“Of course. She’s through here.”
Duchess Balzac leads me through to the lounge where her daughter is sitting on a sofa, and leaves us to it. Sachelle is wearing a cream-colored sweater and joggers, and fuzzy socks on her feet. Soft, comfortable clothes. Because she’s upset? Or because she’s got a guilty conscience over tonight’s mayhem and doesn’t know how to deal with it?
She watches me warily as I cross the room toward her. I hunker down on my heels so that my eyes are level with hers. “I’ve just been to see the King. This man has sacrificed so much to get where he is today, and do you know what his first question was? Was anyone hurt.”
Not, Who did this? Not, Find them and make them pay. That’s my first instinct, but not his. That’s why he deserves to be King. That’s why I’ve laid my life down for him dozens of times, and why I will keep doing so until the day I die.
Sachelle avoids my gaze and turns away from me like she wants me to go, but I’m not done talking to her. “I’d like to believe you had nothing to do with what happened at the hotel tonight. Can you assure me that you didn’t?”
“How could I have had anything to do with it? I was right next to you the whole time.”
That’s not much of a denial. I sit down on the sofa next to her, passing an exhausted hand over my face.
“What’s going to happen now?” she asks.
“I’ll find the culprit, and I punish them.”
“You have to be sure that you have the right person, though! You can’t just lock up anyone.”
“Why on earth wouldn’t I find the right person?”
“All Varga would have wanted is a scapegoat, and for them to be publicly punished and then jailed for life. You locked up Briar for doing nothing wrong.”
Her definition of nothing is very different to mine. “Do you not trust the King?”
She shoots me a dark look. “I don’t trust you.”
“I’m conducting an investigation. The whole hotel has been shut down while forensic experts comb through the scene and my people study the security footage. I don’t want a scapegoat. I want to find out who was responsible.”
Sachelle studies her nails for a moment, and then glances up at me. “And what do you think happened? You must have a theory.”
I caress her cheek, brushing her soft skin with my roughened knuckles. If she’s got anything to do with what happened tonight, I’ll find out.
And then?
I don’t fucking know what then.
“Why are you doing that?” she whispers.
“Because you’re beautiful, and I can’t help myself.”
But she’s mistaken if she thinks her beauty will keep her safe forever if she had anything to do with what happened tonight. King Anson has always come first for me, and he’ll always be first.
“If you’re mixed up in anything and you feel you can’t get out of it, please tell me. I think you’re being reckless, Sachelle. I don’t want you to be the death of His Grace, either.”
She picks up a cushion and hugs it against her chest. I leave her that way as I head back into the hall and out through the front door. Tonight has given her a lot to think about.
And I’ve got a traitor to catch.
9
Sachelle
The wind is whipping falling leaves from the trees as I stand a block down from Hotel Ivera. The road is still cordoned off and City Guards in their gray uniforms are standing at the barriers.
It’s the morning after the smoke bomb incident, and several forensic investigators in disposable white jumpsuits are inside the restaurant. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. Trying to fathom how things are turning out the way they are? In the past I would have told Briar everything, and she would have listened and then told me something comforting like my heart is in the right place, but I’m going about things all wrong and this is how I fix it.
At the blockade at the other end of the hotel, a shiny black car pulls up and Mr. Rasmussen gets out, straightens his jacket, and heads through the cordon to speak to the forensic detectives. My stomach lurches at the sight of him. What about my attraction to that man, Briar? Can you explain that?
I turn away and walk quickly back toward the main street. When I get home, I try calling Tieman, but he rejects my call. A few minutes later, I get a text from him.
Laying low for a few days. Don’t bother calling this number. Destroying my burner.
His burner phone, one that can’t be traced to him and that can be disposed of when needed. It’s hard to gauge his state of mind from a handful of words, but it feels tense, and nothing like his flirty interactions the day before. Maybe he feels he was too reckless with the smoke bomb, now that it’s blown up in his face and the City Guard are closing in.