by Amanda Foody
“So that’s why there aren’t any whiteboots in Olde Town?” she asked. “That’s why the bridge was already cleared?”
Levi nodded. “I didn’t want to tell you because—”
“Because it’s another secret to keep from Vianca,” she finished. Admittedly, that was a worthwhile reason. If the tables were reversed, she wasn’t sure she’d have behaved any differently. “But...if she does find out...” A shiver of fear ran down her spine. Maybe—as irritating as it was to admit—he shouldn’t have told her after all. “She’ll kill you, Levi.”
He snorted. “Vianca would never kill me.”
“You didn’t see her today, since Harrison’s candidacy was announced. She was humiliated...and furious.” All that belief in legacy, and her legacy had betrayed her.
“Even so, we won’t need to worry about Vianca forever. Harrison intends to kill her.”
Enne’s eyes widened. It felt wrong to wish for murder, but Vianca Augustine was an exception. “When?”
“After the election, should he win,” Levi said. He leaned against the wall, his gaze fixed out the window. “I can’t be the one to pull the trigger, but I’ll help him...in whatever way I can. It’s not just about my freedom—it’s also about yours. I want to make that right.”
“I don’t blame you for introducing me to Vianca,” she murmured. “You know that.”
His expression told her he felt otherwise. Despite everyone in the museum toasting his triumph, Levi looked ill. His eyes were sunken, and his voice weak.
“You were sent to the Shadow Game for no fault of your own, but I wasn’t,” he said. “I’d cheated half the city. And I can’t take back the things I did to you, or to Chez, or to Reymond, but I can make penance.”
She’d had no idea Levi felt that way. Maybe she’d been too harsh with him. It’d been hard not to look at this party and the silver card in his pocket and assume his fame had gone to his head.
“I don’t think you made that many mistakes, Levi,” she told him, joining him beside the window. The cool air made chills creep across her skin. “You’re just punishing yourself. I was at the Shadow Game for hurting Sedric Torren—and not just because Vianca made me. Because I wanted to hurt him.”
Levi shook his head. “I found out this morning that Chez died from the wounds I gave him. Sedric deserved to die—Chez didn’t.”
Enne stilled. “Do the Irons know?”
“Everyone knows.”
“But...the party... I thought Chez used to look after them.”
“He did.” Levi’s voice was distant, somewhere else. “For months at the end of the scheme, I was paying my way out by stealing from the Irons. And I’m scared there’s nothing I can do to make up for that.”
Enne could never imagine stealing from her friends, but Levi had been desperate. Before she’d come to New Reynes, he’d suffered Vianca alone.
“Did Chez know?” Enne asked.
Levi shook his head. “He would’ve tried to kill me much earlier, if he had. Mansi found out, and now she’s gone. I don’t blame her.”
Enne was about to tell him that she didn’t think any less of him, that she knew him. He was loyal and clever and good, and no matter what mistakes he’d made in his past, he deserved his successes now. She was even about to reach for him, her own embarrassment and bitterness be damned.
But then he continued. “There’s something else. Harrison wants information on the Torren Family. He asked me to send someone inside their empire, to find out who the next don would be. Someone I could trust.”
“Jac,” she said. The person Levi trusted most in the world.
“He wouldn’t want me telling you this.” He sighed and rested his head against the doorframe. “But I think it’s important you understand why I’ve done what I have.”
“You don’t need to keep making me understand. I don’t think you’re half as terrible as you seem to. Selfish and infuriating, maybe, but not terrible.”
He smiled weakly. “A few years ago, Jac was working a job that got him mixed up with Lullaby, a Torren-owned drug—one sold all up and down Chain Street.”
Enne’s breath hitched. She hadn’t known that.
“He was addicted for almost a year. It happened around the same time I started working for Vianca, so I hardly ever saw him. Sometimes he’d disappear for weeks on end. He ran himself broke. Every time we met, I didn’t know which Jac I would face—the one lulled and empty, or the one who was withdrawing...and angry. For a while, I hated him. He’d say awful things. He’d go through these cycles over and over, until it nearly killed him.” Levi drew in a shuddering breath, a haunted look crossing his face. “After I dragged him out of that place and he realized he’d overdosed, he promised he’d get clean. And he did.”
