Dark Dealings

by Kim Knox

  Pain tightened in her chest and she blew out bad air. The last of Heyerdar’s magic was gone. “He felt strange. As if something hooked him.”

  “Why did he want you?”

  Lack of trust she expected from Heyerdar and it made her mouth curl up at the corners. “I’m the only thief in the city.” She held his gaze. “Maybe he wanted to play.”

  “What could hook a thief?”

  Ava had forgotten Sahar was in the Chamber. The physician moved behind her to lay a sheet over Narve’s remains, and in that moment of distraction, she almost missed it. Heyerdar looked to Reist and frowned.

  They knew more about this than they wanted her to know. Without the thieves breaking through the wards into the city, would she have remained totally ignorant of what she was? What she could do?

  “You know what hooked him.”

  Reist sighed. “Ava...”

  “The Words.” Heyerdar said, and Reist frowned. “As certain Words make a thief they can also bind them. Mages formulated them centuries ago. The first Word is the tattoo the apprentices wear. To hold back their naturally empty souls and prepare their bodies for hoarding.”

  “Captain!”

  But Heyerdar ignored him. “And there are Words that hook a thief. Mage protection. To say them and use high magic can twist a thief to your bidding.”

  “A mage didn’t do this.” Reist flushed red, anger tightening his face. His hands flexed again and magic flared across his knuckles.

  Heyerdar’s gaze slid to Ava. “Used them before? On her?”

  Ava blinked. Reist hadn’t used them on her...had he? She would know, would feel it deep in her bones the way the thief, Ehren could. Fuck, Heyerdar could twist her thoughts until she didn’t know what she was thinking. “Who would know these Words? Learn them, have access to them?”

  “They’re taught to every senior mage.”

  “Captain!” Reist barked the title. “Enough.”

  “You can let the thieves run free. Or your pet can know what she is and how you control her.”

  “I am not his pet.”

  “And Ava is not under my control.” Reist pulled in a steadying breath. “Physician Fane, thank you. You can go.”

  The woman nodded. “Sir, Captain.” Her mouth moved into a smile. “Ava.”

  The door closed behind her with a soft whoomph of air.

  “Dismissing the staff?” Heyerdar gave Reist a sharp smile and stared up at the curve of crystal forming the roof. He moved around the table, his boots thudding against the stone floor. “I’ve let you play your games here, Reist, but when the safety of the palace, of the emperor, is compromised, then it stops. Now.”

  “And what games are you playing?”

  “Can you have this pissing contest elsewhere?” Ava caught her hand in her hair, hating her shitty, shitty life. She needed to focus on the job at hand. “Senior mages would have these Words. Who else?”

  “No one else.” Reist’s reply was clipped. He didn’t want to share any of this with her. Her friend was gone. Only the mage was left. She would treat him as such. “They were bound to a book in the emperor’s possession.”

  “His personal collection moved to the Institute six months ago.” Her head tilted and she fixed Reist with a steady gaze. “Under your order.”

  Heyerdar laughed. “Your pet’s finally turning on you.”

  “Wait out in the corridor.”

  Heyerdar stiffened. “What?”

  Reist give him a thin smile, his eyes cold. Ava had rarely seen him like this. She’d had the luxury—or the delusion—of working closely with him, of thinking him a friend. “I’m still Ava’s master. She is still my servant and only seconded to you. You are in my domain. So...wait in the corridor.”

  “Tell her who has had access to that book.” The muscles in his jaw tightened. “And now that one of your own is gone, can you finally treat this situation as serious?” And Heyerdar left.

  Reist let out a slow breath and slumped into one of the heavy chairs pushed against the smooth wall. “You implied you were experienced, Ava.”

  She stared at him, completely confused. Had everything he’d just said, how he’d acted been a front? Or was this a front? She wanted to growl. She’d had little to no sleep, her clothes itched and her skin was sticky. And she was hungry. Tabor hadn’t appeared with the promised breakfast...though eating raw meat so close to an emaciated corpse wouldn’t be politic.

  “Untouched, Ava? When I asked, I meant had you slept with anyone.” He swore under his breath. “If I’d known, I would never have put you in his way.” His dark eyes held her, serious and concerned. “Did he force you?”

  “No.” She could feel herself blushing again. She was a grown woman, a thief...yet she reddened like an innocent girl. “No.”

  “He has a power over you now—”

  “I know.” She didn’t want to share what she’d experienced with Heyerdar. She should. In the hope of pricking Reist to jealousy. But she couldn’t. It was private and a pleasure she’d not known before. Something for her. Even if Heyerdar was being a shit about it afterwards. No, how she felt didn’t make sense. At all. “It’s under control.”

  It was a lie. But lying was what she was good at.

  “Ava...”

  And there was the voice of the concerned friend. A part of her wished she’d never started down the path of trying to make this man more than that. “I need to do my job.”

  “Heyerdar has ignored a mage ruling and what he has over you will have to be broken.”

  Her instincts flared. There was an edge to his words that made her wary. “What does that mean?”

  “I’ll have to break it.”

