Shaedes of Gray: A Shaede Assassin Novel

Alexander, who made Azriel’s mother.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “Who? How? Why?”

“Padma,” Raif said with a harsh laugh. “And I don’t know why. I would never ask. That is my king’s business, and his alone.”

“So what do you want to know, Raif?” I was tired of beating around the bush. “If Azriel is my weakness as well? Do you want to know if I’ll be able to seal the deal?”

“I suppose yes, that is what I want to know.”

“You want to be sure that I’ll kill Azriel before he can kill Xander.”

“Yes, I want to be sure,” Raif said.

Let’s see. In the time I’d known him, Azriel had used me, lied to me, and abandoned me. He’d seduced me, and I’d loved him. And his only gift had been leaving me with just my wits to survive by and a farce of an existence to guide me. And now he’d sent his Lyhtan lackeys to threaten me. “Don’t worry. It’s in the bag.” And I wondered if it could really be that easy.

Delilah wasn’t waiting in front of my building. Strange. She’d become such a permanent fixture that her absence sparked a small amount of concern. I stepped from the lift and found Tyler sitting on my couch. Probably why Delilah wasn’t here.

“What’re you doing here, Ty?” I tried to sound normal, not like a jilted woman, even though I was.

Tyler didn’t make eye contact. His shoulders slumped and his forehead fell to rest in his palms. “Delilah is missing.”

All I could think of was poor, skinny, helpless, and blind Delilah being knocked around, bound and gagged, and dragged away with nothing but her smart mouth for defense. “Who did it? Do you know?”

“I think it was a Lyhtan. There was a pretty foul odor surrounding her house.”

“Why would they want her?”

“Maybe for the same reason we did: to use her as a scout.” Tyler looked lost, guilty, and angry.

“No.” I doubted they needed her for something as trivial as that. It had to be something else, something she hadn’t been used for in a while. “How many other Oracles are there wandering around the world?”

“A couple maybe, including her,” Tyler said. “Oracles are rare in this world. She had a sister, but someone killed her two or three centuries or so ago. I don’t know much about it. Delilah may be the only one. You don’t think—”

“Why not?” I said. Wouldn’t it be handy to know the outcome of a war before you had to shed any blood?

“But why kidnap her? Couldn’t they just hire her to do the job?”

“Tyler, she said no one could afford to pay the price. She said it takes a sacrifice.”

His face snapped into an expression of awareness. “What about you?” he asked.

“Me?”

“Darian, the kind of sacrifice necessary to pay an Oracle is a high price because it’s something you can’t bear to be parted from. What if that sacrifice is supposed to be you?”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Azriel is leading the Lyhtans, and if he needs an Oracle, I’d be the last thing he couldn’t bear to be parted from. Trust me—if I meant anything to him, he wouldn’t have abandoned me.”

Tyler paused. “But what if it isn’t Azriel who took Delilah?”

The politics of war made my head spin. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the various intricacies. “Ty, I’m tired. Don’t be cryptic.”

“If Azriel is shacked up with the Lyhtans, maybe there’s a displaced leader. Maybe he’s the one who wants you dead.”

It sounded far-fetched, but I was willing to pursue any angle if it meant getting Delilah back. “What do we do, then?”

“Find out if there’s a disgruntled leader out there and arrange a meeting.”

Oh, fabulous. That sounded like a ton of fun. “Ty,” I said. “How fragile is Delilah? I mean . . . could they—”

“Don’t worry,” he said, a sad smile offering assurance. “If we’re right, they don’t want to hurt her, just use her as a crystal ball. Besides, she’s not as breakable as she looks. Meet me at The Pit tonight around ten. Okay?”

That didn’t seem like the best place to start looking for a Lyhtan king, but I wasn’t about to question Tyler anymore. “I’ll be there.”

The typical throng of people hadn’t yet lined up outside the door, giving Tiny little to do. Inside, the club wasn’t much busier; only a few regulars hanging around, drinking their evening away. Tyler sat waiting for me, in my usual corner, but tonight he wasn’t alone. Levi sat with him.

I took a seat next to Ty. He brushed his hand along my arm, squeezing as he settled on my hand. I pulled away. There was no such thing as PDA at a business meeting.

“So, what’s up?” I asked.

Ty looked a little crestfallen. I sighed. I was sure we’d have it out later. For some reason, he had a hard time differentiating between us in public and us in private. They were all one and the same to him. It might have had something to do with the bond Delilah talked about; he had been a lot more touchy-feely lately. In fact, I felt a little more tuned in to him as well. He put me at ease just by being near. Had we been bonded all along these past five years? He’d made me feel safe since the night of my first job when we sealed our business relationship with a handshake and a silver ring. I hadn’t thought about it, but perhaps something as simple as skin-to-skin contact had prompted Ty to bind himself to me. Or maybe it had been that first kiss outside Xander’s warehouse, because I hadn’t felt the same since that night. And like every other piece of knowledge I’d had to fight for these past weeks, I was going to make Ty spill his knowledge as well.

“Levi is what you might call a liaison,” Tyler said, breaking me from contemplative thoughts. “He’s a go- between for the natural and supernatural worlds.”

That’s the understatement of the century, I thought. Levi was a walking supernatural encyclopedia. “Well, Levi,” I said. “What’s the word?”

He smiled at me, a very genuine expression on his frat-boy face. I fought the urge to ask him if he was late for a kegger.

“There’s a lot going on right now,” Levi said. “There’s talk of war between the Shaedes and Lyhtans. Many beings have their eye fixed to the outcome. It could mean change for more than just the parties involved.”

“What about the Lyhtans?” I asked. “Do they have a leader who’s been kicked from his throne or something like that?”

“They don’t generally live that way,” Levi explained. “Lyhtans are wild, lawless. They’re solitary. Every once in a while you’ll find them moving in packs, groups not much larger than ten. There’s no real leadership hierarchy, no pecking order. They don’t follow.”

I looked at Ty and gave a silent shake of my head. We weren’t getting anywhere.

“Have you heard of a Shaede who is banding the Lyhtans together?” I asked Levi. “Named Azriel.” And did I mention I need to kill the bastard?

“I have,” he said. “Like I said, they don’t usually follow, so this Shaede must be promising the world to get them on board for his campaign.”

“What do Lyhtans want?” I asked. “What could he use as a bargaining chip?”

“They’re tired of hiding,” Levi said. “They want to be more like you.”

Acceptance. That’s what the Lyhtans wanted more than anything. They wanted to blend in with the human population and pass as something close to normal.

“How?” I asked no one in particular. “How could he promise that? How does he think he’ll give that to them?”

“Who knows?” Tyler chimed in. “It could be just a bunch of lies he’s telling them to string them along. Otherwise, we’re in for a shit storm of trouble.”

“Because they’re nasty fuckers,” Levi added. “If they can come and go as they please, blend in with the general population, they’ll cause all sorts of chaos.”