by Queen, Nyna
If she had any sense, she would grab her backpack, leave, and simply try to forget about him.
But if she left now, it would be over. Once and for all.
It was probably stupid to hope that they still stood a chance. After all, Darken had had plenty of time to make advances if he’d so wished during these past weeks. But no, they were still in the same stupid place they had been after their night at Blayde’s hotel. To think he could actually fall for a shaper was foolish. No, not just foolish, it was stark raving mad. Yet at the same time, there were these tiny moments, small, heated glances, subtle touches, words, moments when she thought—in which she was almost sure—that he felt the same way she did. And that’s why she couldn’t give up. Not quite yet.
Darken caught her looking at him and tilted his head in quiet curiosity. Heat blossomed in Alex’s cheeks and she quickly lowered her gaze down into her glass.
Bloody body! Just why did it have to betray her whenever he was around! Like fucking clockwork.
She took another swallow of whiskey, hoping that the burn in her stomach would eclipse the burn in the rest of her body. What was she doing here anyway? Harping and whining about her heartache when they had much bigger problems to deal with—like the Master still being at large.
Exhaling, Alex asked the question that the majority of the people in the room were probably thinking but nobody wanted to voice.
“Now what?”
No need to say that their great plan had been ruined. According to Stephane’s sources, the raid of the Bluetail Grand Theatre had gone down just as planned, thanks to his law buddies who’d done his biddings to a T. The problem was that when it happened, they had all been locked up in their suites in the Royal Palace with no chance to see the reactions of their suspects. All their careful preparation—for nothing!
Well, not quite nothing. At least they knew for sure that the Sauniers weren’t behind the abduction attempt, but that still left Devilier and Roukewood, both of whom had returned behind the protective walls of their estates by now where it would be that much harder to get to them. Especially now that every security guard in the country was on high alert due to the murder at the palace.
That murder—and everything Alex had overheard in the maze—was also the best lead they had at the moment, so Alex focused her attention on it.
“How likely is it that they will find Lord Ferhus’ murderer anytime soon?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s only a short matter of time now until they have the culprit,” Edalyne said, fiddling with her glass and glancing around as if she were waiting for everybody to loudly agree with her. “After all, it’s a priority case and the entire head of the guardaí Department is working on it.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Darken’s deep voice was soft, with just the merest hint of scorn.
“What makes you say that?” Stephane asked with a frown as he closed the cabinet.
Darken gently swirled the whiskey in his glass, causing the tattoos on his arms to perform a beautiful, glowing dance. “They haven’t announced any suspects yet. Most likely because they have none. In a case of this magnitude they would do it just to reassure the enraged public.” He shrugged. “If they haven’t found anything yet, I doubt they will find anything in the future. With every passing day the traces are cooling down, and the chances of a significant discovery are only getting slimmer and slimmer. Now that they have dissolved the ball, I’d say that they are tending to zero.”
“How can they not have a suspect?” Max cut in with an incredulous shake of his silky brown cap of hair, quite eager to approach the ‘bad’ topic from another, more acceptable angle. “I mean, it happened inside the palace. Boydon says they have some kind of super security system in place.”
Darken snorted softly. “From what I could pick up during my witness interview”—he pronounced the word with mocking crispness—“their super security system seems not to have worked all that well.” His chiseled face was set into that cold, indifferent trueborn mask that seemed to be carved from stone, not betraying any emotion, but Alex could feel the bitterness exuding from him through her sensory threads. Bitterness tinted with a hint of burning anger, like a small flame, glowing in the center of his core, waiting for a spark to explode into an inferno. “Otherwise, I’m sure they wouldn’t have seen the need to conduct such … lengthy … interrogations.”
Alex bit the inside of her lip. During the coach ride home—after carefully checking if the magic-fueled vehicle had been planted with bugs or any other magical observation equipment—they had shared everything they remembered about their interrogations.
Since Tyler wasn’t there, they had been able to speak freely. Of course, Alex had also told the others what she had found out while spying on Elizabeth Saunier—although she made it sound as if she’d scrammed once Lizzy and Lord Olbec had gotten hot and heavy—and what she had overheard in the maze afterwards.
Turned out that while she had been sneaking along the garden hedges to listen to Ferhus and his nameless companion, Darken had been searching the palace for her. He had only returned to the Great Hall a short time before the dramatic appearance of Lord Ferhus, and the guardaí had jumped upon his lack of alibi like vultures on carrion. In the absence of a real suspect, apparently being what he was made him the suspect number one in this case, and they had interrogated him for more than twelve hours straight in the hopes that he would crack and simply confess the deed. No doubt they would have loved to simply blame this on him—the Forfeit, the Servant of Death. Clean and easy, right? Who cared about motives and stuff like that when you had a born killer at hand?
Alex understood Darken’s bitterness. She understood it very well. It was a mirror of her own feelings. Shapers, too, were always the go-to scapegoat if one was needed.
Max’s eyes grew huge on his face. “Did they torture you, Uncle Darken?”
“Maxwell!” Edalyne exclaimed. She and Josy both looked shocked by the idea.