Enne stared at the sparkling city skyline because it was easier than looking at him. “And after all of that, you sent him to the Torrens?” In some ways, that seemed a worse crime than killing Chez. Jac was Levi’s best friend.
“I never should’ve asked him to do this. But he agreed. He wanted to do it.” Levi squeezed his hands into a fist. “So if one more person smiles at me or cheers for me, I think I’ll be sick again.”
Enne noted the word again and softened her voice. He didn’t need someone else to hate him when he clearly already hated himself. “Lucky for you I wasn’t going to do either of those things.”
“What will you do then? Leave?”
“Do you want me to leave?”
He laughed hollowly. “No. I want everyone else to leave, but not you.”
Enne tried not to dwell on what his words could mean. He was the one who’d taught her to second-guess herself.
“I thought the deal with Harrison would make me feel more in control. And then the wager with the other lords. What happened today at the bridge.” He closed his eyes. “I don’t feel in control.”
“For what it’s worth,” she told him, “I forgive you. I forgive the terrible choices you made, even if you don’t forgive yourself. Because I understand why you made them, more than Mansi or Jac or anyone. I know what it’s like to feel helpless around Vianca. I know how it feels to have no control.”
For the first time since they entered the room, he turned to look at her, and the city lights shining through the window cast splintered shadows across his face.
“You understand better than anyone,” he murmured. “But you have no idea how hard it is to control myself, when...”
He stepped closer, close enough to touch her, and Enne didn’t trust herself to move. She shouldn’t still want him, not after the rejection, the secrets, but it was hard not to reach for him. And so she focused her gaze on the floor and the shards of glass beneath their shoes, reminding her how easily another move could cut.
“I don’t...” Levi swallowed and slid his hand around her waist, pulling her into him. His hand cupped her cheek, and he tilted her chin up to look at him and the distress in his eyes. “I don’t accept your forgiveness.”
He squeezed the fabric of her dress, making its sleeve slip from her shoulder. Gently, he slid her hair to the side and brushed his lips against her bare skin. She shivered. All of his touches were slow and deliberate, as if he’d given each of them some thought. And that realization enraged her.
He wanted her. He’d wanted her even when he’d told her he didn’t. He’d wanted her even while he’d spent his nights with someone else.
She wanted to slap him. She wanted to kiss him and draw an apology from between his lips.
Instead, she whispered. “You’re still keeping secrets.” Because Levi was right—she understood better than anyone, and so she was the only one with the power to forgive him. And that meant there was another secret he still hadn’t told her.
He froze, his forehead pressed against hers. “You’re right,” he breathed, but he didn’t move. “Before Jac agreed to the job, he made me promise something in return. And so... I told him I wouldn’t... That I wouldn’t be with...”
Enne didn’t need to ask him what he meant. It was obvious from the way his hand tightened around her waist, tugging her closer when there was no space left between them. The truth wasn’t that he wanted her. The truth was that he wanted her, and it ate at him.
She should kiss him, just to break his promise and see if it broke him, too.
Instead, Enne hissed, “Why would he ask that?”
“Because Vianca would use us against each other,” Levi answered. “That’s what he said, and he’s right. She loves the idea of us together. We’d be giving her what she wants.”
But even as he spoke those warnings, his gaze still fixed on her lips. Still, this wasn’t desire, she realized. It was defeat.
Enne pushed herself away from him, and he staggered back. “You’re unbelievable. Did you like knowing that I wanted this? That you could go home with whoever you wanted, and that I would still be here waiting?”
He cringed. “No. Muck, no. Of course not—”
“Then you must be terribly thick.” Enne swallowed. She was working herself into tears, but she didn’t care. “If Vianca asked me to save you again, right now, I would. If she hurt you to get to me, then it would work. Wouldn’t it be the same for you?”
