Chapter 17

The hotel room seemed to breathe in the afterglow. Tonight, Gavin thought, it also breathed with a rare sense of contentment. It settled around them, humming through the dim half-light the hotel had advertised as Perfect Mood Candles. Glorified nightlights is what they are, Gavin scoffed to himself. Still, he didn’t mind the gouging. This was a celebration, after all.

Across the room, sitting in front of the open room safe, was Marco Ventura’s Rolex, damp with spilled champagne. They hadn’t quite gotten their prize safely inside before they gave in to one another. But now that the room sighed its sinister, seductive satisfaction, it seemed to be whispering. A million scrip. Three and a half million dollars at current value. As luck or fate had it, they’d practically tripped over a fortune in blood money. That watch was worth as much as one of the damned Unholies.

The air was heavy with the smell of alcohol, grilled meat, and sweat. Plates which had once held rotisserie chicken and salads—priced at an unfathomable markup by the room service barons—sat clean on the suite’s table among champagne flutes and wine glasses.

Beside the large window that gazed out at the Detroit skyline, Gavin lay upon the king-sized bed. Lena was curled up on his chest, arms around his neck, wrapped in the baby-blue sheets. She might have been asleep, for she was quieter than normal. Drunker than normal, too. God, she was gorgeous.

Lena was a wonder of nature. She was gifted with ravishing beauty, even by hemomancer standards. She was lean and graceful, but her physique was intensely, ridiculously sculpted. There was no inch of her that wasn’t in perfect shape. That word seemed to epitomize her very being: perfect.

She had the body of a war goddess and fucked like a sex goddess. Gavin couldn’t fathom why she had settled for him. He was a nobody, not particularly good looking or fun to be around at his best. Asking Lena directly never produced any answers, either; she merely deflected to the convenience of it all, and deeper probing was unfruitful. He didn’t doubt her when she said he was the only one she was sleeping with.

Not long after the two had met—right before Lena had officially joined the Veil—they’d accidentally fallen into a relationship, though one which was, at least ostensibly, purely physical. The woman had shared nothing about her past, not with Gavin nor with anyone else. What he’d learned he’d pieced together through coercing her brother Clive. In short, she had suffered profound scars when it came to love. That always made it awkward to guess where their boundaries truly were.

The afterglow kept on breathing, tempting Gavin to surrender his worries to it. But he couldn’t. It gnawed him from within, devouring his certainty.

Lena stirred on his chest. She tightened her arms about his neck and pressed her lips into the skin of his bare chest. Then a sharp pain pinched him right below the collarbone.

“Ouch.”

Lena giggled a little. “Sorry.” Her feigned remorse lasted only a moment before she bit him again.

“If you were really sorry you wouldn’t keep doing it.”

With another intoxicated giggle, she settled deeper into his chest. The feeling of her silky skin moving against his roused Gavin immediately from his lethargy. “You been awake long?” he asked.

“Been in and out for a while.” She nipped him again, and he couldn’t help but jump a little as her teeth found the first spot she’d bitten. “Think it’s time for you to wake up.”

Gavin grabbed his phone from the nightstand with his good hand. The screen flashed, indicating it was just past three in the morning. With a groggy groan, he sat up and reached for their second bottle of champagne on the room service tray. It was almost empty. “If you’re gonna wake me up, then we should get some more of this.”

“Is room service still open at this hour?”

“They’d better be.” He ripped the room’s phone from its cradle and pressed nine. The tone went through a moment later, and Gavin placed his order for two more bottles of champagne and a plate of hot wings. It was incredible what such luxuries cost at this place, but if there was ever a time to splurge and celebrate, it was now. Marco fucking Ventura’s enemies had bottomless pockets, and even the most opulent of luxury hotels couldn’t even shave the very top of their windfall.

“Talk about service,” Lena muttered into the pillow as she wrapped herself in the covers and spread out to occupy most of the bed in a distinctly feline pose. “Don’t suppose ya think we’ve got time before they bring that up here.”