  “You...?” Her heart missed a beat and she was certain her face went completely red. Sex. He’d have sex with her to remove Heyerdar’s control. Her belly tightened. It was what she wanted. It was...but, it was business. Obligation, not something he’d chosen freely.

  Fuck. She couldn’t think. So she fell back on work. “The book the emperor owned? Was it one of the eight we took from the library yesterday?”

  “No. Ava, we have to—”

  “Who knows about the book?” A thought twisted through her head of falling into an insane spiral of fucking Heyerdar and then Reist, one man after the other to make a bond and break it. She pressed her hands to her mouth and sucked in a breath, tasting her skin. Skin that still held Heyerdar’s scent. Mage and thief and elemental all rolling around in the same bed. “Reist.” She swallowed and crushed the image. “They’ve killed so many. That is the important thing. Not who I’ve fucked.” Or who I will fuck. But she couldn’t say that out loud. The one thing she craved was set for her near future...and it scared her. “The book should be in Heyerdar’s keeping until this is resolved.”

  “The Left Hand?” Reist stared at her. “I couldn’t give him that power.”

  A bitter laugh broke from her. “He already has that power.”

  Reist pushed himself out of his chair and strode across the room to a small cabinet tucked away in the shadowed corner. He pulled out a leather-bound book no bigger than his palm. The words on the cover gleamed gold. The Compendium of Words.

  Reist wiped his hand over his mouth and frowned. “Only the emperor, the curators and the Highest Mage have ever seen this book.”

  “Curators?”

  “Karol Valter, Sentos Clay...and Zara Tore are still living. Civil servants without the power to use the Words.” He let out a long, tired breath and pressed the little book into her hand. The gold lettering blazed briefly and the leather stung her palm. “When this is over, this book will be returned to me.”

  She nodded. The sooner she handed it over to Heyerdar the better. The Words caught between the thin pages resonated with power, the crawl of them over her mind l
ike little glittering hooks into her thoughts.

  “He can’t have you, Ava.”

  She looked up. Sunlight edged his skin and revealed a rough bite low on his neck. The bruising was dark. Recent. Had he been pulled from a warm bed and Fallon to deal with the murder of Narve? Was it sex driven by the magic she’d unleashed into Fallon? Shit, everything was more of a mess than it had been four days ago. “He doesn’t have me.”

  And was that another lie? She’d become addicted to Heyerdar before they’d slept together. Now she craved him. She tapped her fingers against the stiffened leather of the book cover. Magic flared, sour and grasping.

  “We have to track down the curators, see if they know anything. First, I need to get to my room.” Ava stared at the book, feeling the hooks that had also grabbed the thief Ehren. “This thief wanted me. Strange to be in demand.” She backed away from Reist. For a moment, in the bright sunlight, he looked grey and tired. What was she doing to him, to them? “Should I report to you at the eighth hour?”

  “Have you eaten yet?”

  A fist tightened in her gut, the bitter feeling turning with it. She had her guilt...but then he was playing her too. Could he be involved with the thieves? It should be an easy no. But it wasn’t. Not anymore. She’d lost that implicit trust in him. “I will. Soon.” She tugged at the door, pulling it open. She gave him a short nod. She had to get away. “Master.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  She pulled the door to the antechamber closed and rested her forehead against the cold wood. The need to bang it hard with her skull was there. She’d just turned down an offer from Reist. An offer made whilst both of them had the scents of other lovers on their skin.

  “He offered to fuck you, didn’t he?” Heyerdar’s low voice cut across her nerves. She couldn’t answer him. “He will.” His laugh was sour. “He has to.”

  Ava pressed her lips together before she turned to him. “Did you know that? So you got me my fuck, one way or another?”

  “Maybe.” He took the little book from her hands. A hiss escaped him. “Fuck, that’s sweet.”

  Ava shook her head, wanting to laugh despite everything. “You’re a deviant.”

  Heyerdar pressed his thumb to her lip and memory sparked heat within her. He closed the short distance between them, trapping her against the solid wood of the door. “I know what I am. I know what you are.” His low, whispered words burned across the shell of her ear. “Enjoy it.”

  She stared at him. Had his actions after sex been his twisted way of pushing her towards Reist? Make himself...unappealing, and she’d accept Reist’s offer and strip him where he stood. She’d put the mage off, so now he intended to play some more?

  He stepped back, a brief smile curving his mouth, and tucked the little book under his tunic. He rolled his shoulders and drew in a deep breath. “I may never hand this book back.” He took her arm and nodded to the antechamber beyond the doors. “They know it’s Narve. They know that a mystery thief killed her. They’re not believing that fact. Stay close.”

  “Understood.” Ava pushed down the riot of her emotions, opening herself up to the natural, cold emptiness at her core. She wouldn’t react. Though the thief in her remembered the fresh taste of the dead mage, a meat unlike any she’d tasted before...

  “Always so hungry,” Heyerdar murmured. “I should do something about that.”

  She should’ve made a quip about her lack of breakfast, but she couldn’t. Not with the heat of his hand around her upper arm. Sex with Reist would take away her addiction. The little twist in her belly was not regret. It couldn’t be. “I need to get to my room.”

  “That’s where we’re going.”

