The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(44)

“Well, there’s no fixing that. But if the Chosen recorded the history, they’d remember something as big a deal as a threat like this, right? Maybe you could ask them. They’re all up at Rehv’s Great Camp. You could talk to them and they could at least narrow your search.”

“Yeah, that’s true. I could do that.”

“So let’s go—” She shook her head. “I mean, you. You should go.”

Those eyes of his bored into her own. “I could use some help on this. If you’ve got some time to spare.”

Jane looked down at the gauze in her hand. There was a red stain in the center of the sterile white pad.

Manny wasn’t going to allow her anywhere near the clinic. And she was just going to go stay at one of the Brotherhood’s properties, cooped up like a prisoner, cursing her life and her professional partners and everyone else in the process.

Or…she could help V with his job.

She thought of all the secret meetings he went to, all those closed doors, those rooms she wasn’t welcome in, that information he never shared.

“It’s fine,” he muttered. “I know you’re busy—”

“You sure you want me to know anything about this?”

As she spoke, there was bitterness in her voice—and she had to admit she had been hurt for quite a while now. She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge this, of course, because, come on—she had her own life, and it wasn’t like she could share patient details with even him. But she had felt left out of so much of how he spent his hours, how he purposed his life, how he committed himself. He and the Brotherhood were so close, they were essentially one entity, between their working relationships and their off-rotation, inside-joke, male macho stuff.

Which she didn’t mind at all—as long as she felt like she and V had a connection.

“I have no problem with you knowing anything,” he said.

“You sure about that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean—”

She put her hand up. “I don’t want to fight.”

He took a deep breath, that star scar on his chest expanding out of shape and resettling. “I don’t, either. And I do mean that. Hell, you’ll probably be the one who makes sense of it all. You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever known.”

Jane looked away and tried to hide the little bit of sunshine that had bloomed, unexpected and unfamiliar, on her face.

She wasn’t going to tell him this…but that compliment meant more to her than any throwaway line about her being pretty or attractive would have.

Coming from someone like him? It was the highest form of praise she could get.

“Okay.” Her voice was rough so she cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “I’ll go with you.”



* * *



—

Even though there was a lot of night to spare, Throe settled into his bed, reclining back against pillows soft as clouds.

In retiring to his private quarters, he was following—after too long a hiatus—the traditions of his class. Back before he had been conscripted into the Band of Bastards and forced to learn to fight or die, a mansion such as this one that he had taken over, and servants such as the ones he had created, and moments like this, where one reclined when feeling not well, were part of the normal course of life.

In truth, he was already recovered from the previous night’s strange chest pain. So this was out of an abundance of caution and a love of luxury.

There was also quality time to be had with his female.

Extending a hand, he put his palm on the cover of the ancient tome that had proven to be the means to his ends.

“My love,” he murmured as he closed his eyes.

The Book warmed under his touch, communicating with him as it did, filling him out in ways he’d been previously unaware of being deflated, restoring his energy after the pain and depletion he’d experienced back in that alley.

Yes, he thought, as he fully returned unto himself, strong once more. He needed more time with his love and then all would be well—even if a loss of one of his soldiers had compromised him, it would be only temporary. He would make more.

As Throe lay in quiet in a bedroom properly appointed for a member of the glymera, his thoughts embarked on an idyll through the recent past, as if he were going on a museum tour and the docents were stopping him from time to time before certain paintings.

He recalled going into that psychic’s in a bad part of town and being called unto the Book surely as if the thing were saying his name. He had been in search of dark magic, it was true—although he wouldn’t have stated such at the moment. All he had been presently aware of, as he had mounted those steps to the second floor of that walk-up and found himself transported to another dimension without his body changing positions, was that he had ambitions unto the throne that were struggling to find success.

Without the muscle of Xcor and the Band of Bastards, and with the aristocracy completely castrated with the dismantling of the Council, he had seen no way forward.

“But then I met you,” he murmured.

The Book had shown him how to create the shadows, the incantation requiring but a small sacrifice of his blood and some minor pain. It had been so easy, with the only fault being that each spell was a one-at-a-time.

If only there were Amazon Prime for the damn things.