“No, kiddo,” Darken reassured his nephew mildly, although the smile on his face held a hint of a shadow. “Torture was banned from the interrogation practice of the guardaí more than a hundred years ago.”
Yet it had never been banned from the practice of the Forfeit was what he didn’t say, though Alex was almost sure she was the only one in the room who heard these unspoken words.
Darken reached out and ruffled his nephew’s already mussed hair. “None of us were tortured.”
“Well, speak for yourself,” Alex muttered.
One of Darken’s eyebrows rose in her direction. “Oh? You were tortured, milady?”
“Sure felt like torture to me.” Alex took another sip of whiskey and shuddered. “When they fetched me and brought me down into the catacombs, I thought this was it. I was convinced they knew everything.” The mere memory filled her with bone-chilling dread. “I almost spilled the beans before I realized that they didn’t have a clue about me being a shaper at all.”
“And what form of torture would that have been, pray tell?” Darken’s deep voice tinged with dry amusement.
Alex bared her teeth at him. “It’s called mental torture.”
“Is that so?”
Alex flipped her shoulders. “Look it up, it’s in the dictionary.”
“I suppose. Right between humbug and exaggeration?”
Alex gave Darken her sweetest smile. “How would I know? That’s your specialty, not mine.”
Max snickered. Beside him, Josy made a sound that might have been a hiccup but really resembled suppressed chuckling.
Even Stephane’s face seemed to have trouble staying straight. “Well, that’s one of the guardaí’s preferred tactics,” he finally said diplomatically, clearly trying to draw everyone’s attention back to the topic at hand. “Leading you to believe that they already know everything. Can’t say I can blame them, either.” He rubbed his chin where dark gold stubble was starting to grow. “If they really have no lead—”
“Someone m
ust have seen something, though,” Max insisted stubbornly.
Darken leaned back in his chair, his muscles subtly moving under his clothing, like a panther stretching in seeming calm while silently sharpening its claws for the kill. “Oh, dozens of people saw the governor coming into the Great Hall from the gardens and go upstairs. The next time he was seen, he was bleeding his life out on the landing. But in between…” He splayed his fingers.
“And I was probably the last person who saw—or better heard—him before that,” Alex mumbled into her glass. She exhaled slowly and put the glass on the couch table. “Should I have reported what I heard in the maze?”
“Jester forbid, no!” Stephane vigorously shook his head.
Darken glanced at his brother. “I concur. Since they don’t seem to have anything else to go on, that would have made you a focal point in this investigation. We cannot have that, for obvious reasons.”
A subtle weight eased inside Alex’s stomach. She hadn’t really known the governor and couldn’t pretend to care much about him or his death, but from what she’d heard, he had a family. They would want to know why their husband, father and grandfather had to die. And they would want the culprit punished. Hell, if she were in their shoes, she’d want that, too. Her information might have helped solve the murder, yet providing it would have put her in a precarious position.
Not that they were out of the woods yet. Oh no. As long as the guardaí were groping in the dark, they would pursue any lead, and if, for some reason, they decided to take a deeper look into the affairs of ‘Lady’ Alexandre de Nuy…
Stephane softly cleared his throat and Alex knew what he was about to ask before he did.
“Are you absolutely sure you don’t remember anything else about that other man in the maze, Alex?”
Alex suppressed a sigh. Same question, same answer.
“I wish I did, sugar. Believe me, I do.” She was aware that they were all hoping for her to have a sudden brainwave. So did she. “I’m positively sure that I heard that voice during the Summerball, but with all the people I met there…” She spread her arms and shrugged, frustrated beyond words that she couldn’t fill that black hole in her memory. It was chewing her ass that she couldn’t. Such an important detail… “If I remember anything else, you’ll be the first to know.”
A knock sounded from the door. A second later, Hector poked his balding head into the room.
“Milords. Ladies.” The stoic old butler formally bowed his head. “There is a communication incoming on the private vis-aural emitter line. A Master Diose.” A tiny pause. “Gran Diose.”
“Master Gran Diose?” Stephane repeated with an appalled frown.
A tormented sigh came, unexpectedly, from Darken. All eyes turned toward him.
“It’s Belaris.”
Stephane’s bushy blond eyebrows crept upward. “How do you know?”
“Trust me, brother. I know,” Darken said drily and shook his head with a mournful expression. “I’m not sure if this is his idea of humor or his idea of acting inconspicuously. Both would be troubling at best. Anyway”—he nodded at Hector—“please, put him through. I’ll take the communication in the conference room.”
Darken uncoiled himself from his chair with predatory grace and rose to his feet, motioning with his head for Alex to accompany him.
She needed no second invitation.
Stephane also got up. As did Josy. And, having seen her do it, Max.
“Oh no, you two. Absolutely not!”
Edalyne had gotten to her feet as well, hands poised on her hips, a stern look on her face.
Both kids stopped in their tracks, blinking at her like two startled baby owls.
“There is no need for either of you to be part of that conversation. In fact, it is already quite late. Time for bed, I think…”
“Bed?” Josy stared at her mother with a mixture of shock and outrage. “It is barely past eight. I never go to bed at such an early time.”