He chuckled. “Think we should probably wait.”

Her head sank halfway into the pillow. “Goddammit, I’ve been waiting for hours.”

“Sorry. Need a break every now and then, no?”

“What do ya call sleeping like a waterlogged trunk?”

Their order arrived a few minutes later. As soon as the door was closed again, Gavin wasted no time uncorking one of the bottles and taking a long gulp straight from the source. The bubbles burned his nose and throat, and the sharp lick of alcohol shone through the screen of sparkling needles. He let out a sigh and then took another couple mouthfuls. When he set the bottle and the rest of the order on the crowded table, he found Lena staring at him from the bed.

“Somethin’ botherin’ you?” she asked.

“No.” He breathed out through his nose, and it left a sour, aromatic tingle. “I’m just thinking about Coral.”

“Thinking about another woman in bed. That’s what every girl dreams to hear.”

Was that a barb of jealousy he heard? The thought of it made him smile despite its absurdity. “Nah, you know what I mean.”

She picked up her own glass of champagne from the nightstand, drained its flat dregs, and flopped back onto the bed. “Yeah. I do. Been tryin’ to push it from my mind since I woke up.”

They’d discussed at length what they’d learned from Weber, but their conclusions were nebulous. If what he’d told them about Coral was true, then it explained where the girl had come from and how the Rosarium knew about her. But if the Rosarium had arranged Coral’s engineered hemomancy through Weber and the Hyacinth—God, what a ghastly combination!—then how had Lady Leblanc discovered her, and why had the woman been so horrified that the Rosarium knew, when logic held that they alone should have known?

It quickly devolved into a tangled nest of he-knew-she-knew, and it was easy to jump to conclusions. Gavin soon came to believe he was reading too deep into every little thing. But how could he not when a literal and obvious conspiracy enwebbed Coral? The heaviest and most toxic piece of evidence was Weber’s cryptic parting remark: you are in for a rude awakening once your infallible Lady Leblanc’s plan for Coral is realized.

“Want my advice?” Lena asked abruptly. She was burying herself in the pillow, filling in the space Gavin had left behind. “Stop thinkin’ about it.”

Gavin grimaced as he kneaded his bandaged right hand. The nerves crackled from his wrist to his fingertips. “I can’t do that.”

“Should try. Whatever’s going on with that girl, I think it’s on a level or two above us foot soldiers. Especially if the Hyacinth are involved.” She grumbled the last bit. Was it fear that choked her so? It was impossible to imagine Lena being afraid of anything, especially after their fight with Ventura.

But it didn’t matter to Gavin what level the game was being played on. The only thing that mattered to him now was keeping Coral safe. He took a deep breath and asked the question he’d been too nervous to ask since they’d left Caduceus. “Do you think Lady Leblanc really is planning something?”

Lena moved sluggishly into a sitting position and slipped the sheets from around her. “Honestly, I think Ludwig only said that to fuck with you. Otherwise, nothin’ adds up.”

Gavin hummed an affirmative as he paced about the table. That had been nagging at him as well. “If Coral’s hemomancy was induced as a supply for Malthus,” he reasoned aloud, “and Lady Leblanc knew…” He let himself trail off. It was too heavy to speak with his own tongue.

Lena finished the thought for him. “Then why didn’t Leblanc just have her killed?”

The question was a noose about Gavin’s neck. Leave no blood for the Rose. He took a drag of champagne and swallowed it without tasting it. “Yeah. That’s been the modus operandi up to now. I guess you already knew that.”

“Suspected,” she said. “I guess I’m not privileged enough to be officially in on the secret, but it ain’t much of a secret if it makes that much sense.”

He studied her tone but couldn’t detect any specific disgust or resentment. It was a fact of life, whether it was widely recognized or not. But perhaps, he thought, it was the Orchid Veil who was most ignorant of its own monstrosity. How many have you killed? Ludwig’s accusation hung imposingly in the air. That Prussian fuck. “One,” Gavin answered. The word rumbled in his throat, and he doused it with more champagne.

