"To be an exile is my identity."
―Adonis
Lin barely avoided meeting the boy's eyes. Mouth falling open in an open smile, she looked around. Unbidden, a little bubble of laughter lifted through her chest. "Humans?"
"Every one of them," Wilson enunciated. Tap-tap went his finger against the rim of his glass, discordant with his impassive appearance. Lin worked her jaw, tension like a cord down her spine. They weren't kidding.
"You didn't have a problem last time." Greymark cocked his head at her, a kindly smile gracing his lips. That damned smile was always the same. Earnest until it wasn't. Lin, go kill this one. That one. Now your boyfriend. What a good girl, Lin.
This was his nature. The harmless young man with old spectacles and an old-world demeanor. A sucking plague underneath.
She shrugged, pettiness winning out. "I'm game."
Greymark smiled again, a thinner edge to it: he knew she would agree. What else could she do, rebel? Lin tossed her glass—wine and all—to the ground. It shattered in a splash of red, splinters of glittering glass flying across the floor.
The Kings jerked in surprise. A tired glare from Greymark. Well, she'd have to try harder next time. Maybe she'd get a scream if she questioned his judgement with a bit more bite. She smiled. "But I'm not moving an inch until Janus is onboard."
Greymark rolled his eyes and sagged into his desk chair. "Of course, you never make anything easy, do you?"
"Exactly," Lin said. She bared her teeth at them. "Is that all?"
Yelena parted her lips, but Wilson spoke first. "That's all you need to know."
"King Wilson will be staying here at the Manor for the next few days. And Lin?" Greymark lifted his brows empathetically. "Do try not to kill him."
She shrugged and pushed off the wall, marching straight across the room towards the boy thief. Her fingers snagged his sleeve as she passed, dragging him through the door behind her. He didn't make a sound. Didn't flinch or even act surprised. Just ghosted along behind her as if he were a wisp of wind.
Lin jerked him in front of her, kicking the door shut behind her.
"Greymark doesn't like thieves."
The boy shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at the closed door before pulling a book from beneath his shirt. He held it out to her, his shoulders tense. Even so, a smile lifted at the edges of his mouth. "You gonna tell?"
It was a childish challenge. But Lin gritted her teeth together and snatched the book from him. She turned the book over, pretending to contemplate it. "It's not even that good."
"I read some of his other works. They were," he cocked his head, "interesting."
"Interesting enough for you to steal a copy from the most powerful man alive?" Lin cocked her head right back at him.
"I like interesting." They were in the massive hall, fountain burbling in the center. His eyes passed over everything briefly before settling on her again. "And I'd have liked a chance to find it in original Japanese, this seemed as good a place as any to find it."
"This is the worst place to look for a bad language. Old Grey's always been at the forefront of assimilation." Lin frowned at him. "And you can't read Japanese. Or, you shouldn't be able to."
"Well, I can."
"No, you can't."
He smiled, that same impish grin he'd given her when he first saw her. "Again, you gonna tell?"
The book was back in his hands, disappearing up his shirt before she could blink. It was a thick, dark sweater with sleeves that hid his knuckles. She couldn't tell he was hiding an entire book there, and his body language did nothing to betray it if she wasn't looking.
Lin snorted. She crossed her arms over her chest and turned on her heels, strolling away from the crowded parts of the hall. "Your funeral, kid."
"Wait."
"What?"
He bounced after her. "You're Lin, right?"
"Yeah."
"The Lioness? Greymark's dog? Many other names I'm not allowed to say because they've got bad words in them?"
"Yes. Yes. And not to my face." Lin ticked them off on her fingers. "Why?"
She kept walking, tracking him from the corner of her eye.
"Just making sure." He smiled absently.
Lin hummed and focused on the hall ahead. This boy was interesting. "Know any other hunters with beautifully flowing blond hair?"
He tapped his chin with a slim finger, his sleeve over his palm. "Gerald."
"Gerald?" Lin said, scandalized. "Gerald is ginger."
The boy shrugged. "More flowy than you, right now."
She hissed out a breath and ran her hand through her hair. It was a tangled mess of blood and scorch marks. "You're a cheeky piece of shit."
"Language," he coughed. She startled.
Eyes wide and innocent, he looked up at her. She glared back. To the untrained eye, he would appear to be about three inches shorter than her. He slouched and raised his shoulders, walking delicately and keeping his head at an angle.
