The Bound (Ascension #2)(80)

“I’m not sure I can say the same. Cyrene, is it?” he asked, as if he didn’t remember.

But she could see his sharp eyes and knew he remembered all.

“You remember my name, Master Selby. You remember everything about our encounter,” Cyrene said.

“Is that so?” he asked. He took a seat in an armchair opposite Cyrene. “I meet a good number of people while on my travels. Faces start to blur.”

Cyrene slowly retrieved the Book of the Doma from her bag and held it up for him to look at once more. It had landed in her lap, because of the man before her. “Do you remember this?”

He smiled crookedly. “So, you made it.”

“Of course I did. No thanks to you.”

His eyes drifted to Dean and back. “And you manifested?” he asked, cautiously eyeing the book.

“You know I did. Why didn’t you just tell me what it meant?”

“Can’t talk about those things in Byern unless I want to lose my head.”

“Well, can we talk about them now?” she asked.

The man is so frustrating.

“What do you know, Basille?” Dean asked. He had the calm, calculated look of a man who was used to getting what he wanted, coupled with the skill of a man not to be reckoned with.

“You’ve grown a lot since I last saw you, boy,” Basille deflected.

“I’m not a boy anymore.”

“That, I can tell. Nineteen at the Eos holiday in ten days’ time, if I remember correctly. Did you come to bring my invitation?”

Dean leveled him with a stern gaze. “If you didn’t want to risk your neck in Byern, I doubt you would want to risk it here.”

“It’s been ten years since I was last on the palace grounds,” Basille said with a well-oiled smile. “I’m sure my presence would go completely unnoticed.”

Cyrene rolled her eyes. If everything Dean had said was true, then he would surely be noticed.

“Where have you been then?” Dean asked.

“Around the world and back again”—Basille flicked the sides of his mustache and then gestured around the room—“as you can see from all my exploits. No world is barred to the man who knows how to access it.”

“All but the palace grounds, it seems,” Cyrene said casually. “That brings me to the matter at hand. I’m here in Eleysia on your word. I am looking for Matilde and Vera, just as you said I should. How do I find them? And don’t play any more tricks. I have come a long way to get this information, and I will not haggle with a swindling peddler for it. Just spit it out.”

Basille’s smile took over his whole face. “My, have you grown since the first time I met you, little Affiliate. Once terrified of your own shadow and throwing your weight around with a title that had barely sat on your shoulders. A title that they give to seventeen-year-old girls with such high opinions of themselves.”

Dean took a step forward in anger. “Just answer her.”

“Or what?” Basille asked. “Stand down, soldier,” he said the term derisively. “I will speak to the Affiliate…for a price.”

“What price?” she demanded.

“What could you possibly want?” Dean asked.

“I’m a high-standing merchant. Everything can be bought for a price.”

Cyrene was certain that Basille did not mean money in this instance.

“Well?” Cyrene said.

“An invitation to your Eos ball is the price.”

Cyrene and Dean exchanged a glance. It was an easy enough thing to deliver. The ball was widely open to all nobility. Anyone with a piece of the beautiful Eleysian stationery stamped with the blue royal seal could attend. But why he wanted it could prove more problematic for them.

“You know, if you are discovered on the grounds, you will be in a world of trouble,” Dean cautioned.

“That is my battle to fight. You will not be responsible for what happens once the invitation is in my hand,” Basille said with a crooked smile.

Dean shrugged his shoulder at Cyrene. “I’ll do it. I can get one.”

Cyrene looked at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said, then turned to Basille. “Now, talk to her.”

“I reckon I don’t know much more about Doma history than you do. Except that I know it all to be true and not some idiotic story that Byern royalty tells the public. Domas lived and ruled with magic in Byern…and they do no longer.”

Cyrene nodded. She knew as much. The Dremylons had just been lying to everyone about what had actually happened. The knowledge that Doma had magic would change the entire history of their country.

“How did they lose magic?” Cyrene asked.

“I hear there was a great war, and they lost. But I don’t know the specifics. I wasn’t there.”

“But Matilde and Vera were,” Cyrene said quickly. “They were Doma. That’s how you knew they could help me.”

Basille nodded slowly. “I knew they were Doma in hiding, but…to think they would be alive back during the War of the Light…” He considered this for a moment and then shook his head. “They would be over two thousand years old. That can’t be possible.”

“Why do you think they were alive back then?” Dean asked Cyrene.