“Be that as it may, there is no reason for you to stay here, either.”
The girl looked stricken. “But—but I know what’s going on, anyway! I was at the ball!”
“It’s not my fault that I wasn’t!” Max piped angrily from the side.
Edalyne hushed him with a sharp glare and focused on her daughter. “Just because you were allowed to go to the ball doesn’t mean that you have to take part in any further investigations. You already did a lot more than was bargained for.”
“Mom! I’m not a child. I’m almost fifteen,” Josy said crossly. “You can’t keep me out of this!”
“Watch me, young lady! It’s about time you remembered the rules in this house.”
“But—but Mom—”
“No ‘but-Mom’s! That’s my final word!”
Josy whirled on the spot.
“Daddy!”
“Oh no! Don’t you look at your father!” Edalyne cut in before her husband had a chance to react. “He won’t tell you anything else. Isn’t that right, darling?” There was enough steel in her voice to supply a small army with weaponry.
Stephane had frozen in place, looking as though he’d found himself caught with one foot in a trap and the other stuck in quicksand. He rubbed the back of his neck, not quite glancing at his daughter.
“Well … uhm … you see, pumpkin … your mother is probably right…”
Josy gasped, giving him the deeply wounded look of a rejected puppy. Her father kept looking everywhere but at her. Smart man.
When she didn’t get the expected reaction, Josy sniffed loudly, spun in place and stalked off, muttering loudly about the injustice of the world and not being a child. The door closed behind her with enough force to make the pictures dance on the walls. Stephane flinched. Edalyne let out a long-suffering sigh. Darken, tactfully, pretended not to have noticed anything.
Since his sister wasn’t allowed to stay either, Max didn’t consider being excluded enough reason for another major tantrum—which probably was the reason for Josy not being allowed to stay. Or, at least, one reason; Edalyne had never been too happy with her daughter being involved in their plans in the first place.
The boy bid them all goodnight and obediently trudged after his mother.
Stephane sighed with the air of a man who had just walked through a heavy storm and barely gotten out with his life. Darken, on the other hand, seemed to have a hard time not to smile.
At that moment, Alex was tremendously glad that she didn’t have children.
She glanced at the two men and arched her eyebrows. “Well? Are we gonna take that call or what?”
CHAPTER THREE
THE paneled conference room was mainly occupied by a long, rectangular table made from a solid piece of dark, glowing wood, surrounded by a dozen comfortable leather chairs. Neatly organized bookshelves lined three walls and an all-glass front facing the garden showed off a softly lit indigo pool in the shelter of beautiful, fan-leaved palms, inviting you to take a sunset swim.
Alex gaped. Mother’s mercy and Jester’s grace, these people lived in a fucking resort!
Left of the door, the silver, dinner plate-sized disk of a vis-aural emitter sat on a small, round desk. Its outer ring was stamped with arcane glyphs, some of which were glowing in a repetitive sequence, signaling the incoming call.
After locking the door behind them and attaching a soundproof sigil to it, Darken stepped forward and brushed his thumb across the activator.
Magic sparked, and a three-dimensional image of Belaris’ upper body appeared above the table.
Handsome to the point of breathtaking, his blond hair was gelled into an artful mess just short of unkempt, and his dreamy blue eyes were glowing with a devilish spark in a perfectly shaped face that would give any male model a run for his money. The wicked smile curving his lips promised many things, none of them good or virtuous.
He took the time to nod at Stephane first, “Senator,” then winked at Alex, his voice dropping into a low, seductive purr
, “Lady.”
Yes, handsome and equally full of himself.
Belaris’ attention shifted to Darken. “I got your message that you arrived at the family townhouse.” His smile faltered a little. “Is everybody alright?”
Well, of course he would have heard about what had happened at the palace. Alex doubted there was a single soul in the entire Republic who hadn’t.
“Nobody got hurt,” Darken replied. “At least, none of us.” He paused. “Is this a secure line?”
Belaris cocked one eyebrow at him. “You’re talking to me, man. Don’t be insulting.”
The ghost of a smile traveled across Darken’s lips, turning his face as devastating as Belaris’. Sweet Jester! Being in a room together with both men was entirely more than a girl could take. Alex had to concentrate hard on what was being said.
Darken folded his arms over his chest, making his biceps bulge. “So, Master Gran Diose. Really?”
“Liked that one, didn’t you?” Belaris chuckled impishly. “I’ve been waiting to drop this one on you for ages.”
Darken shook his head. “Sometimes I really wonder why I even put up with you.”
“Because you love me, man. And someone needs to make you laugh once in a while or you’ll get the wrong kind of wrinkles.”
“You’re a pain in the neck!”
“Always at your service.” Belaris performed a sweeping bow and winked at his friend. “You’d miss me if I weren’t there. Anyways, I don’t have much time, so I’ll get straight to the point. Your inquiry about that Dorian Phelps.” His bright blue gaze flickered to Stephane. “The guy really tried to poison you, huh? Say what you want, but trying to assassinate someone in the Royal Palace? That takes some balls. Although it seems to have become some sort of trend lately. Still, I cannot help but admire his boldness.”