Before anyone could respond, the door opened again, and Anais walked in. Behind her was Oz, with a thick bandage wrapped around his throat.
He glared at Lucien, who stared patiently back, as he took his seat. Anais hesitated for a moment before Lucien gave her a nod, and she slid into the last free seat, next to Enoch.
“Let’s start,” Lucien finally said, and turned to look at Blaise, whose eyes were still on me. “Now that everyone is up to speed, it’s time that you, Blaise, head to the Underearth.”
Blaise glanced at Lucien and nodded silently while my brother asked, “What the hell is the Underearth?”
It was Anais who responded, to my surprise. “It’s a place under the earth,” she said curtly, and when I looked at her, I saw her staring at Thayer with open distaste.
Thayer seemed to share her dislike because he snapped, “I got that part, thanks.”
Anais jutted out her chin condescendingly as she replied, “Your question is quite redundant, then, isn’t it?”
I stilled as Thayer glared at her. Thayer was a scholar. He prided himself on asking the right questions, which, he always claimed, was quite the achievement in his field. With his bachelor’s in physics, then master’s and PhD in comparative literature, it didn’t seem far fetched. My brother was smart.
Yet Anais, for whatever reason, had found the right button to push.
Why was she needling him?
“Anaïs, stop,” Lucien now interjected, frowning at Anais, too, who nodded and sat back—though she still shot a smug smirk at Thayer that practically made smoke come out of his ears.
“The Underearth is the place where the Fae dwell,” Enoch now explained, drawing everyone’s attention to him. He was into his third cup of coffee for the morning, and he sipped it as if it were his first before he resumed. “Not all Fae, of course, but a very specific subrace of Fae. We refer to them as Underearth Fae.”
He paused and glanced at me momentarily before he looked at Thayer, who still seemed pissed off from Anais’s obvious provocation. “The Underearth Fae are governed by an organization called the Sable Syndicate. While they dabble in all kinds of illegal businesses, and many of their actions warrant a healthy dose of suspicion, they care deeply for their kin and rule the Underearth fairly.”
“The irony of the Syndicate,” Blaise chimed in, his thick accent making his voice drawl, “is that their ruler, the Syndarch, is a part of the Council.”
“The Council for Regulation of Arcane Phenomena,” Lucien explained when Thayer seemed confused, and I remembered Lucien mentioning them, though only as the Council. “They are the global organization that oversees the world’s entire Otherborne population.”
Anais suddenly jumped in, staring wickedly at Thayer. “Otherborneis an umbrella term for all supernatural races,” she told him in the maddeningly slow voice that people often used on kids.
My brother had never been quick to anger—Willow had always been the hotheaded one among us siblings, which made Thayer reprimand her more often than not—but Anais was deliberately poking at him, and he bit into it almost willingly. “I know that already,” he snarled at her.
That surprised me. “Do you?” I asked, sincerely confused.
A sudden tug on my hair made me grow still. Slowly, I turned to look at Lucien, who gave me a soft smile as he murmured, “When you were passed out, Thayer and I talked.”
Right.“I see.”
He curled a few strands of my hair around his finger, making me stiffen further, as he returned his gaze to the rest of the table. “That means that the Syndicate, and thus the Underearth as a whole, can bend the law however they want.”
Lucien and Enoch exchanged glances then, and I realized there was more to what he was saying. I remembered then what Lucien’s main objective was: to expose the supernatural world to humans.
But what did it have to do with the Syndicate? The same Syndicate that had conspired with Mack Page to kill Lucien—and almost succeeded in doing so?
“So even theOtherbornegovernment is corrupt,” Thayer murmured, throwing a filthy look at Anais, who rolled her eyes as if she hadn’t been the one to taunt him.
It was Blaise who spoke next. “I’ve set a meeting with one of my contacts in the Underearth for later today,” he said matter-of-factly, and seeing that no one but Thayer and I was surprised, it seemed to be old news. “They might know what kind of ...” He frowned a little. “What’s the word ...cost?Price?” He shook his head. “Whatever Mack offered the Syndicate.”
His fumble would’ve been cute if he hadn’t been a huge muscular werewolf whose face was set in a permanent flat expression.
“You meanfavor.” Teya, for the first time, joined the conversation. Her gold eyes shot a heavy look at Lucien. “The Fae, and especially the Syndicate, don’t deal in money.”
“Yes,favor’s the word.” Blaise nodded solemnly.
Lucien grimaced. “Whatever Mack offered them, I still believe the Syndicate have their own personal reasons to get rid of me.” He looked at Blaise. “Vous devez vous renseigner pour savoir s’ils seraient disposés à conclure un accord avec moi en tant que représentant de l’Impératif.”
The sudden transition to French made me blink, and the others seemed confused as well.