Page 31 of This Monster of Mine

She’ll be useful, he’d said, as though she were a knife he planned on wielding. Fishing out her last aureus from her coin pouch, she tossed it at his back. He caught it without looking and turned to her with a raised eyebrow.

“Like I said,” she said with her most insincere smile, “I don’t like being in debt.”

A glint in his eyes before he pocketed the aureus. “As you wish.”

There goes my last coin.Telling herself it was for the best, she followed him out of Aoran Tower and watched as the gate and the tower’s front door vanished.

So these were his infamous wards. She patted the air and came up against an impenetrable, invisible wall.That’s a complex bit of illusion magic. Nihumbprovided a blanket concealment of her scars but didn’t prevent anyone from feeling them. Kadra’s wards blocked even touch. She reached for her key, and the gates and Aoran Tower’s door reappeared when she gripped it.How powerful is he?

She eyed him warily as they followed the cobblestone path. “Are you an illusion magus?”

He didn’t seem to mind the question. “No.”

“But Cato is,” she guessed. “He isn’t your coachman.” She waited for him to lie, but Kadra pulled in a satisfied breath as if he were pleased that she’d seen through the act.

“He was married to this quarter’s previous Tetrarch. He prefers to keep it a secret that he lives here and,” a wry note entered his voice, “he’s a good cook.”

Truth. So Cato was the real talent here. Kadra was only powerful in title.Ha!

Kadra’s lips twitched like he’d read her mind. “Cato forms the wards, but I sustain them.”

Her smirk vanished. “Magic pooling?”

Only extraordinarily powerful magi could siphon off some of their power for another magus to use. Even then, the subsequent drain was said to feel like being hit by several sacks of grain.

“Naturally.” Kadra raised a hand, sleeve falling back to reveal an obsidian armilla witheveryrune alight. Her skin crawled. She recognizedyarisfor fire and a few other runes for lightning formation and manipulation, but the rest were a terrifying mystery.

Wrath and Ruin. Just how powerful is he to sustain those wards every single day without keeling over?Lips pressing shut, she followed him to the Aoran Tower Gate. Every brush of his gaze sent shivers down her limbs. Her attacker, aTetrarch. And there wasn’t ahavïdthing she could do about it.

Steel scraped against stone, punctuating her bitterness, as the Gate drew open. The bleary-eyed vigiles stationed there bowed low to him and eyed her with disapproval.

“Morning, Tetrarch Kadra. Will she be accompanying you?”

“At all times.”

Her head snapped to him. Biting her tongue, she waited until they were out of earshot before turning to him.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Is there a problem?”

Therehavïdwell is!How was she to search his home or visit the Hall of Records? “I may be from the north, Tetrarch Kadra, but I doubt that Petitors here are normally glued at the hip to their Tetrarchs.”

He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial rumble. “Perhaps that’s why the previous ones are largely dead.”

Her pulse jumped to the speed of lightning.He’s already given himself an alibi.If she died, he merely had to point out that he’d accompanied her on the job and done everything in his power to help her. Any suspicion directed at him would evaporate before her corpse was cold.

“I see,” she whispered. “Because their deaths were a matter of oversight, and you would undoubtedly be innocent if I died.”

A slow smile spread across Kadra’s face. He leaned across the scant distance between their mounts, his lips to her ear.

“Naturally.” The word brushed her cheek. “Because if I wanted to kill you, Sarai of Arsamea, you’d already be dead.”

Truth.Air stuck in her throat when he drew away, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from yelling that he’d failed four years ago. Without a backward glance, Kadra spurred his horse to a gallop. And as Sarai followed, she could only wonder what torture he had in mind for her this time that was worse than death.

An hour later, Sarai reluctantly concluded that Kadra’s Quarter wasn’t the cesspool of violence that she’d expected. She’d taken brief stock of it the night before the Robing, but they ventured deeper, where raucous whoops sounded from bazaars in full swing, their entrances draped in jeweled fabrics and signs dictating that mounts, pets, and, occasionally, children, weren’t allowed entrance. Laughing women clung to inebriated men, their artfully lined eyes hard.

Most bowed as Kadra passed, eyes averted in respect—or fear? Others waved, some drunkenly raising a bottle, all to which he inclined his head.The people love him, Harion had said. The Elsar only knew why.

Clouds blanketed the capital, Praefa and Silun all but obscured. She shot the sky a glower at the memory of her dash for safety with Kadra scarcely over a night ago.

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