Specimen.
There it was.
Again, a wave of shame and disgust ran over me, coating my skin with invisible grime as I recalled, largely against my will, the way this woman’s greedy hands had once touched my body. I always told myself that the way I approached my one-night stands wasmychoice, that my carefully crafted rules had been set by my will alone. Neandra’s inability to take no for an answer reminded me of another buried truth. Those casual nights of easily discarded pleasure were as much my preference as they were a critical defense mechanism. A lesson, hard-earned.You need to leave before you get left. Reject them before they ever get close enough to reject you.
The ugly truth was that none of these men or women had any interest instayingwith me. None of them wanted to know me beyond the most surface level, whatever it took to get my clothes off. People like Neandra only wanted a taste of a scant few things I could offer in their eyes: my body, my authority, or my fucking Lyra.
But Arken…Arken wanted toknowme.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you yet.”
There was a time when I’d sworn I would never speak of Viktor again, and yet the confession had poured out of me just the other night, eager for Arken to know just a little bit more of my story. Desperate to give her a hint of context, a droplet’s worth of explanation of why I was the way I was.
I would never be able to fully explain my past to her, not without revealing the horrors that lurked in my future. Not without exposing myself as a doomed man, a dangerous one she should be running far, far away from.
But she wanted toknowme. She wanted to stay. And I wasn’t about to let any of my past mistakes come back to haunt me.
My fingers curled into fists at my sides. “Neandra, I am only going to say this once, so listen fucking well,” I began quietly. “I know where you live?—”
“Nah, not anymore,” she interrupted, waving an irreverent hand. “I moved.”
“Fourth building off Silversmythe’s Way, your third apartment in the last three months,” I continued, snarling at this point. “Three roommates, two of whom are addicted to illegal powders and poisons they buy off the Pyrhhan Black Market. Once a month, you visit your dying grandfather in Ithreac—the one who thinks you’re still studying to be a scholar and not just some washed-up waitress at a run-down tavern who dropped out of the Studium within her first six months in Sophrosyne.”
I was just being cruel now, but I didn’t care.
“For someone who claims to have no interest inrepeats,you sure seem to know an awful lot about me,” she shot back, clearly affronted.
“Yes, Neandra, I do. I know a great deal about you—probably more than you would like. Because I already knew you weren’t with Fionn anymore, as you’d cheated on him so many times with your drunken clientele that you gave the poor sod crotch-rot so bad he was bed-bound in the infirmary for a week. And not that it even matters, but for the record, unlike you, Fionndidget a second ride out of me. Figured it was the least I could do to lift that man’s spirits once he’d recovered from your infectious cunt. But that’s far from all I know, so I’d advise you stop running your fucking mouth and listen.”
Her expression faded from challenging indignance to discomfort, and perhaps a bit of anxiety.
Good.
“I know that Herr Lamen pays you under the table each week, only giving you half the wages you’re owed under Sophrosyne’s bylaws, and that you take it, because you still submit monthly claims to the city’s welfare offices, forging medical records to lay claim to a hardship stipend that’s intended for people whoactually fucking need it.And I knowthis shit, not because I have even one iota of interest in you, what you do, or who you spread your legs for,” I seethed. “But because I am the motherfucking Scouting and Reconnaissance Captain of the godsdamned Elder Guard, you are acriminal,and if you think you can escape my authority just because you’ve taken my cock, you are sorely mistaken. So if you, or anyone else in your little circle of my apparently scorned one-night stands, eventhinksto approach my woman, you’re done for. I will ruin your fucking life if you even so much as glance in her direction. That’s not a godsdamned threat, Neandra. It’s a promise.”
“I—I’m not—I haven’t—You’rewrong, I don’t—” The woman spluttered and stammered, and Ysabeau began to cackle from the other side of the room.
“I do believe that’s your sign to leave, Miss Contrieau,” Ysabeau said pointedly. “And respectfully, find another place to shop for your needs in the future. We don’t accept stolen coin here.”
Sour-faced and seething, the strawberry blonde huffed on her way out, muttering some diatribe beneath her breath that I didn’t care to hear.
“Thank you for that, Ysabeau,” I murmured, running an exasperated hand through my hair. I wasn’t all too proud of myself for dragging Neandra’s name for filth in front of the elderly shop owner, but I didn’t exactly regret it, either.
“It’s no trouble, Captain,” she replied. “No trouble at all. She only ever comes in to browse and paw through the latest collections, anyhow. I don’t think she’s ever even made a purchase.”
That hardly surprised me, given Ysabeau’s prices.
“Now, we have these in cream and ecru, olive, burgundy, and black, naturally,” she said, motioning to the selection she’d laid out atop her sewing table. “I’ve also got something similar here,just a slightly different cut, in blush, deep rose, buttercream, and a nice periwinkle. All in the appropriate sizes, mind you.”
“You’re such a doll,” I murmured, nodding appreciatively. All of these colors would suit Arken’s complexion—though she would look good in damn near anything. “And yes, these are excellent picks. I’ll take them.”
“Which ones, precisely?”
Fuck it.
“All of them.”
What Arken didn’t know about the Lyra I was about to blow wouldn’t hurt her. She was the one who had accused me of frivolous spending, after all.