Page 69 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

I straighten in my seat. Three hours only gives me two if we’re including the thirty-minute run there and back. “I’ll come back,” I assure him.

Those unsettling eyes of his, deep and vast as the powerful seas and like a storm on the horizon, meet mine. “I know you will,” he tells me. “Because if you do not, I will come for you myself.” He leans close to me until the heat of him is pressed into my side and all I can think of is his half naked body covered in sweat and how fucking dangerous he is simply because he is the one who turned me in to Dolos and had me punished.

Unlike other Mortal Gods, though, and their Terra, Ruen had felt guilt for what he’d done. It hadn’t been his intention to see me hurt, and when I’d been punished, he’d tried to take the pain away. He’s here, helping me because of that guilt.

“If you leave me here and disappear, I will spend the rest of my life searching for you, Kiera Nezerac,” Ruen threatens in a low voice. “There will be nowhere you can hide, nowhere you can run from me. There are more powers at my disposal than mere illusions, secret keeper. Remember that. I will be waiting here.” He holds up three fingers. “Three hours.” His head turns and I follow it, spotting a clock hanging between two bookshelves on the wall. The hands of the clock hang onto their respective numbers, marking it the beginning of the hour. “Your time starts now.”

Chapter 35

Kiera

“Three hours.” I repeat the words to Ruen as he stares at me with that enigmatic expression of his. He’ll never know how unsettling he can be. I’ll never tell him and I’ll have to be tortured for the information if he wants it. He nods to the clock on the wall again and that’s the only further indication I need.

I leave him and the half-drunk mug of my coffee and flee the coffee house. It’s been so long since I’ve been outside the walls of the Mortal Gods Academy—and more specifically, away from the prying eyes of the Darkhavens—that it feels as if I’ve come up for a breath of fresh air the second I step beyond the doorway. Once I’ve been freed from Ruen’s attentions, I don’t waste any more time. I take off in a sprint, curving around the building and diving for a side alleyway.

It hadn’t necessarily been a lie when I’d told Ruen that Madam Brione’s was less than a thirty-minute run from the coffee house, but that was considering a human’s speed.

The alleyway I enter is a dead end, but I spot a series of cracked and thin wooden planks set up against the far wall and I pick up speed, racing towards it. My booted feet fly across the cobblestones and for the first time since I put them on this morning, I’m grateful for the clothes Ruen had likely placed outside my room this morning. This would have been impossible to do in skirts.

My foot connects with the flat edge of a plank and I race up their angled faces. One cracks further under my weight and then breaks entirely, but I’ve already got it. My hands reach up and out, one catching the lip of the building’s slanted rooftop. The fingers of my other hand scramble to latch on also and I use my hold to drag my body up from the broken wooden planks on the ground.

My chest hits the hard shingles first and I roll the rest of my body sideways as I lift my knee and hook it over the edge until I’m lying flat on the surface. Then I drag myself to my feet and start running. Racing over the roof of the building—closer to the middle where the shingles don’t seem as loose and likely to cause me to slip and fall—I leap from one roof to the next, a blur of speed.

It’s early enough in the morning still that very few people are milling about in the slum streets. Every once in a while, I spot the slumped over body of a man snoozing in a doorway, empty bottles clutched to their snoring chests. With a roll of my eyes, I hang a right when I see the rooftop I’m on ending and dive onto the next.

It’s a zig-zag of streets and alleys that I move over, casting a glance down every so often to ensure no one is watching me. The outer streets of the slums, closer to where I’d left Ruen, fall further back and the ripe stench of piss, ale, and horseshit lingers in the air.

When I spot the scarred wooden door of Madam Brione’s shop and boarding house, I take a great leap from the edge of one rooftop and drop into the alleyway across from it. Scanning the street up and down, I breathe a sigh of relief when the only person I see is a woman sweeping her front porch, her hunched back turned in the opposite direction as I dart out of the alley’s shadows towards my goal.

Just like the first time I’d entered, the door chimes upon opening but no one comes rushing out to greet me. Not that I expected Madam Brione to, but at the very least, Regis should be. He is, after all, expecting me.

Throwing off my cloak and draping it over one of the hooks lining the wall at the bottom of the stairwell, I glare up the narrow path. “Regis?” I call out. “I’m here!”

Thudding footsteps followed by the sound of a door creaking open meet my shout. Regis appears at the top of the stairs looking disheveled and paler than normal. My brows arch up towards my hairline as he hurries down the stairs and stops in front of me. “Kiera.” His face splits into a wide grin as he takes my shoulders into his hands and draws me into a sharp hug.

Confusion slides through me at the odd excitement with which he embraces me and the relief. Though I consider him to be my closest friend within the Underworld, we’ve never exactly been touchy-feely people. Carefully, I draw one hand up and pat him awkwardly on the back.

“It’s … good to see you too?”

The strands of his hair appear to be wet and they smack against my cheek as he pulls back. He smells of fresh soap. No doubt, he’s been miserable living with Madam Brione’s level of cleanliness.

“You must be starving,” he says, pulling away from the awkward hug and brushing past me to head down the side hall along the stairs leading into the kitchen area. “I’ll make something and you can tell me all about your time in the Academy.”

“Regis?” His exuberant tone is strained, forced.

I eye him as I trail him into the small kitchen, glancing to the door just off the room that I suspect leads to Madam Brione’s personal chambers. I’ve never actually been inside, but for the short time I lived here between receiving this mission and getting into the Academy, I’d seen her go inside time and time again, disappearing for hours when she wasn’t ‘cleaning’ her shop that never seemed to actually change.

Few people in the Underworld get privacy and as long as she doesn’t give me a reason to suspect her, then I’ll stay away. My eyes span away from the door to the rest of the kitchen, seeking out some reason for Regis’ edgy attitude. The back window is open and Regis stops before it as he takes something from the sink and moves to the fireplace—putting a metal kettle above the fire before he flips back to me.

There’s a fresh bruise poking out from the back of his collar, spanning over the side of his neck and disappearing beneath the fabric of his tunic. I pause when I realize that his shirt is wrinkled. Not just wrinkled but dirty. As if he’s been wearing the damn thing for several days now. Now that we’re in better lighting, I can see the sweat stains under his armpits, darkening the fabric there, and … is that blood on the hem?

My eyes snap back to his face. Dark circles line under his eyes and now that I’m taking a closer look the roots of his hair appear greasy. His jawline is unshaven, the golden shadow of a beard growing in.

Regis hates wearing dirty clothes. He’s grown used to it over the years—assassins often have to get the dirtiest before they get to their target—but once he’s off the clock and back in a place with an accessible washroom and fresh clothes, he never remains in his mission clothes. Something is most definitely wrong.

I sniff the air and focus on listening, but all I hear is his rapidly beating heart and the scraping of metal, and the glug glug glug of water being poured into the kettle.

“How about some tea?” he asks.

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