Chapter 217: Old sins come creeping

BRADLEY

"You want to attend the gala?"

The voice on the other end belonged to Alpha Rennick, a heavyset, genial man who had sat across from me at a dozen council tables and never once received an acceptance to any of his invitations. I heard the clink of glass against glass, followed by the rustle of paper. Whatever he had been occupied with, he had evidently decided it could wait. My unexpected interest in his gala had given him something far more entertaining to occupy himself with.

"Well, I’ll be damned," he continued. "That doesn’t sound like you at all."

I stood at the window of my private office, the phone pressed to my ear, watching a sentinel cross the yard below. From this height, the man was little more than a gray figure moving across the pale gravel.

"Is that a problem?"

"A problem? No, no. Quite the opposite. It’s a marvel." I could hear the smile in his voice. "Every year, I send you an invitation. Every year, I receive a polite refusal in your handwriting. I even sent a few to His Majesty, may the Goddess keep his soul, and I understood why King Cornelius never attended. The man despised crowds. But you?" He gave a low, disbelieving laugh. "What changed?"

I had rehearsed my answer beforehand, turning the words over until I could deliver them without hesitation. They still tasted like a coin I’d bitten to test its authenticity.

"I suppose I’ve begun to reevaluate my life," I said. "After what happened to my Alpha, I find myself thinking about all the things I’ve spent years putting off. A man can spend a lifetime standing behind a door, convinced there’s no reason to step through it, only to discover one afternoon that the door is gone and he’s been left standing on the wrong side."

For a moment, Rennick said nothing. When he spoke again, the easy amusement had left his voice.

"I understand. I truly do. There’s no bond quite like the one between an Alpha and his Beta. You two were peas in a pod. Everyone knew it." He cleared his throat, as though the subject had caught him somewhere tender. "Well, come, then. We’d be delighted to have you. Truly. The tables will be full, the music will be terrible, and the food will be excellent."

"Who’s attending?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I’m hoping to avoid certain people."

"Ah." He chuckled, having drawn an entirely different conclusion from my words. "Well, let me think. The Dornans are coming, naturally. Alpha Whitcomb and his wife, the Vasquez delegation, although I’ve heard the old man is unwell. Three representatives from the northern territories, if I remember correctly. Alpha Marrow. The Halloran twins. And, of course, Alpha Sterling Grivas, who’s been..."

"Stop."

The word struck the air harder than I’d intended. Rennick fell silent.

I closed my eyes. I had told myself I wouldn’t flinch when the name came. It was only a name, after all. A target. A set of coordinates I needed to commit to memory before I could decide how best to approach it.

Yet the moment I heard it, something in my stomach turned over, slow and heavy, like a stone rolling through deep water.

"I shouldn’t be afraid," I said, my voice quieter now. "I shouldn’t let a little bad blood keep me from showing my face in public. I’ve stood in worse rooms and faced worse men. I’ll come."

"Splendid!" Rennick sounded faintly bewildered by my sudden determination, but he was too pleased to question it. "I’ll have a seat reserved for you near the high table. Remember, it’s two nights from now. And for Selene’s sake, Bradley, wear a black tie."

"Black tie. Understood."

"And Bradley?"

"Yes?"

"Bring someone along, if you like. Your wife, a friend, anyone you please. You’ve earned a night out."

"I’ll think about it."

I ended the call before he could offer any further encouragement and lowered the phone from my ear.

The silence that followed seemed to press against my eardrums. I drew a slow breath through my nose, held it for a moment, and released it, but the tightness in my chest remained.

I’d done it. I’d set everything in motion.

By nightfall, half the High Circle would know that the High Beta was attending Rennick’s gala. The news would travel from one private conversation to the next, passed over wineglasses and between discreet smiles, until my attendance became the evening’s most interesting piece of gossip.

And in two nights, beneath the chandeliers of a ballroom crowded with elders, Alphas, and glittering strangers, I would approach Sterling Grivas with a smile on my face and a glass in my hand.

I turned away from the window.

