Page 103 of Heartless Enemy

His smirk grew into a smile dripping with threats. “Or what, Miss Dreary?”

She opened her mouth as if to retort, but then seemed to think better of it. Instead, she smoothed down her hair and forced out a long breath through her nose. I almost chuckled at how easily Levi managed to fluster people. It really was rather entertaining when he did things like that to someone other than me.

“You have fulfilled your end of the bargain, and we will keep our side,” Dreary said at last. “The south side is now yours to govern. And since you are now a political leader, we will refrain from trying to arrest you on sight.”

Levi let out a dark laugh that made several parliament members shiver. “How generous.”

Her gaze sharpened, and she looked like she wanted to say something else. But being snarky to the King of Metal did not usually end well. And I should know, I had plenty of experience with it.Ihad certainly no plans to suddenly become sensible and stop doing it, though.

“That concludes our business then,” Dreary said instead.

Levi nodded. “It does.”

“I trust you will forgive me when I say that I sincerely hope I never have the displeasure of being within speaking distance of you ever again.”

“Keep your nauseating high morals and your worthless democracy on your side of the river, and you won’t.”

She let out an indignant huff. Then her gaze drifted from Levi and towards someone coming up behind us. “Well then, if you’ll excuse us, we have another urgent matter to attend to.”

Levi flashed her a wicked grin. “You are excused.”

She shot him an annoyed look back, but then simply stalked past us without comment. We turned to find that the constables had finally caught up with us. A mass of white and gold now filled the space between Levi’s dark mages and the civilians who had come to watch the show.

I spotted Frank and Jamila among them. Apparently, they had survived. After they had all just left me to get my head smashed in by White’s hammer, I had stopped caring what happened to that side of our army.

As if they could feel my stare, my former colleagues glanced towards me. Several emotions flitted across their faces. Regret? Guilt? Anger? Contempt? I wasn’t sure. But standing there among the dark mages who had come for me when I needed help, I realized that I didn’t really care what the constables I used to work with thought of me now.

My gaze slid to the brown-haired man who had separated himself from the ranks of constables and who was now striding forward across the stones.

Chief Ulric Smith didn’t even look in my direction as he stopped in front of Dreary and the rest of the parliament members who had gone to meet him.

“Honorable parliament members,” he began in a voice that I think was supposed to sound confident and full of effortless authority, but which only made me want to vomit. “The threat that the worldwalker Christian White posed to our great city has now been neutralized. Our forces have—”

“Ulric Smith,” Nikita Dreary said, cutting off his pompous declaration.

Ulric drew back a little and blinked in surprise at the harshness of her tone.

Silence spread through the entire square like a sweeping wave. And suddenly, all eyes were on Ulric and the parliament member.

“Uhm, yes, Parliament Member Dreary?” Ulric asked hesitantly, his brown eyes now full of confusion.

“You are hereby charged with high treason.”

A gasp pulsed through the crowd.

Ulric’s eyes went wide as fucking dinner plates. “I… what?”

Nikita snapped her fingers and flicked her wrist. “Arrest him.”

The constables who had been guarding the parliament members immediately moved forward to grab him. Ulric tried to back away while several of my former colleagues staggered a couple of steps forward as if to help him before apparently deciding against it. All the other white boots who had been with us on the battlefield shrank back from Ulric as if he had been infected with a deadly plague.

Utter shock pulsed on Ulric’s face as he stared at Dreary while the other constables grabbed him by the arms. One of them slid his sword out of its scabbard while another one snapped a pair of stiff handcuffs around his wrists.

“Wait,” Ulric blurted out, still staring at the parliament members in disbelief. “High treason? For what?”

There was no mercy on Nikita Dreary’s face as she stared him down.

“For the murders of Captain Jonathan Wright and Chief Eric Anderson.”

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