Page 21 of This Dark Descent
He held out pictures of the two men who’d attacked her. One short and square-faced, the other lean with a jagged nose. “Do you know why someone might have said such a thing?”
Ari had to force herself not to look at the door behind Damien. To his credit, he didn’t so much as blink.
“Not in the slightest,” he replied smoothly. “As I’m sure you know, my family is old friends with Inspector Elrihan and a dedicated supporter of the Anthir.”
The sergeant’s lips curled in distaste. “Yes of course. I wouldn’t dare to insinuate. But neither can I simply dismiss such claims, you understand.”
“Of course.” Damien’s voice was light, but the Adair guard holding the Sherakin shotgun fell into line at his back. The constables responded by reaching for their enchanted batons.
Mikira shifted, her nervousness nearly as tangible. Ari willed her to stay still. All it took was a noise from the men downstairs, or the wrong turn of a head, and the Anthir might realize just how close they were to the truth.
The blood.
As though the thought drew him to it, the sergeant’s gaze fell on Damien’s red-stained sleeve. “Are you wounded, Lord Adair?” he asked with hollow concern.
Ari acted before she could think. She drove her palm into the point of her Saba’s necklace hard enough to draw blood and tugged it free with her other hand, tearing the skin open with a sharp burst of pain.
“That’s from me.” She held out her wounded hand. “Damien was inspecting it before you showed up, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to get it tended to sometime today.”
Visible annoyance flicked across the sergeant’s face. “I see. My apologies, my lady.” He inclined his head to Damien, adding begrudgingly, “I’m sure this was all just a misunderstanding. Please accept my apologies, Lord Adair.”
“Of course,” Damien replied. “Though I didn’t quite catch your name, Sergeant.”
The sergeant paused mid-turn. “Jac Eedren, my lord.”
Mikira stiffened in recognition at the name, and it brought something of a smile to Damien’s lips. “My family recently made a sizeable donation to a hospital with a Mr. Eedren in residence. A relation of yours?”
“My father.” Jac’s face had gone pale, the threat received. The Anthir’s job was to enforce the law, but they never would have dared question a member of another noble house this way without solid proof, which meant someone had sent them. Someone whose reach with the Anthir went farther than House Adair’s.
Ari could practically see Damien recording the slight, a notation in his mental ledger. Jac’s only saving grace was that they hadn’t brought any enchanted animals with them. A bird charmed to detect lies or a hound to track scents would have been far more than a slight.
It’d be an attack, and Damien’s response would not have been a simple threat.
Damien adjusted the cuff of his sleeve. “You may go, Sergeant Eedren.”
The sergeant performed a hasty bow, then scrambled from the corridor, his compatriots a step behind.
“How did you know that?” Mikira blurted out once they’d gone. “That guard at the ball—they have the same family name.”
“If you’re going to make an enemy of someone, you best know everything about them,” Damien replied, and Ari didn’t miss the warning underneath.
Something clicked into place in Mikira’s expression. “Rezek sent them.”
“I don’t imagine he likes the idea of us working together.” Damien turned back for his room. “This won’t be his last move.”
ARI SAT STILLas a bird on the chaise as Reid meticulously bandaged her hand with a skill that bespoke training. She still wondered at herself over what she’d done. Involving herself like that—it went against everything her parents had taught her to do in such precarious situations. But Damien had been threatened because of something he’d done to protect her. The least she could do was return the favor, even if she didn’t understand why he’d done it in the first place.
With the Anthir gone, they’d gathered around the book-strewn table before a crackling peat fire. Thick gray clouds had filled the sky, and several enchanted lamps burned along the perimeter of the room.
Mikira kept glancing outside. She looked anxious, like an animal backed into a corner.
“Do you have something you want to say, Miss Rusel?” Damien asked from his position by the fire.
“Mikira,” she corrected him with a shudder. “Did you take those men?”
Damien regarded her with an unreadable look. “I didn’t, no.”
But your people did.Ari could practically see him stepping around the question. It was like watching a chess game unfold; he always thought several moves ahead.
