Barren Vows (Fates of the Bound 3)

And Dixon?

He was Tristan’s brother. He’d have his allegiances.

She’d have to do it alone this time, just as she had done everything alone before she met Tristan, just as she’d always do things from now on.

Sliding her palm back into her pocket, she slipped downstairs and left the great house, entering the family’s garage only a few moments later.

A small pool of oil now stood as a monument to her broken Firefly, the only evidence that anything had ever sat there at all. The space seemed much too wide and much too empty to contain her bike.

Jewel’s red Firefly leaned nearby as though it were a bored teenager, wanting a night out with a side of trouble. It tempted Lila greatly. Jewel would never even know she’d taken it, not that her sister would care a whit one way or another. Each part, each wire, each tube seemed the same as her beloved bike, only in Randolph red instead of silver.

Perhaps the danger was the same as well. Lila knelt beside it, squinting at the brakes. She didn’t see any plastic cubes on the brake lines, but what if the intruder had done something else to Jewel’s bike, hoping to knock out two primes in a row through different means? The assassin might not know that Jewel never rode hers.

But Lila had no idea what to look for.

Shirley had said that only luck had saved her, that luck was the only reason why she still lived and breathed. Luck was only reason why Pax sat upstairs studying, rather than grieving for his elder sister.

If she had died, what would have happened to Jewel? Would her mother have demanded that her sister invoke the right of eyre-cleue and produce children with other senators, marriage and love be damned?

Probably.

Lila swept off the pile of GPS and audio bugs she’d laid atop the seat and called up her snoop programs. If something had been planted on Jewel’s Firefly, she’d find it. It took only a moment to pass the device over Jewel’s bike, but the computer did not beep once. She shook it pointlessly and tried again.

She found nothing.

It had to be safe, though. Jewel might not have ridden it recently, but the mechanics that tended the family’s garage surely had, all under the guise of keeping it roadworthy. Jewel’s bike likely had more kilometers on it than her own, even though the odometer never ventured above five hundred. Indeed, the few times that Lila had snuck out of the estate on it, her added kilometers had magically disappeared only a few days later.

Janice, her family’s lead mechanic, could probably give Shirley a run for her money.

Had Janice been the one who messed with her bike?

Lila thumbed her palm and restarted the programs, peering at the brakes. Nothing alarmed her, though nothing had alarmed her about her own bike that morning.

Was this what the intruder wanted? Did the assassin want her to be afraid?

No, the assassin probably wanted her dead.

Lila trudged to a black Cruz sedan nearby and passed her palm over the frame. Within seconds, the computer beeped. She found two GPS chips hidden behind the bumper and a small audio bug attached to a crook in the front dash.

Lila dropped the devices to the ground and crushed them under her heel, then passed her palm computer over Jewel’s Firefly a third time. Then a fourth time, assuring herself that she was only being cautious.

She aborted her fifth attempt as paranoia and shoved her palm back into her trouser pocket. Hopping up, Lila retrieved Jewel’s key on a peg near the door and started the bike with a thundering roar. She’d be damned if she gave up riding just because some crazy person wanted her dead.

Gingerly climbing on the purring beast, she pulled from the garage.

Moments later, she passed through the southern gate, riding slowly through downtown New Bristol. She needed a safe spot to stage her assault against the Liberté. Chances were high that the Wilson estate still had a good net connection, since her mother’s people had been on site for weeks, making plans for what would be torn down and what would be remodeled.

Chaucer’s Ghost might not be a bad idea. She and Tristan’s people had nearly been caught there, but the Wilson militia now worked security jobs for the lowborn or other highborn families in the region. Few even lived in New Bristol any longer, and none would linger near their old home.

Lila could relate. She’d likely never stroll inside the security office again after she became prime, regardless of Sutton’s offer.

The Randolph militia wouldn’t pass by Chaucer’s Ghost, either. She’d been the one to approve the patrols around the Wilson compound.

Chief Shaw’s blackcoats might, though. The city owned the blocks around the compound. They’d refused to sell them to Chairwoman Randolph, or rather, they’d delayed the sale until other families might get involved in the bidding. Now that the Randolphs owned the Wilson compound, those blocks had become much more lucrative. Her mother wouldn’t snap them up cheaply.

Lila parked several blocks away from the restaurant, just on the off chance that Sutton had changed the patrols. The streets had not changed much in the last few weeks. Graffiti still covered the walls, especially the boarded-up windows. Old receipts and leaves and paper flyers had blown into the gutters, stamped into patches of

hard-packed dirt and decomposing like mulch, their color leeched away in the autumn rain. It seemed everything had been leeched away, even the colors in the cars that slipped past. None slowed in the neighborhood, not for playing children and certainly not for the teens who stood around in groups. Not for the homeless who lived nearby, either, occasionally sticking out a fingerless, soiled glove for a bit of spare change.