Page 25 of This Monster of Mine

Anek chuckled. “She prefers the company of women. Nothing unsavory about her.”

“No, that would be Kadra,” Cisuré muttered. “Everyone knows that he accompanies his vigiles when they cavort at pleasure houses.”

Lovely. “Harion called him a ‘block of ice.’”

“Because despite going with his people, he never engages in their activities,” Anek added. “Hasn’t touched a pleasure worker or had romantic liaisons even before he took office.”

“Who’d want to sleep with that?” Cisuré laughed scornfully.

Who indeed.Sarai thought back to her first real glimpse of Kadra on the dais. Hard-eyed, untouchable. Exuding power without so much as lifting a finger. This was a man more interested in blood than any other sport.

She locked the door with quiet finality, Cisuré promising to return her key to the Night Office. Outside, the moons hung low.

Tension rippled through her. “Where do the Tetrarchs live?”

“Here.” Anek gestured at the grounds. “In the four tallest towers. They double as vantage points from which to control stormfall when it strikes.”

Cisuré still looked grim. “Kadra resides in Aoran Tower to the west. Every Tetrarch’s tower is heavily warded, but his has the strongest, fully cloaked in illusion magic. No one knows where the entrance is.”

So why let me in?The question followed them to the Lisran Tower Gate where her third raeda of the day waited, painted in the black and gold of Kadra’s colors. She shivered. It looked like a gilded hearse.

Inclining her head to the coachman, she turned to Cisuré, sighing at the deep furrows between her eyes. “I’m not going off to war.”

“You may as well be.” The other girl hugged her fiercely. “Don’t be reckless. Send word if you needanyhelp, and for the Elsar’s sakes, don’t—”

“Lose my temper, I know,” Sarai said wryly, the warning drilled into her over many years.

“Kadra has a way of getting into people’s heads. Keep him out.”

“My head’s always been a hard nut.” She patted Cisuré’s shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”

“You will,” Anek said dryly. “Kadra is many things but offing a Petitor who publicly defied him is too on the nose. Even for him.”

Somehow that didn’t make her feel better.

With a parting nod to Anek, Sarai climbed into the carriage, feeling like her last tether to normalcy had died along with Ennius. Then again, perhaps that was best—to lack all illusions as she entered a monster’s lair. Drawing the raeda’s curtain aside, she waved as the coachman clicked his tongue and hooves clattered to life.

I’m sorry, Cisuré. She watched her friend’s pinched face fade to a flesh-colored blur.But I’m going to have to get very reckless.

CHAPTER FIVE

Her first thought was that Kadra’s tower resembled him.

Sarai’s eyes widened as she alighted from the raeda. Obsidian pillars framed the cavernous doorway of a structure easily a fifth of the Aequitas’s breadth. Fire danced in a single sconce, casting shadows swallowed by the ebony door. Behind her, an ornate gate swung shut. Neither door nor gate had been visible until the raeda had passed through Kadra’s wards.

Sarai apprehensively eyed the entrance. The night breeze carried the scent of citrus. Too gentle for lemon, too sweet to be lime.He must have an orange grove.

“Tetrarch Kadra awaits within.” Firelight illuminated the coachman’s gray hair and the deep smile lines around his mouth.

She wondered what anyone working for Kadra would have to smile about. “Tibi gratias ago. I’m Sarai, by the way.”

“Cato.” He tilted his head toward the door, amused. “He doesn’t bite.”

No, he only burns people alive.With a steadying breath, Sarai stepped into a terrazzo-tiled atrium. Here, too, a single sconce was lit. The open-air roof typical of southern domii was conspicuously absent.

“Does Tetrarch Kadra have no use for light?”

Cato smiled. “An open roof is an invitation to his enemies. No matter how many people say otherwise, at the end of the day, Tetrarch Kadra’s only a man.”

---