Page 11 of The Danger Kiss

At the corner of my eye, I could see the butler closing the door behind his back, leaving me alone to face some of the most powerful men in the world. "Father. Grandfather. Rukko.”

They echoed my greeting.

My father gestured to the chair to his immediate left, beside Rukko. "Please be seated.”

I nodded and walked towards the chair, slightly uncomfortable that the only sounds in the room were the crackling of the nearby fireplace and the soft swishing of my skirts.

"Pretty as ever," murmured my grandfather. “Although I do believe you need more sun, Blanca."

I smiled wryly at him as I took my designated seat. "As you say, Grandfather."

"You have been keeping busy for some time now, Blanca," said my father. "Your efforts are most notable, especially in strengthening the arsenal. Rukko tells me that the poison count has reached to a hundred and fifteen. That is a record."

I nodded and slid a sidelong glance at my brother, who was staring at something infinitely more interesting on the table. "I like to keep busy, Father."

There was a perfunctory knock on the door and Gudo entered with four other manservants. They were pushing a large, shining silver serving trolley.

"We will have wine," Father said. "We shall eat later."

The servants poured wine into our glasses and were gone just as quickly and efficiently.

I looked at my glass. The wine was transparent, sparkling almost demonically in the shadows cast by the crackling fire.

Once the servants had all left, my father continued speaking. “Yuri died, two weeks ago. Surely you two remember him."

Yuri. He couldn't be dead. He couldn't die.

His Manifestation practically made him invincible.

Rukko was shaking his head ruefully. “Indeed a loss.”

Grandfather nodded. "He was a great man. You two were the last ones he had ever taught. After Blanca left the Borderlands when her training concluded, Yuri never accepted students again.”

"I visited him two years ago," Rukko said. "He still lived the same way as before. There was nothing wrong with him, as far as I could sense. Had he felt anything, he'd been hiding it very well.”

"When...when did you know this?" I blurted out. My hands, I noticed distantly, were clenched tightly in my lap. "When did you know that Yuri died?"

"Only today," said my father. "There was word out since midday. Some miners found his body in the snow, out of the cavern."

He'd never left his cavern. Never once, the whole time I was under his tutelage.

"I also received a third-level security message," Father went on. "This concerns, shall we say, Yuri's legacy. Among his students."

"The Round Table of Platinum City has been faithfully keeping track of items that were purely Manifested. It was brought to their attention, by a highly reliable informant, that some of Yuri's students have been the source of the imprint for components of an item called The Danger Kiss.”

"What has this got to do with us?" Rukko asked. "Are we meant to get ahead of Platinum City’s finest, so we could have Yuri’s Manifested item for ourselves?"

Father shook his head. "On the contrary. We were hired by Platinum City’s Round Table to find this item and retrieve it without any damage whatsoever. They intend to sell this during the Grand Auction, which will take place a little less than six months from now."

"There were so few of us who'd been his students.” My voice sounded so far away, as if I was hearing myself speak from another room. "Aside from Zolas...he had only taught about four more people, or a number close to it.”

"That’s correct," said Grandfather. "Two are confirmed to be dead for years now, a man named Kagen and woman named Eiji."

"Which leaves two more, whose whereabouts have yet to be confirmed," added Father. "The first is a man named Jihan, from one of the Eastern cities. Last known to be a drifter of some sort. He was taught about eighteen years ago."

"The other surviving student goes by the name of Aldara. Known to have been a disciple of The Spinel Temple, but has no records for the last twenty-six years. He or she was Yuri’s student more than twenty years ago."

“What are we supposed to do, then? Look for these two? Is The Danger Kiss with either of them?”

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