Page 32 of This Monster of Mine

“We won’t see stormfall for a few days yet,” his voice broke in.

She jumped. By Ruin, how did the wretched man know exactly what she was thinking? “I’ll be prepared this time.”

“Garden follies aren’t so easily found in Edessa,” he said blandly, and she, once again, debated the merits of strangling him. “The storms tend to arrive at night.”

“Sounds like quite the wrench in your regimen.”

“Mine?”

“Working from two in the morning to noon,” she said coolly. “Most people fear the dark for what it hides. It’s a rare man who avoids daylight.”

A glimmer of laughter in his eyes. “It’s easier to see my enemies at night. As you said, it’s a rare person who skulks in the dark.”

Damn him. He had an uncanny ability to turn words on themselves, to invert and recenter meaning.As befitting a politician.Unable to think of a retort, she lapsed into sullen silence.

The domii and storefronts on either side grew smaller the farther they got from the Academiae, shifting from opulent marble to cement. A wall began on one side of the road, sloping up to end in a parted gate. Moonlight glinted off the stately buildings beyond, mercifully not liveried in Kadra’s colors, unlike the vigiles dashing across the grounds, eyes heavy with fatigue. At the center of it all rose an oblong structure forming a three-sided square: the vigile compound, a central hub in every Tetrarch’s Quarter to which their vigiles reported. The soldiers oversaw prisons, manned patrols, and coordinated disaster efforts during stormfall. They also didn’t like her much, if their scowls were any indication.

Dismounting, Kadra tilted his head toward a smattering of smaller structures across the grounds. She wrinkled her nose at a pungent odor that worsened as they neared a domed building. Acrid, it sat somewhere between a rotting animal and a spoiled batch of Cretus’s wine.

“What in all the Elsar’s names is that stench?” she finally spluttered.

“The morgue.” Kadra swept past her, unaffected. The door scraped open, unleashing a blast of putrid air. Sarai clapped a hand to her mouth as her breakfast rose to her throat.

“Tetrarch Kadra, why are we at a morgue?”

“For Jovian of Edessa.”

She tried not to gag. “What about him?”

“Four months ago, he was found dead in his study, pinned under several bookcases.”

“What piques your interest afterallthis time?”

Her emphasis prompted a dark smile. “Jovian was one of last year’s Petitors.”

She halted. “What?”

“The very last to kill himself.” A sconce backlit his face in washes of umber. “Pulverized so badly, his own brother barely recognized him.”

He could have been discussing the weather for all the emotion he showed. Trepidation wrapped bony fingers around her ribs. Why was he starting off her first day by showing her a Petitor’s corpse?Is this a threat?

With great effort, she kept her voice from shaking. “If he killed himself, then why are we here?”

Kadra didn’t elaborate, striding past several corpses perched atop medical tables. Lugens pored over the disarrayed maps of the bodies, trying to intuit the cause of their demise. On the fringes of the room, young healers-in-training carefully cut into organs, rinsing their hands to make notes on their structures. Quashing the ache of her younger self’s dreams, she followed Kadra.

A hard-nosed woman with salt-and-pepper hair rose at his approach.

“Tetrarch Kadra.” She bowed low. “Whom did you come to see today?”

“Jovian.”

Surprise flickered across her face. “Of course.” She turned frosty eyes on Sarai. “Lugen Geena.”

“A pleasure to—” Sarai blinked when Geena walked past her.

Well, then. She could almost hear Harion snickering that he’d told her so. Irritated, she followed Geena and Kadra down a flight of stairs at the back.

The bustle and clatter of Lugens and metal implements faded, replaced by the quiet of death. A chill hung in the air, ice sealing the cracks in the stonework. The stairs culminated in a short hallway leading to a snow-crusted door, which Geena unlocked.

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