Chapter 236

Chapter 236: Chapter 236

Gideon

Julian smelled like dungeon stone and burned skin, and the new hunger in my gut wanted him anyway.

I hated that. I kept the blade level with his throat and breathed through my mouth, it didn’t help much. Julian’s wrists were rubbed raw under the silver, and every drop that welled up along the edges of those manacles called to me like a dinner bell.

He was my master but lately, seems like he is a love sick fool.

"Gideon." Julian lifted his chained hands and gave me a tired smile. "Put that down before you hurt yourself."

"You’re supposed to be in Drake’s dungeon."

"I was. I left."

"Nobody leaves Drake’s dungeon. Well, except for me."

"Then I’m the second, and I’d love to brag about it somewhere warm." He glanced over his shoulder at the empty street. "Let me in before your neighbors wake up and see a barefoot man in chains on your front steps. Think of your father’s reputation."

"My father’s reputation can take it."

"It can’t," my father said from somewhere down the hall behind me. "Let him in, Gideon, and shut the door. You’re letting the cold in."

I didn’t lower the blade right away. I held it there one more breath, long enough for Julian to stop smiling, and then I stepped back and let him limp past me into the hall. I bolted the door behind him and followed close enough to put the knife in his back if he gave me a reason.

My father sat at the head of the long dining table, exactly where I’d left him an hour ago, with his ledgers open in front of him and a glass of brandy at his elbow. He didn’t get up. Darius never got up for anyone who needed something from him.

He looked Julian over from his bare feet to his split lip, and he took his time doing it.

"Well," he said. "The gala didn’t go well for you."

"You heard."

"The whole city heard. It’s the first entertaining thing to come out of that mountain in years." He took off his spectacles and folded them. "Sit down before you fall down. Gideon, the drawer by the hearth."

I knew which drawer he meant. I crossed the room, pulled out the little leather roll of picks and files he kept there, and tossed it onto the table. My father unrolled it, chose a thin steel pick, and held out his hand without a word. Julian hesitated, then laid his chained wrists on the tabletop.

Darius worked the lock with his bare fingers. The silver didn’t bother him, and that was one of the things I’d never get used to now. He could pick up the thing that would burn me to the bone and handle it like a spoon.

The first manacle sprang open. Julian sucked air through his teeth as it peeled away from the raw flesh, and the smell of his blood rolled across the table and straight into my chest. My fangs slid down before I could stop them. I gripped the back of the nearest chair hard enough to make the wood creak.

"Gideon," my father said, without looking up. "Go stand by the window."

I went and stood by the window with my back to the room and my hands clenched at my sides. I could hear the second lock give, and I could hear Julian’s breath hitching, and I could hear my own pulse not beating at all. I stared out at the dark street and counted the lamps until my fangs slid back up.

"How long?" Julian asked behind me.

"It’s been going on for a while," my father answered for me.

"That long and you’re letting him answer the door with a carving knife?"

"It was the closest thing to hand," I said to the glass.

"It’s a bread knife, Gideon. I could see the little teeth."

I turned around. Julian was rubbing his freed wrists and watching me with a hint of his old smirk, and I wanted very badly to show him what the little teeth could do. My father poured a second glass of brandy and slid it down the table toward him instead.

"Drink that and tell me why you’re bleeding on my good tablecloth," Darius said.

Julian drank it in one swallow. He set the glass down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and when he looked up again, the smirk was gone.

"Calix," he said.

My father waited.

"Calix is the one who put me in that cell. Everybody thinks he did it to clear Lysander’s name, and he didn’t. He did it because I was standing next to Drake, and he wanted that spot empty." Julian leaned forward with his elbows on the table. "He’s dangerous, Darius. He’s far more dangerous than anyone in that house knows. I want him gone, and I can’t do it alone. I want you to help me."

My father turned his brandy glass a slow quarter-turn on the tablecloth.

"Calix," he repeated. "Drake’s little gray shadow."

"That’s what I called him too, and look where it got me."

"And what does any of that have to do with me?" My father spread his hands. "Drake’s household eats itself every other winter, Julian. Nobles rise, nobles fall, somebody ends up in that dungeon, and I read about it over breakfast. I don’t lose sleep over who’s standing next to Drake at parties."

"You’ll lose sleep over this."

"I doubt it."

"He’s going to kill Lysander."

The room went still. I felt the word land in my stomach before my mind caught up with it, and I didn’t realize I’d taken a step away from the window until my father glanced at me.

Darius kept his voice even. "Lysander’s carrying Drake’s heir. Calix wouldn’t dare touch him."

"I thought he wouldn’t dare touch me either." Julian’s laugh came out cracked. "Listen to me. I spent months watching Lysander, because I thought he was the only thing standing between me and Drake. I never looked at Calix once. Not once. And he walked up in front of every elder in the territory and took me apart in less time than it takes to finish this brandy. He had proof of things I never wrote down. He had names I never said out loud." Julian tapped the table with one finger, hard. "He doesn’t want a seat beside Drake. He wants every seat. He wants everyone else gone so Drake has nobody left to look at but him. I was first. Lysander’s next."

"And then?" I asked.

Julian looked at me. "And then there’s nobody left."

My father didn’t answer. He picked up his spectacles, turned them over in his fingers, and set them down again. I knew that habit. He’d done the same thing the night Lysander’s mother told him she wouldn’t stop Drake from taking her son up the mountain, and three days later she’d moved out of the house.

"So here’s my offer," Julian said. "We get rid of Calix together. Once he’s gone, the two of you get Lysander back. Bring him home where you’ve always said he belongs. And I get Drake."