Page 62 of Ruthless Scoundrel
“Hadtoooo?” I ask with dwindling patience. My mind runs wild in the silence between us. He had to sell me, too? He had to sell himself? The very brief interaction where I saw the captain wouldn’t make me think she was that type, but one can never judge the inner workings of the mind of a smuggler.
“I had to tell her things.”
“Whatthings?” I ask, my frustration mounting.
He winces. “Like that you’re part of a secret Fynish rebellion and the queen wants you for something.”
“You. Told. Her. What?!”
The frustration explodes into full-blown fury in a blink. I throw the closest thing at him; a pillow. He catches it, then holds it up to block the next thing in my hand—I’m not even sure what it is. A compass bounces off the pillow and lands on the bed as I reach for the next thing my hands can find.
“Why would you do that?”
“Rei, stop,” he complains, blocking a lamp that goes crashing to the floor.
“You’ve just painted a target right on us, you idiot!”
The door swings open before I get to throw the next item in my hand. The pistol.
Instinct drives me and I point the flintlock at the woman standing in the open door. It’s the same one who’d been working on the papers in the tavern earlier this afternoon. The captain.
She puts her hands up in mock surrender as she comes all the way in and closes the door behind her. “Just wanted to make sure things didn’t get out of control. I’m on the hook if you destroy this room, too.”
Jasper lowers his pillow an inch. “Please stop. The barman is going to keep our third ruby if you damage anything else.”
“Ourruby?” I turn the pistol on him. “You meanmyruby! The one you stole! Frommytiara!”
The captain looks at Jasper. “Her tiara?”
He covers his face with the pillow, his voice coming out muffled as he shouts, “I didn’t tell her who you are!”
The woman’s gaze cuts to me, and though she’s doing her best to subdue it, I can see the shock in her eyes. “Princess Reina?” she asks in a hush.
I point the pistol at her, and her hands shoot back up, this time without the mockery.
“You will not speak my name again. I am Amaya,” I say, and I don’t know why I want to keep up this charade.
Fear?
No.
Being with Jasper the last week has been hard, but less terrifying than being trapped in the palace. And I’m finally promised some answers from him when we reach Illya. If he is a selkie prince or king in need of my help for something, I could forge a powerful alliance with the strongest and most intelligent creatures of the sea through him. Since my feet are no longer bleeding, and I don’t feel as if I was beaten half to death, I have to assume he is a powerful magus with healing abilities.
An alliance with selkiekind would give me control of the seas. Killing the queen will be easier if she has nowhere to run but up to Seter, and then it’ll just be a matter of hunting her down in the frigid north.
Gods, I’ve truly become the perfect usurper the rebellion wanted me to be.
“Are we going to talk about this, or start shooting?” Alejandra asks.
I lower the pistol and Jasper lowers his pillow—as if that could’ve spared him.
Alejandra walks over to the fireplace and begins building a fire. Jasper gives me a very pitiful expression that pulls on my heartstrings. He puts his hands out, reaching toward my feet but stopping halfway. I put the trigger lock in place and set the pistol aside, then lower my legs back to the mattress.
Warmth seeps into my feet as he massages his magic into me. There’s an undercurrent of electricity that shoots from his thumbs all the way up to my core, and I fight the sensation that’s trying to bloom there.
Sparks fly in the fireplace and catch on the kindling Alejandra’s built up. “I’ll go first, I suppose,” she says. “Jasper told me you were with the rebellion planning to overthrow the queen of Fynren, but nothing else. You could say I am a sect of that rebellion, working on starting up my own over in Wolfsheim.”
Jasper and I exchange the same furrowed-brow look of confusion.
