Poison Tree

Ben shook his head. “It just ashed a half hour ago, listing SE Haven Number Four as your location. Hidden client, private posting to all three guilds.”

“If it only happened a half hour ago, then how did you hear about it?” He hadn’t been to any of the guild halls where he might have picked up a message; she was sure of that.

“There’s an app for that,” Ben answered, once again completely straight-faced. “The question is, when will Christian hear about it, and do you think he’ll call?”

She couldn’t tell if he was being honest or just screwing with her. It didn’t really matter, as long as he wasn’t trying to kill or kidnap her. “Fine. Thanks for the heads-up, but I want you gone. Now, or I’m going to have to try to make you gone.”

He grinned. “You’d lose.”

Alysia shrugged. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

She jumped when he leaned in to her, just long enough to kiss her cheek. “That’s what I love about you, babe,” he said as he pushed to his feet, all evidence of a limp gone. “You have the wackiest principles I know. And yeah, I’m out of here.” He quickly packed the laptop back into its case. “I suggest you get out, too.”

He had closed the door behind him before Alysia was able to push herself to her feet. Her heart was pounding in her throat, and insanely, it felt good. She was unarmed, SingleEarth still had some kind of Onyx stalker on the loose, and now someone was o ering a very large amount of money to anyone willing to try to abduct her.

She hadn’t felt so alive in two years.

CHAPTER 10

IT WAS HER fth birthday, and her father had brought her out to a fancy party. She wore a pretty dress and a shiny necklace, and her hair had been put up special with a glittering gold clip shaped like a butterfly.

There were metal detectors and guards at the door. Her father’s cu links set o the detectors, and the guards made him remove his tuxedo jacket so they could search him thoroughly. Her butterfly made the machines beep, too, but they let her pass.

The party was beautiful, ful of dancing people who oohed and aahed over her. Isn’t she lovely? So poised. So sweet. None of them knew there was a dagger hidden in her hair, under the pretty butterfly her father had known would set off the metal detectors.

Her father asked for the knife about half an hour after they arrived. They left shortly after, amid the screaming. He bought her a cupcake at a restaurant on the way home, wished her happy birthday, and thanked her for being a good girl and making him proud.

There was blood on her fancy big-girl shoes. She kicked them o under the table and walked barefoot back to the car. Her father didn’t notice. He never noticed things like that.

Sarik woke with a start, disoriented and sore. The move sent a long-cold co ee sloshing over its rim onto the desk.

She had intended to close her eyes for just a moment. Just a second. She had been on edge for days, her sleep mocked by memories surfacing as nightmares.

It wasn’t even eleven in the morning, and Jason was still sleeping in the next room. The worst part was, she had been happy that day, deliriously pleased, because her father had made time to celebrate her birthday and because she had made him proud. She hadn’t understood that she had been there only because she was useful.

As she grew up, it all became harder. Every moment became a power struggle, an impossible balance, as her father groomed her to be his heir, always demanding perfect obedience. Warning her that she needed to be strong and then beating her so badly she couldn’t walk if she dared try to turn that strength against him.

She jumped when hands descended on her shoulders.

“Sorry,” Jason said. “I said your name, but you were a million miles away.”

“Sorry,” she echoed, pulling away as she stood up.

I can’t do this anymore. If she had to keep running, hiding, doing anything in her power to try to stifle the fear, it was going to destroy her.

“Sarik,” Jason said softly, “I know we’ve had this conversation before, so I won’t push it, but … well, one of the counselors came to me after the attack, to see if I wanted to schedule a time to talk. I think it could be a good idea for you, too.”

“I wasn’t hurt,” she replied. Jason could have been killed, real y killed.

“Not physically, but—” He broke o , as if he was going to drop it, then decided to forge ahead. “The last time I felt that kind of pain or had blood on my skin was in Maya’s cell the day I met you.”

The day I met you. He didn’t understand how those words sounded in her ears, not like the empathy he intended but like accusation.

“I’m sure this attack has dredged up just as many traumatic memories for you as it has for me. There’s no shame in needing some help to—”

“No,” she interrupted. “If you want to talk to someone, I’ll love you and support you and hope they can help. But it’s not for me.”

He looked like he wanted to argue once more but said only, “I need to feed, and then I’m going to call Diana. Maya is powerful, but she is still only one mercenary. She wouldn’t dare challenge SingleEarth openly.” He looked away as he added, “But she might send someone to harass us anonymously, if she thought it could scare me away from here and back to her. I’m going to tell Diana everything and let her decide what to do next.”

The words seemed to place a clamp around Sarik’s throat. She wanted to say You don’t need to do that, but she couldn’t.

Jason kissed her cheek. “I love you, Sarik.”

“I love you,” she whispered, but only after he was out the door.

Alysia. It wasn’t too late. Sarik could still make this right. She just needed to talk to the table’s newest mediator and explain everything. Everything, down to the moment when she had peeked inside the trunk in the human’s room, found enough weapons to arm a half-

dozen killers, and been sure down to her toes that Alysia was here to nish what Maya’s brood had failed to do six years earlier.

Jason didn’t understand, because Sarik had never told him who Cori was.

For a long time, Sarik had been too afraid to admit anything to Jason. He had been a mercenary, after all; she didn’t want him to realize she could be valuable to anyone. He hadn’t made the connection between the dead girl and Sarik because he had no reason to assume there could be any relationship between a runaway tiger of pure royal blood and a human child.

By the time she trusted him enough to tell him, she was already someone else, and Sarik kuloka Mari had slammed the door on her painful past.

So now, only she had the information necessary to know that the recent bloodshed wasn’t about Jason. It was about Bruja, about Alysia.

Alysia, who had stepped forward to help when the attack happened. Who had been alone with Sarik for hours when they went to Onyx but hadn’t made a single move to threaten her. Who just maybe wasn’t the villian Sarik had thought she was but instead was hiding from the same demons Sarik was trying to dodge.

Sarik couldn’t talk to a counselor. Couldn’t explain to Diana without putting all of

SingleEarth in danger. Couldn’t even really explain to Jason. But if she had the courage, she could tell Alysia, and they could work out what needed to happen next.

Her mind was full of white noise as she crossed the hall in search of the human mediator.

As she knocked, though, the door swung open.

The trunk was open, and most of its contents had been dumped onto the bed. The weapons were gone, as was Alysia’s laptop. Sarik couldn’t tell if anything else was missing, except for Alysia herself. The question was,