Page 87 of The Sin

All ten of the council heirs had been put together. Other than Daniel, I knew the others only by sight. Some were men in their later years. Councilmen seldom retired. Most heirs had to wait for their fathers to drop dead on the job. Some of them were just children, dragged from their homes in Parklands.

Roman had asked me about regrets.

Well, I was not okay with this.

Daniel came forward to the bars. He looked tired, dark circles hanging beneath his eyes, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. “Georga, what the hell is going on? Have you seen my father? What was that screening about and how are you involved with these people? Who are they?”

The truth came less easily to me than I would like to admit. Daniel was looking at me with such faith, as if there was an obvious explanation for why I seemed to be associated with these mad women who’d tossed him in this cell and taken his father away.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I promised.

That’s all I had time for, before the other heirs converged on me.

A middle-age man with a full beard and furiously winged brows grabbed onto the bars with both hands and shook so hard, I was afraid they’d rattle out from the walls. “You ungrateful, scheming—”

“That’s enough,” Daniel snapped.

The man sneered at him. “Or what, littleboy?”

The way he said,boy,I placed him immediately. The Otter heir.

Two guys around our age, maybe a few years older, stepped into line beside Daniel. “Are you sure you want to start this, Otter?”

Otter’s nostrils flared. “Why would you stick up for any Edgar? They’re in bed with that warden and this, this—” his eyes flashed to me, pricked me.

He didn’t get to finish that foul thought.

Daniel lunged forward with an uppercut to Otter’s jaw. His head snapped back and blood spat from his mouth.

More heirs fell in line, some on Daniel’s side, some on Otter’s side. The youngest boys stayed out of it, thank goodness.

I stepped back from the bars, my heart thudding. Coming here had been a bad idea. I was making things worse for Daniel, not better.

But I couldn’t just leave, either. The two sides were about to go head-to-head, and Otter’s team had the older, bigger men.

I put a hand up, raised my voice. “Daniel and Julian are friendly with my husband, not with me. They’ve had nothing to do with me, and none of them, not the Edgars, and certainly not my husband, had any idea of what I’ve been involved in.”

Daniel’s mouth opened.

I narrowed my eyes at him in warning.

Otter didn’t seem the least bit appeased. He bared his teeth at me, like an animal, and then turned that snarling look on Daniel.

“I’ll get you out of here,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, confident, firm. “Allof you.”

Otter looked at me, and I met that look with far more grit and steel than I was feeling in my bones.

“That’s a promise,” I said. “I can do it, and I will, unless you give me a reason to not give a damn about whether you live or die.”

Otter still didn’t look entirely convinced, but the rest of his team took the bait. They straggled deeper into the cell, leaving Otter to stand on his own.

“You had better not be lying,” he said to me.

As if he still had the power to do anything about it if I were.

“I promise,” I repeated, and I actually meant it.

He was an unpleasant specimen of a human being, and maybe I really would regret this decision, but he was an heir, not a councilman. I was pretty sure he’d follow in his father’s footsteps, but he hadn’t yet, and a man should be judged on his actions, not on what he might be capable of doing one day

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