He seems to think that this is a game. Cat and mouse. He chases, I run. Now that he’s got me pinned down, he wants to play with me a little. “I said, get your hands off me.”
“If you prefer, I can go to your father and tell His Grace that his daughter has been running around at night with a group of dissidents.”
I swallow hard, feeling sick. He’s figured out that I’m more afraid of that than anything else. “You’re not going to. I think you just like provoking me.”
A smoldering smile spreads over his face. “You’re right. Let’s keep this just between us.”
There’s an insinuation in his voice that I don’t like. I push my hands against his chest, but he loops an arm around my waist and keeps me where I am.
“I know everywhere you go,” he continues softly. “Everything you do. If you carry on with whatever you’re doing, you’ll only lead me straight to your friends again.”
My throat feels tight, and I wonder if it was my fault that Rasmussen discovered our meeting place the other night. But it can’t be. He was too shocked to see me there.
So how did he know?
“I came here to see Archduchess Levanter. That’s it. Now you know everything.” I study his cold, gray eyes. “Are you happy?”
He takes a hand from my waist and cups my cheek. His huge hand engulfs my face, stroking strands of hair back from it and tipping my chin up. An expensive silver watch glints in the corner of my vision as his hand moves down to caress my throat. Who is he, that he came out of nowhere and the King granted him so much power?
“Very happy, Sachelle,” he murmurs, and I feel the vibrations of his words against my lips. His fingers squeeze my throat a little, stroke my skin softly, and then squeeze again. The alternating pressure and gentleness have my insides quivering.
Oh, shit. I can’t be attracted to him. I can’t. He’s one hundred percent pure-grade asshole, even if he does fill out that suit perfectly.
“Lady Sachelle,” I correct him with a gasp, pulling out of his embrace and grabbing my bag.
I don’t look back until I’m out of his office, the building, the palace, and halfway down the street. Chest heaving, I search for any sign that I’m being followed. I can’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean his eyes aren’t everywhere.
It’s not until I get inside Balzac House that I remember my notebook still laying on Archduchess Levanter’s desk.
4
Jakob
Sachelle Balzac leaves behind a lingering scent of honeysuckle and violets.
And panic.
Men have been afraid of me before. People’s Republic soldiers on guard duty, standing between me and my mission. My assassination targets, in the split second they realized I’m not the person I said I was.
I sit down at my computer and bring up the security feeds at the palace from the past hour. I see Sachelle enter the building at a quarter past ten. She visits with Archduchess Levanter, and a few minutes later the two of them head down the corridor to the old record office that’s being turned into a library. Wraye leaves her there.
My eyes narrow. I toggle to the library camera, and watch as she drifts nonchalantly along the shelves, all the while checking that the archivist isn’t watching her. At the back of the room, hidden from the archivist, but not from my camera, she sorts through a stack of what look like blueprints and folds one into her notebook.
I searched her, though. Where was the notebook?
I get up and head down the corridor to Archduchess Levanter’s office. She’s not there, but there’s a cream notebook sitting on Wraye’s desk, right where Sachelle was seated.
I pick it up and start leafing through it. The blueprint slides out. Unfolding it, I see that it’s a map of this part of the palace rooms.
“Sachelle, what the hell are you up to?”
I refold the sheet and slip it into my pocket, and put the notebook back.
There’s a painful tightness in my gut as I go back to my office. I had the same feeling earlier in the summer when I discovered that Levanter’s daughter was sneaking around with General Lungren’s son, a union so incongruous that it was an outrage. I’ve surveilled Aubrey and Cassian closely and there seems to be nothing untoward about Bellerose’s relationship with Levanter’s daughter, but I had to be sure.
Now I’ve turned over a rock and found Sachelle Balzac among the mire and muck that I’m charged with cleaning off the streets. I wonder how long it will be until someone else notices that she’s up to something. It’s a dirty word, traitor. The consequences could be painful for her and her family.
I open a secure browser that hides my VPN, and start to compose an email.