“Of course it would.” He started to reach for her, but Enne swatted his hand away.
“You do not get to touch me.” Tears finally spilled down her cheeks. She didn’t care how broken he felt tonight—he couldn’t use her as a weapon for his own self-destruction. “Your promise was useless from the start. Only now it’s worse, because if Vianca used you to manipulate me, it would still work, but I would hate myself for it.”
Levi flinched as though she’d slapped him for a third time that night.
“I’m glad you have your gang back,” she said, reaching up to wipe the tears away. “I’m glad Jac came here with a girl and looks so happy.”
“You know I’m not happy,” he rasped. “I don’t deserve any of their praise up there, but I’m trying so hard to be better. I just don’t know how to be better if I don’t keep this promise to Jac.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “Then I’m glad we’re both miserable.”
She stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her so he wouldn’t follow. When she returned to the party, she immediately made for Grace, who was dancing with an Iron boy. Grace took one look at Enne and pushed him aside.
“That bastard,” she muttered. “What happened?”
“We’re leaving,” Enne answered. “Tell Lola.” While Grace hurried to find their friend, who’d abandoned her music with Tock so they could dance to someone else’s, Enne retreated to the edge of the room. The last thing she wanted was to run into Jac right now.
Lola stormed over, Grace behind her. “Are you alright?” she asked.
Enne wiped away her smudged makeup with the back of her hand. “All this time, I’ve felt like a thickhead, but then he told me that he made a promise to Jac not to...” It felt pathetic even to say it.
“That’s a muck promise,” Grace snapped, “and we’ll kill them both.”
Grace grabbed her dagger necklace, and Enne thought, for a moment, she would actually have to tell her not to murder the Iron boys. But then Grace drew the blade across her palm. Blood spilled on the floor.
“Tell me your real name,” she said.
Enne knew what this was. And she also knew from the fierceness in Grace’s dark eyes that she had earned it. It was the only thing Grace could’ve given her to make her feel better, to make her feel powerful once more. So Enne whispered her true name into Grace’s ear, and Grace spoke the words. “Blood by blood. Oath by oath. Life by life.”
“Thank you,” Enne said when Grace finished.
Grace wiped the blood off on her dress, which was too black to show the stain. “Let’s build our own empire.”
6
“Sometimes they call them the Bargainer. Sometimes the Devil. I guess it depends on who tells the story.
“Legend goes that either the Bargainer approaches you, or you have to summon them. Some people claim you need to stand at a crossroads. Others say to make a sacrifice. But all of them are wrong.
“The only thing that summons the Bargainer is chaos.”
—A legend of the North Side
JAC
Jac stared out the black-tinted window of the motorcar as they passed over the Brint. He’d only visited the South Side a few times, and he always felt dreadfully out of place. Jac wore the suit Enne had bought him—with a checkered shirt and leather shoes worth more than a week’s salary at Liver Shot—and even though it fit perfectly, it still felt like a costume.
Levi sat across from him, reading today’s copy of The Crimes & The Times. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, like he hadn’t slept all night. Jac wanted to ask about it, but then he remembered how Enne had returned to the party yesterday in tears. How Levi hadn’t returned at all.
Sophia was the first to speak. “You don’t like this,” she said to Levi.
“I don’t,” he agreed. He set the newspaper down in his lap, revealing a front-page photo of the destroyed Revolution Bridge.
“Why not?” Jac demanded. Last night, after listening to their plans, Levi had merely muttered to Jac, “I trust you,” before abandoning them to interrupt Enne at a card table. Now Jac realized Levi hadn’t listened at all.
“Harrison wants to quietly back the winner of this feud,” he answered. “Nothing about you is quiet. How are you even connected to the Family?”
“I’m Charles’s and Delia’s sister,” she answered. “We’re all half siblings.”
“Do they know about you?”
“No,” she answered, but Jac knew that wasn’t the full answer—he just didn’t know what the truth was.
