Queen of Shadows

That seemed to be enough assurance for Evangeline, who scooted closer, the lantern light gilding her tiny porcelain hand before she gripped Aelin’s arm to hop from the cab. No more than eleven, she was delicately built, her red-gold hair braided back to reveal citrine eyes that gobbled up the drenched street and women before her. As stunning as her mistress—or would have been, were it not for the deep, jagged scars on both cheeks. Scars that explained the hideous, branded-out tattoo on the inside of the girl’s wrist. She’d been one of Clarisse’s acolytes—until she’d been marred and lost all value.

Aelin winked at Evangeline and said with a conspirator’s grin as she led her through the rain, “You look like my sort of person.”

Aelin propped open the rest of the windows to let the rain-cooled river breeze into the stuffy apartment. Thankfully, no one had been on the street in the minutes they’d been outside, but if Lysandra was here, she had no doubt it would get back to Arobynn.

Aelin patted the armchair before the window, smiling at the brutally scarred little girl. “This is my favorite place to sit in the whole apartment when there’s a nice breeze coming through. If you want, I have a book or two that I think you’d like. Or”—she gestured to the kitchen to her right—“you might be able to find something delicious on the kitchen table— blueberry tart, I think.” Lysandra was stiff, but Aelin didn’t particularly give a damn as she added to Evangeline, “Your choice.”

As a child in a high-end brothel, Evangeline had probably had too few choices in her short life. Lysandra’s green eyes seemed to soften a bit, and Evangeline said, her voice barely audible above the patter of the rain on the roof and windows, “I would like a tart, please.” A moment later, she was gone. Smart girl—to know to stay out of her mistress’s way.

With Evangeline occupied, Aelin slung off her soaked cloak and used the small remaining dry section to wipe her wet face. Keeping her wrist angled in case she needed to draw the hidden blade, Aelin pointed to the couch before the unlit fire and told Lysandra, “Sit.”

To her surprise, the woman obeyed—but then said, “Or you’ll threaten to kill me again?”

“I don’t make threats. Only promises.”

The courtesan slumped against the couch cushions. “Please. How can I ever take anything that comes out of that big mouth seriously?”

“You took it seriously when I threw a dagger at your head.”

Lysandra gave her a little smile. “You missed.”

True—but she’d still grazed the courtesan’s ear. As far as she’d been concerned, it had been deserved.

But it was a woman sitting before her—they were both women now, not the girls they’d been at seventeen. Lysandra looked her up and down. “I prefer you as a blonde.”

“I’d prefer you get the hell out of my house, but that doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon.” She glanced at the street below; the cab lingered, as ordered. “Arobynn couldn’t send you in one of his carriages? I thought he was paying you handsomely.”

Lysandra waved her hand, the candlelight catching on a golden bracelet that barely covered a snakelike tattoo stamped on her slender wrist. “I refused his carriage. I thought it’d set the wrong tone.”

Too late for that. “So he did send you, then. To warn me about what, exactly?”

“He sent me to tell you his plan. He doesn’t trust messengers these days. But the warning comes from me.”

An utter lie, no doubt. But that tattoo—the sigil of Clarisse’s brothel, etched on the flesh of all her courtesans from the moment they were sold into her house … The girl in the kitchen, the driver below—they could make everything very, very difficult if she gutted Lysandra. But the dagger was tempting as she beheld that tattoo.

Not the sword—no, she wanted the intimacy of a knife, wanted to share breath with the courtesan as she ended her. Aelin asked too quietly, “Why do you still have Clarisse’s sigil tattooed on you?”

Do not trust Archer, Nehemia had tried to warn her, drawing a perfect rendering of the snake in her coded message. But what about anyone else with that sigil? The Lysandra that Aelin had known years ago … Two-faced, lying, and conniving were among the nicer words Aelin had used to describe her.

Lysandra frowned down at it. “We don’t get it stamped out until we’ve paid off our debts.”

“The last time I saw your whoring carcass, you were weeks away from paying them off.” Indeed, Arobynn had paid so much at the Bidding two years ago that Lysandra should have been free almost immediately.

The courtesan’s eyes flickered. “Do you have a problem with the tattoo?”

“That piece of shit Archer Finn had one.” They’d belonged to the same house, the same madam. Maybe they’d worked together in other regards, too.

Lysandra held her gaze. “Archer’s dead.”

“Because I gutted him,” Aelin said sweetly.

Lysandra braced a hand on the back of the couch. “You—” she breathed. But then she shook her head and said softly, “Good. Good that you killed him. He was a self-serving pig.”

It could be a lie to win her over. “Say your piece, and then get out.”

Lysandra’s sensuous mouth tightened. But she laid out Arobynn’s plan to free Aedion.

It was brilliant, if Aelin felt like being honest—clever and dramatic and bold. If the King of Adarlan wanted to make a spectacle of Aedion’s execution, then they would make a spectacle of his rescue. But to tell her through Lysandra, to draw in another person who might betray her or stand witness against her … One more reminder of how easily Aedion’s fate could be sealed, should Arobynn decide to make Aelin’s life a living hell.

“I know, I know,” the courtesan said, taking in the cold gleam in Aelin’s eyes. “You needn’t remind me that you’ll skin me alive if I betray you.”

Aelin felt a muscle flicker in her cheek. “And the warning you came to give me?”

Lysandra shifted on the couch. “Arobynn wanted me to tell you the plans so that I might check up on you—test you, see how much you’re on his side, see if you’re going to betray him.”

“I’d be disappointed if he didn’t.”

“I think … I think he also sent me here as an offering.”

Aelin knew what she meant, but she said, “Unfortunately for you, I don’t have any interest in women. Even when they’re paid for.”

Lysandra’s nostrils flared delicately. “I think he sent me here so you could kill me. As a present.”

“And you came to beg me to reconsider?” No wonder she’d brought the child, then. The selfish, spineless coward, to use Evangeline as a shield. To bring a child into this world of theirs.

Lysandra glanced at the knife strapped to Aelin’s thigh. “Kill me if you want. Evangeline already knows what I suspect, and won’t say a word.”

Aelin willed her face into a mask of icy calm.

“But I did come to warn you,” Lysandra went on. “He might offer you presents, might help you with this rescue, but he is having you watched—and he has his own agenda. That favor you offered him—he didn’t tell me what it is, but it’s likely to be a trap, in one way or another. I’d consider whether his help is worth it, and see if you can get out of it.”

She wouldn’t—couldn’t. Not for about a dozen different reasons.

When Aelin didn’t respond, Lysandra took a sharp breath. “I also came to give you this.” She reached a hand into the folds of her rich indigo gown, and Aelin subtly shifted into a defensive position.

Lysandra merely pulled out a worn, faded envelope and gingerly set it on the low table before the couch. It shook the whole way down.

“This is for you. Please read it.”

“So you’re Arobynn’s whore and courier now?”

The courtesan took the verbal slap. “This isn’t from Arobynn. It’s from Wesley.” Lysandra seemed to sink into the couch, and there was such an unspeakable grief in her eyes that for a moment, Aelin believed it.