Page 129 of The Duplicity of Thieves

“Don’t talk about my father like that,” I growl.

“Where is the Grimoire, by the way?” His question throws me off. “Does he have it?”

“No one has any grimoire.”

“Secrets, secrets, secrets.” He prowls around me.

I can’t react because if I do, I'll be playing right into whatever game this is. I do know something he may not realize I’ve figured out. He has no idea the things Josie has told me, and I may be able to use it to my advantage.

“You know one of your own betrayed her.” He may not be Remnant, but I’m pretty damn sure of it. He looks just like one of them now that I’m seeing him with fresh eyes.

He stops his circling and is frozen in shock.

“It caused a mass exodus of the Remnant. They went home to the Republic. Her sister included. You just missed her.”

“Vivian was here?” It seems like I have struck two chords at once. But he has confirmed two new speculations. “Is she safe? Is she with Stafford?”

There is that fucking name again. The pub owner. “She’s safe. All of them are as far as I’ve been made aware. All except for the traitor.”

“Fuck.” He yanks on his hair again. The man is stressed. “Why didn’t Jo go with her? Did you threaten her?” He shoves me against the cool brick wall, and I let him.

“She didn’t want to.”

“No, no, no. Stafford promised,” he frets under his breath.

I laugh. “Promised to what? Keep her safe or use her to his advantage?”

“What do you mean by that?” He’s so serious that it gives me pause.

“Quite the entrepreneur Stafford seems to be. He wasted no time using her to extort anyone in his way.”

Clearly, he never knew that. I find it hard to believe there was a time Josie wasn’t filled with the devil. He smashes his face into his hands and sits down on the nearest stone bench. Killian looks out over the garden with the look of a lost man.

“My sweet Jo,” he mutters to himself. “What have they done?”

I patiently stand there in silence for his existential crises to end.

“She wasn’t like that.” He turns to me, pleading with me somehow.

“You’re wrong.” I smirk. “The Josie I know was always like that. Even when she was in the Republic.”

His head snaps up. “What?”

I’ve got a jump on him. I know she never told him about our interlude that night. This makes it that much sweeter.

“Unlike you, I never wanted to change her.” I look out over the garden, remembering the darkness in her eyes the night we first met. The danger she exuded at the club the second time. That day she married me in blood. There's a reason I call her little devil, and it isn’t because she’s innocent.

“Do you love her?” It catches me off guard. There’s a hard request for truth.

I eye him suspiciously. “I married her.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

I think about what to say next. No one has directly asked me that, yet. Not even Josie.

“I’ll put it to you like this. When Josie, inevitably, takes my life, the atoms of my soul will continue to exist only for her.”

He nods slowly, looking into his hands with acceptance. “She has that effect.”

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