She looks away, but not before I catch the shadow that crosses her face. There's history etched into her every movement, into the protective way she shifts toward her son.
I tell myself this is just a detour—just a pause before finishing the job—but the days keep passing, and I keep showing up. Keep finding reasons to linger in this small room with its mismatched furniture and carefully mended curtains. Keep allowing myself to be drawn into their orbit, against every instinct that has kept me alive all these years.
The bounty waits. Five hundred novas—enough to spend the rest of my life in comfortable numbness. But comfort has never been what I sought, and the numbness I've lived in for years seems to be falling away, replaced by something sharper, more dangerous.
Something like feeling.
9
DOMNO
Ifeel oddly uneasy when I leave Esalyn and Erisen hours later. But I don't go to my room. I go to where information is spread and can give me a better idea of what is waiting for us. Of how much time I have.
Heavy smoke hangs in the air of The Broken Horn, a tavern where the walls sweat as much as the patrons. It's well past midnight, and I find myself perched on a stool worn smooth by years of similarly disreputable asses. The place reeks of stale amerinth, sweat, and the particular tang of desperate decisions being made.
Perfect for my needs.
I nurse a drink I have no intention of finishing—a murky concoction that probably contains more ash than alcohol. My fingers curl around the chipped glass, seemingly relaxed, though my body remains coiled tight beneath my casual posture. Nothing about me says "I'm listening" except that I am, every sense tuned to the conversations bleeding together around me.
A pair of smugglers argue about cargo routes to my left. Behind me, a woman with scales freckling her cheeks haggles with a man missing three fingers. Information flows like sewagein places like this—abundant, filthy, but valuable if you know how to filter it.
The bartender—a hulking creature with tusks filed to sharp points—slides another drink in front of me without asking. I haven't finished the first, but that's not the point. The cost of occupying space here is continuous patronage.
"Haven't seen you in a while," he grunts, voice like gravel shifting underfoot. I did spend the first week here in Velzaroth drinking myself underneath his bar.
I shrug. "Been busy."
His yellow eyes assess me with the particular wariness of someone who's broken up too many lethal fights. "Must be. All the hunters have been scrabbling for work lately. Except you."
There's a question beneath his observation. I ignore it, sliding a few lummis across the scarred wood instead. The coins disappear beneath his massive hand.
"Heard anything interesting?" I ask, the practiced casualness of someone making conversation rather than gathering intelligence.
He snorts, a sound like metal scraping against stone. "Depends what you find interesting. Had four brawls this week. Found a severed hand in the privy." He leans forward, dropping his voice. "And there's rumors a kal'galan finally made it to the city."
That catches my attention. Kal'galan are rare—demons who practice blood magic, outlawed even in the lawless corners of Ikoth. If one's in Velzaroth, things will get bloody fast.
But it's not what I came for.
I'm about to press further when a burst of laughter erupts from a table in the corner. Three mercenaries—two human, one with the telltale ridged skin of a half-gorgon—sprawl around a table littered with empty glasses.
"—wasting his time," the half-gorgon says, voice carrying through the smoky air. "Five hundred novas just sitting there unclaimed."
My fingers tighten imperceptibly around my glass. The mercenary beside him—a woman with a scar bisecting her face—leans forward.
"You sure it hasn't been collected? Seems like easy money, tracking down one human woman."
Something cold settles in my stomach. I don't move, don't react, though my pulse quickens beneath my skin.
"Positive," the half-gorgon replies, tapping ash from a rolled herb onto the table. "Spoke to Thren's courier myself yesterday. Said they're getting impatient, might double the bounty soon."
The name slams into me like a physical blow. Thren. Vorrak Thren'Surath. Other hunters are talking to him? Asking about the bounty?
And I've been playing house with his quarry.
"You going after it?" the third mercenary asks, a burly human with fingers stained black with what might be poison.
The half-gorgon laughs. "Nah. Got better things to do than chase some noble's runaway pet."
