Page 58 of Of Thieves and Shadows

I shake my head, my jaw clenching. “You can’t go back to her.”

The words were meant to be authoritative, but something like pleading slips into my tone. I’m not sure if I’m asking her to stay tonight, or to stay, period, to stop working for the woman who put her in shoes that tortured her and left her vulnerable to a man like Damian.

Her head tilts as she surveys my expression.

“More of your infinite mercy, Remy?” she asks. “Even now?”

She’s stepped closer to me than I realized, her curious, upturned face only inches from mine.

Suddenly I’m lost in memories of bloody hands in a room above a bar. Of desperate kisses that feel more like a goodbye than a relief.

Sympathy for the murderer, Remy?She had asked.

I told you, mercy is not a finite resource.

Mercy. Is that what this is?

No, I had wanted to say. But what was I supposed to tell her, when the masquerade was coming up? When I knew I would probably never see her again?

Was I supposed to admit that mercy didn’t begin to scratch the surface of everything we were?

That was before I knew who she was, that she worked for Madame, that she was apparently never going to stop. And now…

“What else?” I lie, because that’s all we seem to do to each other.

“Is that for Gemma’s sake, or mine?” she questions.

I want to tell her that I’m beginning to think there’s no real difference. If anything, Lady Aika feels like the lie. But she’s still The Flame, still working for the woman who killed my brother, and I’m still the prince of a royal family she wants no part of.

“Does it matter?” I respond instead.

A sigh escapes her, so quiet I almost miss it. “I guess not. Especially not now, when I have to go.”

Like hell she does.

“Aika—”

She cuts me off, reaching into her satchel and pulling out a vial. “I could have drugged you again, but I thought we could go forward with more trust.”

Something is false in her words, and I narrow my eyes.

She relents. “Fine, I need you to refrain from tattling to my sister…and to keep the monkey.”

The creature makes a sound of protest, and I swear he understood her meaning.

“I think he’d prefer to stay with you,” I say, but she shakes her head.

“He wouldn’t be safe there.”

“Oh, but you will?” My tone is thick with disbelief.

“It’s not at all the same. Madame just…doesn’t tolerate attachments to things outside of her or relationships that don’t benefit her,” she says, wrapping a hand around the creature perched cautiously on her shoulder.

Her eyes are locked onto mine, conveying a deeper meaning, one that has nothing to do with bringing home a stray pet. My jaw clenches. More than ever, I don’t want her to leave.

I take the clearly unwilling animal, meeting her eyes solidly. “But you’ll come back…for the monkey, obviously?”

A small smile pulls at her lips. “Of course. I have no intentions of leavingthe monkeyjust yet.”

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