closed the box and shoved it into place, then I went to the door and listened. The hallway was quiet. I took a deep breath before I slipped into the empty hallway. My heart in my throat, I crept quietly past the room where Leila and the guard had been, which was now silent. Then I passed Demetrius’s office.
“—told you idiots a thousand times,” Demetrius was saying, his voice furious. “Don’t give them more than they can take. A dead customer is no longer a customer.”
“Yes, sir,” one man said.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. We can’t sell until the new shipment comes.”
“But we’ve got plenty—”
“I said we can’t sell,” Demetrius barked. “Nothing for the next five days. Not a drop. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, his voice more subdued.
I slowed by the door, unable to resist listening longer.
“And tomorrow, I want you to get me a list of any Wolves who’ve touched the stuff.”
“Like Patra?” said the first man.
“Not just Patra. He was a full aurist. I’m talking about anyone who’s taken the slightest breath—if they’ve indulged, even once, I need their name. No one in our clan can touch it. Everyone stays clean. That’s the rule. It’s always been the rule. And now we have to clean house. I’m not taking any chances.”
After an uneasy silence, the men agreed. How many of them had been secretly using aurae, just like Patra?
Lucien Patra. Had Lucien’s father been an aurist?
My chest ached at the thought. I tore myself away from the door and hurried down the hallway as quietly as I could, my head spinning with all the new, horrifying things I’d just learned.
I was nearly to the front entrance when I turned a corner and ran smack into a large, powerful torso. “I’m so sorry—”
“Ruby.” Lucien gripped my arm and kept me from darting around him.
My legs wobbled with relief when it finally registered who was holding me. “Lucien, I—”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming here after what you did.” His voice was low, his expression dark and forbidding.
I wrinkled my forehead. “What did I do?”
He held up a newspaper and tapped the front-page article. A shiver ran down my spine at the eerie sight of my own words, now nearly two weeks old. It was the piece I’d written about Zel, describing how she’d grown up hidden in a tower in Draicia’s Wasp clan territory and how she’d spent thirteen years hiding in an Asylian bakery. It must have published just after I left Asylia, and only now had that edition of the Herald made it to Draicia. “It’s just an article,” I said, but my voice was shaky. “And I took the precaution of using a new name here.”
Lucien pressed his lips into a thin line. “I told you to go home. How many times—” He broke off and shook his head, his grip on my arm tightening for a moment. “I can’t protect you, do you understand? You wrote a sympathetic article about the woman who murdered our clan leader thirteen years ago. Demetrius will have to kill you. He won’t have a choice.”
A strange pressure began to build in my chest. “Does anyone know I wrote it?”
“Not yet,” Lucien growled. “But it’s only a matter of time before he figures it out. You should’ve told me you’d written this article. You should’ve told me it was coming out.”
“I didn’t think—”
“You never think.”
I reached out and stripped his grip from my arm. “That’s not true,” I ground out, narrowing my eyes at him. Sometimes it felt like all I did was think!
A flash of regret darted across his face, but it disappeared almost immediately. Robbed of his grip, his big arms hung loose at his sides. “You never should’ve come here,” he said again, slightly more subdued. His voice was hushed, but I could still read the exasperation in his tone. “Why didn’t you listen to me?”
Because you need me! I stared at him for a moment, taking in the familiar frustration in his gaze and wishing he would look at me with appreciation or admiration for once. A foolish wish. Finally, I shook my head. “I’m doing the right thing, Lucien. And as long as I have the ability to keep moving forward, I will never let this story go. It’s that simple.”
Now that I knew someone else was behind aurae—and that they had a mysterious purpose for it, of all things—I couldn’t give up, no matter how dire things got. I didn’t have a choice.
Not waiting for his response, I darted past him, turning my torso so he wouldn’t brush up against the records I’d hidden in my dress. Then I left the villa without a backward glance.
Chapter 24
Outside the villa, I paused, wondering if I was supposed to return to the library or if I’d get in trouble for even more unaccompanied wandering of the Wolf compound than I’d already done.
“Kata!” Professor Kristof’s voice made me jump.
He was exiting the main villa, a relieved smile on his face. I waved and joined him to walk toward the front gate. “How did the rest of the session go? I’m sorry I had to leave so abruptly.”
“I’m glad you’re well.” He smiled wryly. “It didn’t last long after you left. Lucien seemed … ah … distracted. And once he left, the rest of them drifted away too. Apparently, there was a new issue they had to attend to.”
“Oh.” Perhaps Demetrius had already begun rounding up Wolves to prepare for the new plans. I shivered. I wanted to pull my sweater tighter, but I was afraid it would make the papers rustle. “So we can leave now?”
“Apparently.”
We were nearly to the front gate when a familiar female voice called out, “Wait!”
My blood seemed to freeze in my veins. Leila strode toward us, her expression annoyed. Did she know I’d lingered outside the office?
“Professor,” she huffed when she got closer, clearly annoyed at having to follow us out. “This is for you.” She spared me an icy glare before returning to the villa.
I released a breath. Apparently not.
Professor Kristof opened the folded paper she’d given him. His brow furrowed as he read its contents. Then his mouth cracked into a wide smile. “Apparently, someone convinced the Praetor to re-open the University of Draicia.” Professor Kristof’s eyes glinted with humor from beneath his bushy gray eyebrows. “He says he’ll issue a city-wide decree that the university is under the protection of the Wolves, and he’s sending funds in the morning to help with the biggest repairs to the main building.” Then he resumed walking toward the gate, leaving me gaping at his back. “I knew it would be a good idea to hire you,” he tossed over his shoulder.
~
We
ate a small midday meal back at the market, tossing back extra cups of coffee. “Get ready,” Professor Kristof said from over his cup’s rim as steam fogged his glasses. “Every building on campus is in bad shape, but the main building is the worst.”
I took a big gulp of coffee. “I’m not worried,” I said. “I can handle a mess. You should see the—” I shifted. I’d almost mentioned the Herald’s ladies’ dormitory. “Where I lived in Asylia. I know how to clean. But do you mind if I stop back at the boarding house first? I just need to take care of something.” As I spoke, the papers I’d stuffed in my dress poked me in the breast. “Soon.” If I had to wait much longer, I’d simply lose patience and rip them out of my bodice here and now, and Professor Kristof would learn that I’d stolen papers from his university’s only benefactor.
“Go ahead.” The Professor had been a happy bundle of energy ever since he’d received the note from Praetor Demetrius. “I’ll meet you there. You’ll have to forgive me for being eager to get started.”
I stood awkwardly, the papers jabbing my stomach. “Completely understand. See you soon.”
Back at the boarding house, I drew the stolen records out of my dress and fanned myself with them. I’d made it, and I’d only gotten a few intimate papercuts during the demicoach ride for my trouble.
Guilt warred with a sense of victory and no small amount of exhilaration. I’d never done such an underhanded thing to get information for a story. No doubt, if Lucien knew what I’d done—and if he wasn’t so determined to send me home—he would have been impressed with my boldness today. “Extreme methods,” I muttered under my breath as I adjusted my dress. “Is this what you had in mind, Lucien?”
I hid the papers beneath a loose floorboard I’d found that morning. It almost hurt to leave them behind at the boarding house, but I’d have time to review them tonight when I was done helping Professor Kristof. I couldn’t leave him alone to tackle what was likely the biggest development since the plague.
If only I could shake the quiet sense of unease that made me wonder why Praetor Demetrius had decided to re-open the university today, of all days. Was his decision related more to the chilling conversations I’d overheard than my attempt to persuade him?