“One?” Lena asked.

He choked a little as the memories came back. “Yeah. I killed one. A nought. A man. An innocent man who did not need to die.” He gave her a long look over his shoulder, but she just sat there, gowned in silence. Her gaze was not judgmental; it was merely patient.

Gavin cast a sigh toward the floor. “Do you know why the Dahlia has finally broken their neutrality?”

“Kinda. The Rosarium slaughtered a whole branch office of one of their tsars.”

At least there was one truth that Lena hadn’t gotten for free. “Do you know why they did it?”

She shook her head. “I’d assume it was for that very neutrality. Politics, old venom. I don’t know. I don’t really care, either. But, what does the Dahlia have to do with…?”

“About a month ago,” Gavin began, “one of the Beaufort siblings announced to the Veil and the Rosarium that they had info on some noughts that they were gonna auction off to the highest bidder. Money-worshipping bastards thought they’d milk the war between Malthus and Leblanc for all it was worth. What Douglas Beaufort didn’t count on was the Rosarium and the Veil converging on his office and killing every man and woman inside.

“It was a chance occurrence. The roaches wasted them all, got their list of noughts, and were on their way out right as we arrived. We killed the lot, took the data for ourselves. A bleedin’ lucky fight it was, too. We got out of there, leaving no evidence that the Veil was ever involved. Of course, what does the Dahlia think then? To them, it looks like the Rosarium just declared war on them. Obviously, that’s what we wanted to happen. I think we even convinced ourselves that was the plan all along. But if it hadn’t been the Rosarium, it’d have been us that declared war, all over three names.

“We got out of there right as the Rosarium’s cavalry arrived. We couldn’t risk there being another copy of the data somewhere. After all we’d fought for. After Karmen gave her life for Operation Pyrite. There were three names, three of us. And we couldn’t chance leaving them alive. So I did what I had to do. For the Veil.”

He took another long sip from the bottle. It tasted the same as his guilt and sorrow after he’d returned from murdering Harry Yeats. It occurred to him too late he shouldn’t have admitted such a thing aloud. It was a closely guarded secret among those involved and Lady Leblanc. If that got out, it could mean disaster for the nascent political alliance between the Dahlia and the Veil. Could he trust Lena? Could he trust that, despite her murky past and unknown deeds, she was not a spy for the Rosarium? Through some mix of faith and necessity, he chose to believe he could.

“So that’s why you’re so hung up on protecting her,” she said.

It was a weighty and exposing admission, and Gavin hated that feeling of vulnerability. So he did what he always did: he laughed. “Don’t be worrying, I don’t have eyes for her.”

The remark stunned Lena. “I wasn’t—”

“Nah, I said don’t be worrying!” He lunged back toward the bed. The movement brought the two back to the mattress in a tangle of limbs and sheets. Lena’s gray eyes widened to take him in as he came to hover right above her, his lips still damp with alcohol. He allowed her a moment of silence to adjust before he brought his lips near to her ear. “I promise you’re the only one I’ve got eyes for.”

She giggled, and her whole body rattled against his. “My Lord, you’re persistent.”

His heart sank a bit at the refusal, but it also emboldened him. With a laugh of his own—one which could, if needed, conceal his sincerity, he brushed his beard over Lena’s cheek. “Oh, but I’m deadly serious, so I am!” Whether it was a lie or not was ultimately up to her. “What can I say, I guess I just have a savior complex. I like saving people, so I do.”

“Savin’ people? What’re you on about?”

“I’ve gotta save Coral from Malthus, and perhaps from Leblanc. And I’ve gotta save you from the wounds in your heart.”

Her mood immediately soured. Her body went rigid, her gaze cold. “What?”