“How do you plan on winning this?” Levi asked. “At best, you control one den.”
“I know all the supply routes.” Sophia’s words were smooth from her rehearsal that morning with Jac. “I’ve met nearly all the Apothecaries, who are more interested in stability than loyalty. With Harrison’s resources, we could convince them of my leadership and block Delia’s and Charles’s shipments. We—”
“‘We’?” Levi repeated. His gaze flickered to Jac, and he narrowed his eyes. “All Harrison needed was a name. That’s the whole assignment. The whole p-promise.” He stuttered a bit on the last word.
Jac straightened. “I’m helping her.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I want to.” He kept his voice firm, but he still withered at the dark expression on Levi’s face. Even though he’d braved some of his worst fears these past few weeks—and set them aflame—part of him still looked to Levi to anchor him.
Silence fell a second time, and it didn’t let up until the motorcar stopped.
At least Levi trusted him enough not to turn the car around, Jac told himself. The thought didn’t make him feel any better as he climbed out and stared at the Kipling’s Hotel in front of him.
Even more than its adjacent high-end department store, the hotel was famous for murder. On the first day of the Revolution, the best friend of the prince of Reynes was shot in the head in the bathtub of the grand suite. Now the hotel had been transformed into a sort of museum, with tours open during business hours. The decorations inside had a disturbing sort of glamour, with vases full of glass eyes, and scarlet carpets dripping down marble stairs.
Jac shook his head and rubbed his Creed. He was a sorry excuse for a member of the Faithful, but even he could tell this place was unholy.
A man stood up from a chaise in the lobby, wearing an eyepatch and a slim-fitting suit. Jac guessed him to be in his thirties, and like his mother, his eye was so green it looked like a jewel you could pluck out.
Despite his haggardness, Levi plastered on a million-volt smile and smoothly shook Harrison’s hand. Unlike Jac, Levi wore his suit like it was made for him.
“Have you seen the papers?” Harrison asked Levi. “If I’d known yo
ur stunt would have this level of repercussions, I never would’ve agreed. They’re adding travel and licensing restrictions to those with Talents of Mysteries, like we’ve gone back in time twenty-five years. It’s barbaric. Even if it barely affects the South Side, I still—”
“They’re considering restrictions—”
“It’ll happen, mark my words,” he said darkly. Then Harrison shifted his gaze to Jac.
“Harrison, this is Jac Mardlin, my second,” Levi introduced. Jac took Harrison’s hand to shake, even though it felt wrong. An ex-Family prince and an ex-addict weren’t the sort of men who usually crossed paths.
“And this is Sophia Torren,” Levi told him.
Harrison cleared his throat with surprise. “You look like a Torren,” he managed, and Jac couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or an insult. Sophia’s brown curls did resemble those of her siblings, but the differences between them still seemed obvious to Jac. Her green eyes, for instance. And her lack of bloodlust.
Harrison shot Levi a wary look, one that twisted Jac’s stomach like a corkscrew. They might fail before they’d even had a chance to plead their case.
Sophia seemed to share his thoughts, because she told Harrison, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“I’m afraid I can’t say the same.”
“Yes. Purposefully so.” She flashed a winning smile, and Jac had to admire the confidence of her bluff. It was hard not to be charmed by her.
Sophia’s response relaxed Harrison’s shoulders. “We can talk in my room.” He led them to an elevator, and from there, to an upper floor suite. The morbid decor in Harrison’s rooms matched the rest of the hotel. From the coffee table, a radio replayed Sergeant Roy Pritchard’s same statement about the explosion at Revolution Bridge, assuring the citizens of New Reynes that they were still safe and that the efforts to clean out the North Side would be tripled.
“Ever hear of this station?” Harrison asked.
“Can’t say I have,” Levi answered.
“The host—Bobby Vance—is a friend of mine. By the end of this show, I told him he’d receive a phone call with information about the next don of the Torren Family.” Harrison tapped his watch. “We have twenty-eight minutes. I hope he’s not left disappointed.”