  He pulled open the door, and the mass of mages surged forward. Ava’s hand pressed against the hilt of her sword. Heyerdar’s aversion to her blades itched again.

  “Hand her over, Captain. Your jurisdiction doesn’t cover crimes again us.” It was one of the older mages, Crocale, one who had argued against her inclusion and her staying at the Institute. The old man leaned forward, his eyes cold. There was spittle on his lip. “She killed Narve.”

  “Another thief killed Narve.” Heyerdar’s rumble pushed over their growing protest. “You’re not using a mage’s death for your own political advantage.”

  Crocale’s mouth hung open. His lips flapped. “My—”

  “Do I have to spell it out to you?” Heyerdar pushed forward, the mages flinching from his path. “No? Then stay vigilant.” He stopped before he turned down a corridor, Ava behind him. “And stay out of my way.”

  “Captain—”

  He wrapped his hand around his sword. “Thief Kalle is under my protection.” She heard the smile in his voice. “I think you are all aware of the incident in the library.” His amusement deepened and his gaze flicked across the floor and ceiling. “It works just as easily on stone.”

  “You can’t threaten us.” Crocale didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.

  Heyerdar lifted his hand free of his sword and more than one mage flinched. A low growl rolled up from deep in his chest and Crocale’s teeth snapped together. Heyerdar glared at him. “I can do what the fuck I like under order of the emperor.”

  He turned on his heel, tightened his grip on Ava’s arm and strode off.

  “Don’t like mages either?”

  Heyerdar grunted. “What gave me away?”

  * * *

  Ava stood outside her room. The door was open, a shaft of morning light stretching across the shadowy room beyond. She could smell Narve, hints of her flesh, of the shadow that she’d left in the room. Taking a breath, she crossed the threshold. Heyerdar was silent at her back.

  The room was a mess, her clothes, her collection of trinkets—little things found on her scouting through every level of the Institute—had been thrown around, and her unused whitebane cup had been ground to powder under a boot heel. The energy of too many people crowded the small space.

  Curses dragged black across the bare stone wall, carved into the stone by high magic. Ava winced at the hate they spewed. “Well, that’s not really a surprise.”

  “The mages had fun.” Heyerdar set a chair up on its legs and tucked it under her desk. “You’re Reist’s advantage. They remove you, and his power and position falters.”

  Ava didn’t want to believe him. But it made sense. Why would a mage fight so hard to keep her in the Institute? To keep her by him, tied to him, wanting him. Reist had caught himself the loyalty of a thief without the use of the Words.

  “And my loyalty—” the word came out with more anger than she expected, “—offers me protection?”

  “To gain the loyalty of a thief. That’s fierce magic.”

  She glanced at him, expecting the twist of a smile, but she found none. He was speaking a truth. Yet another thing she’d never known. And now Reist would have sex with her to break the power Heyerdar had claimed. Standing in her trampled-over room, she couldn’t remember Reist as a friend and mentor.

  She pushed her mind back to work. It was the only thing she could do. “So what did Ehren want here?” She stared around the small space as Heyerdar pulled the broken shutters free and more light thinned the shadows.

  The thief was there. The touch of him in the air, the hot hooks of the Words in his bones and the strength he used to fight them. A familiar hunger surged through her. Fuck, she hated her thief nature, drooling over the recent dead. She stopped. It was hunger, yet it felt different, as if it were somehow faded. Weakened. Hunger for its own sake. That didn’t make sense. Unless...

  “He’s been in the palace for days. Watching me for days.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can feel his hunger.” She let out a long breath. “I thought it was my own. The past month...” She shrugged. “The rhythm of my magic has been teste
d.”

  “You could track him?”

  “I don’t know. Telling his hunger from my own? It’s difficult.” She followed the echo of the thief through the debris, skirting his fight with Narve, until she came to her bed. “It’s not the hunger I feel here. More the impression his energy left behind.” Her hand hovered over the rumpled bedsheet, the dark memory of Heyerdar pushing to the surface. Ava frowned.

  The thief had been in her bed.

  Her fingers curled into her palm and she backed away. She could sense him...seeking her out. Almost a shadow over a shadow as he crawled across the mattress, tracing the lines of her energy over the sheets. “I’m becoming more popular by the minute.”

  “He was in your bed?” Heyerdar frowned. “Thieves don’t fuck thieves.”

  “So he wasn’t after my body?”

  “No.” Heyerdar gave her a slow smile, and her heart missed a beat. Her belly tightened. He might as well have said her name for her immediate and hot reaction. “Sweet and wanton though it is.”

  Ava willed herself to look away. “He didn’t take anything. He wanted something physically from me.”

  “Maybe he thinks you have a way to control the Words. Defy them.”

  “Reist hasn’t used those on me.”

  Heyerdar teased a long strand of hair behind her ear, the intimate gesture making her cheeks burn. She always expected fire and crassness from him, never gentleness. “No, he used something worse.” His gaze moved over her mouth. “But Ehren doesn’t know that. He’s probably heard of a thief who’s a mage’s pet.” His fingers slipped down her neck, his touch hot and fleeting. Magic curled against her skin, and her soul craved it. “And he wonders.”