Thinking perhaps it was a bridge too far, he put a sliver of distance between them. He sat back up and leaned into the headboard. Guess we’re going the sincere route. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about it,” he said, “but I know about your fiancé.”

She was quiet for the exact amount of time it took the glare to form in her eyes. “How do you know about that?”

“Clive told me.”

She hissed and turned away. “That kid has a fuckin’ big mouth.”

Gavin scratched the back of his neck nervously. “Don’t be mad at him. I really pressed him for it. And all I got was a rough gist of the thing.” The thing, in this case, being Lena’s murder of her fiancé some years back. It was the event that had set her adrift toward the Orchid Veil. The story he’d unearthed from Clive seemed to explain why she was so cautious, why she always—even at their most torrid moments—averted her lips whenever he tried to kiss them. Gavin didn’t want to pry into such a personal tragedy, but he still wanted to know if he was a bandage or an infection.

Lena was quiet for a long while. “So you know, then. So what? You askin’ for context? Askin’ what would drive me to murder someone I loved?”

At once he realized how hypocritical he must have sounded. He was, after all, a murderer, too. “I’m just lookin’ for a window into Lena Lockwood. If I could only figure out who you are, where you come from, the mysteries of the universe would be mine. Not just any queen could go toe-to-toe with Marco Ventura like that. You’re something different. Maybe something dangerous. And I will find the answer to that mystery one day, whether you want me to or not.” Though he kept his tone cheery and playful, Lena’s aura darkened.

“It’s nothin’ personal,” she said, her voice bleeding remorse. “I don’t tell anybody. Because I hate havin’ to remember. Not even Leblanc knows the whole story. All she knows is I’m a murderer, one more in her band of criminals. And that’s the way I want it to stay. Anyway, why ask about that now? Don’t you have more important things to be thinkin’ about?”

“First it’s stop thinkin’ about it, then it’s think some more. I’ll never understand how women can change their minds about every little thing.” Just like Leblanc, he nearly added.

Though he meant it as a playful jab, his own mood darkened abruptly. He’d been ready to retire from the Veil after the murder of Harry Yeats, and he’d met with Leblanc to tell her as much. But during that meeting, she’d revealed to him how she wanted to change the Veil’s course, that they had to put the days of murdering noughts behind them. Her legendary father would be disgusted with them all if he knew what they’d done with his passion. That one-eighty flip in directive had occurred mere moments before she’d handed him the file with Coral’s information in it.

Yes, that vexed him. At first, it seemed like a cruel coincidence that she should declare the murder of noughts anathema to the Veil’s purpose just after he’d stained his own hands and soul. Now it seemed slightly more than that. It was suspicious. And what made it even more suspicious was how she had confided her change of heart only in him; if she’d said as much to Martin and Walter—the other heroes of Operation Pyrite—they would not have reacted so violently when Coral arrived at the Veil. No. He was now more confident than ever that Leblanc was planning something, and whatever it was couldn’t have been good. If only he could get into the old woman’s head.

Lena allowed him to stew in his darkness for a long moment. “I’ll have ya know this is the worst pillow talk ever.”

He laughed, allowed it to spread a glint of light through his heart. “My apologies. By the way, your accent is adorable.”

Again she went rigid, but she didn’t say anything this time.

Don’t like being reminded of it? Gavin thought. Or am I perhaps not the first person to say that to you? He allowed his good hand to rest on her side and trace sensual patterns up and down.

She bit her lip, and then a surge of animalistic strength filled her. Gavin was toppled onto his back, and Lena rolled on top of him. The air in the room changed. “Are you thinking about Coral right now?” she breathed heavily into his ear.

“I am.”

“Then stop it.” She pressed her lips to the nape of his neck and ran her hands over his chest. His hands automatically copied her, soaking in the silky smooth texture of her skin. A sting came as she bit him. He intoxicated himself with her scent, her kiss, her perfection.

The thought of Coral receded before long. There was plenty of time to worry tomorrow, once the champagne was dry.