My desk was an old piece of dark walnut, its surface polished by years of use and scarred along one corner where Cornelius had once thrown a paperweight in a fit of temper. I crouched and pulled the bottom drawer free, setting it on the floor beside me. Then I pressed two fingers against the left side of the wooden frame, just above the groove I’d carved into it years ago.

A soft click answered me.

A concealed panel shifted inward, releasing a second drawer from the hollow space behind the first. It was shallower than the one I’d removed, its interior lined with green felt and fitted to hold what I had hidden inside.

I’d built the compartment myself, years ago, for an entirely different purpose. At the time, I’d considered it a sensible precaution, one of those quiet measures a man took because experience had taught him that even the safest places could become dangerous.

I’d never imagined I’d need it for this.

A pistol rested in the green felt, compact and black, its short barrel catching a thin line of light from the window. The grip had worn pale beneath years of handling, though I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held it for any reason other than to check that it remained in working order.

Beside it lay five narrow vials, arranged in a precise row, each sealed with wax.

One clear, the second, amber. The third was a sickly milky white. The fourth was a dull gray and the last was red.

The first four caught the light differently, their contents shifting almost imperceptibly as I moved the drawer. The last vial sat apart from them in my mind, though not in the arrangement itself. Its contents were a deep, unsettling red, dark enough that the light passing through the glass seemed to disappear into it rather than emerge on the other side.

For a moment, I watched it in silence.

It looked less like a liquid than something that had once been alive.

I picked it up.

The vial was warm against my palm. Of course it was. The apothecary warlock who had sold it to me had called it the last courtesy, and when I’d asked where he’d obtained the recipe, he’d refused to answer. He’d merely given me a look I hadn’t cared to interpret and changed the subject.

There was something wrong with the substance, something that went deeper than its smell. A faint sweetness clung to it, sickly and overripe, with the suggestion of rot beneath it. Even through the glass, it seemed to find its way to the back of my throat.

It was a vile thing, steeped in old magic I had neither the inclination nor the wisdom to investigate. A single drop on the tongue, the warlock had assured me, and a man would be dead before the glass hit the floor. No trace left behind. No convulsions, no desperate grasping at the throat, no struggle to draw one last breath. The heart would simply stop, as though it had reached the end of its own accord.

I tilted the vial and watched the red contents crawl sluggishly along the glass.

Johann was in a cell at that very moment, hungry and in the dark, his fate sealed by the simple fact that the Regent’s mercy had finally run out. Edelina was somewhere above me in her chambers, no doubt occupied with schemes of her own. And the Autumn Gala was two nights away.

Some would stay home out of respect for the late King. There would be houses that considered attendance an insult to his memory, families who would insist that mourning took precedence over tradition. But plenty would come. The great houses had not missed the Autumn Gala in living memory, and grief, however genuine, had never been sufficient reason to abandon an occasion that offered so much opportunity for political maneuvering. Even the elders of the High Circle would attend, resplendent in their ceremonial robes, their appetites as formidable as their opinions.

To commit murder in that room would be madness.

I understood that perfectly well. I’d understood it from the moment the idea first took shape in my mind, and knowing it had done nothing to make the prospect less tempting.

Sterling Grivas would never follow me into a dark alley, where I might confront him without witnesses. The Queen, meanwhile, would not go down without a fight. There were too many eyes on them, too many loyal guards I did not intend to get involved in this, too many layers of protection surrounding those who sat at the heart of our power.

But the gala was different.

A ballroom filled with Alphas, elders, and their entourages offered a hundred opportunities for a death to go unnoticed until it was too late. A hundred smiling faces. A hundred glasses raised in celebration. A hundred conversations that would continue long after one of their participants had fallen silent.

And while I was occupied elsewhere, the poison would do the rest.

Two birds with one stone.

I was reaching to return the vial to its place when my phone chimed.

The sudden sound startled me badly enough that the vial nearly slipped from my fingers. I caught it before it fell, then set it carefully back in its place and crossed the room to retrieve my phone.

My thumb fumbled against the screen as I unlocked it. The message was from Lysander.

Call the great families together. The monster we sealed is finding ways to step out.