Page 65 of Honey Cut
“A group. Called Ys.”
There’s silence around the table. I feel my pulse stop and then start again with an abrupt kick.
“Ys,” Mark says slowly. “You heard that name? Someone said it to you?”
Goran nods. “An old friend from Carpathia who’s with MI6 now. He said they’ve been hearing whispers of the group for several years, mostly connected to arms deals, possibly a ghost mercenary force. As you might have guessed, both Drobny and Ys have been tied to weapons shipments going to the Carpathian rebels. Nothing concrete, but I think it’s solid info.”
“Ys,” Mark repeats tonelessly. “Okay then.”
Ys.Exactly what my uncle wanted to know about. The same thing I heard Mark and Melody discussing at the engagement party.
Ys started the game.
I put this Drobny person on my mental list. I’ll get his name to the Scales and my uncle. They might know more about him.
“The good news is that we think we know where Drobny has been hiding,” says Goran. “A yacht in the Adriatic. Lox says it’s been mooring at Porto Montenegro—she suspects safe houses within driving distance. Maybe Bosnia or Albania.”
“Ask Lox to keep an eye on him,” Mark says. “Is that all for today?”
“Yes, sir,” say Goran, and Andrea is already standing up. Tristan slowly closes his folder, not looking at us.
“Wonderful,” Mark says, squeezing my hip. “Tristan, want to get lunch with my wife and me?”
twenty-four
ISOLDE
It’s after the equinox,and I wake long before dawn.
I watch the dark water move in the ceiling until it becomes shimmery and pink and orange, and then I draw in a deep breath and let the fear swimming in my blood turn to adrenaline, to the heat of a challenge.
It’s been a month since Mark fucked me on a bed surrounded by nightshade and foxglove.
A month of nights in the hall, of being the model submissive he trained me to be.
A month of catching Tristan looking at me or Tristan catching me looking at him and then both of us quietly burning alive.
A month of Mark, his scent, his blue eyes, his cold voice. His bruises and orgasms and dry jokes. Finding him reading at odd times and reading the oddest things—yellowed murder mysteries and depressing war poetry. Sometimes fantasy novels that I know Tristan has also read, like Mark is trying to understand why Tristan liked them.
A month of knowing that what I felt years ago is still true.
I’m in love with my husband.
Which is a terrible idea and will probably end very badly for me.Saint Michael the archangel, defend us in battle, I pray, my favorite prayer, and then I turn in my husband’s arms to face him.
He sleeps lightly, but he does sleep, especially after a good fuck like he gave me last night. Everyone’s face looks different in repose—an unsettling truth I’ve learned as a saint—but Mark’s especially. The face that gives nothing away while awake is now impossibly expressive: soft lips that flicker with silent dream words, eyebrows pulling together, the occasional pout. In his sleep, he is sweeter, gentler. Still a mystery, but one with clues at least.
I study the light playing over his full lips and the slope of his nose. Lying like this, I can see the small ridge where it might have been broken once.
I pray one more time and then speak my husband’s name.
His eyes open immediately, his breathing changing only the smallest amount. I wouldn’t have felt it if I weren’t crushed to his chest.
“Isolde,” he says. His voice is rough and drowsy. “Good morning.”
“As of seventeen minutes ago, it’s officially been a month,” I say without any kind of preamble.
He is very still. “That’s right,” he says.