"Whatever. Go home."
"Love to. But I go where my father goes." The boy sighed and hopped ahead of her, twirling on the ball of his foot and walking backwards. He folded his hands behind his back and smiled at her. "And he's here right now."
"Wilson."
"Yep."
Lin hummed. "So go back to him."
"I think I'll annoy you a bit more." His shit-eating grin dimmed a little. It was subtle, not the typical boyish mood swing.
Wrong. That was what her sigils told her. Or maybe that was her own mind. She really couldn't tell. Whatever the source, it was probably right.
She lifted her hands from her pockets and hooked her thumbs in her belt. The large hall gave way to a narrower path, away from the center of the Manor and towards the outer edge of the strange island.
Contrary to his promise, the boy was silent as they walked.
"So," Lin finally broke the quiet. "What's your name?"
He exhaled. "Mind if I ask you something first?"
A question for a question. Lin smiled, thumbing her gun. "Shoot."
"Where's Alekhine?"
It was pronounced with a casual innocence, sounding as soft as the boy looked. Lin's blood froze and burned in the same vein. She stopped in her tracks. She worked her face into a sneer. "He's dead. I ripped his throat out."
"Oh," he said, brittle and too sharp. "I'm sorry."
Weird. Why?"
"I—uh, he loved you. I mean—he told me and I could have figured it out own," he stammered. He winced and took a deep breath. "From the way he talked about you. I could have figured out that he loved you."
"You knew him?" That was unexpected.
His eyes searched her face, smile dropping to a half-frown instead. "I thought you knew. He was a friend of mine, he promised to get me out—to get me in here."
Off Lin's projected confusion, he kept talking. His eyes were big and wide, a hint of panic seeping into the line of his brow. "Alekhine was going to take me on as his apprentice. To get me away from my father."
But Alekhine wouldn't do that.
He wouldn't take a random kid in out of the kindness of his heart, no hunter would. Especially not as an apprentice. The apprentices had to be bloodthirsty and violent things, as strong as the last generation at least.
But finding out Alekhine had been meeting up with a witch of all things proved Lin didn't know him as well as she thought. And the boy... he was a clever one at best, a sticky-fingered brat at worst. But either way he was far too sweet.
"Lin." Lin scowled as she turned, catching Pierce behind her. He blinked under the force of her glare, a folded paper between his knuckles. "Message from Razo. Am I interrupting something?"
"No." Lin reached out and plucked the note from his grasp.
Pierce lifted an eyebrow. Best not give him a reason to suspect anything. Lin licked her lips. "Just having a chat with the kid."
"Don't kill him. He's Wilson's brat."
Lin would have been offended if that weren't exactly what she had planned. "Go away."
The hunter gave her an assessing look, then rocked to the side to spot the boy. "Are you alright?"
The boy looked up through his lashes and nodded, a stark contrast to whatever he'd been giving Lin before.
"It's fine," he said.
Pierce flexed his jaw and looked between Lin and the boy for a moment longer. Lin waved her hand in his general direction, hoping he'd leave sooner rather than later.
Lin looked down at the note, suddenly reminded of the note Shabina had given her. It was still in her pants pocket, awaiting fingers not crusted in wet blood. She clucked her tongue and opened the new note, dry blood flaking off against the cheap paper.
A quick pass over the contents yielded unfortunate results.
"Well, damn."
"What is it?" He popped his head over her shoulder, perching his chin there delicately. She tensed at the contact, but he didn't do anything more. She barely felt him, actually.
Lin blinked hard. "I gotta shower up and pay my folks a visit."
"Can I come?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I'm going somewhere after."
And she'd need to investigate the boy before spending more time with him. Almost as if he was reading her mind, he spoke. "My name's Hadrian, by the way."
"That's a stupid name."
"Stupid name for a stupid kid," he recited.
A pang ran through her chest, like someone had jabbed her ribs with a needle. "I was just making fun of you. Shit, kid, you gotta make everything such a big deal?"
He shrugged, a half-smile still on his lips. She scoffed and turned on her heel, heading down the way they had come.
"Where were we going, anyway?" Hadrian craned his neck to look down the narrow hallway she'd led him to.
"Well, I was looking for a nice quiet spot to kill you."
His eyes snapped to her, suspicious but not afraid. She wasn't sure if she was disappointed or relieved by that. "Did I charm you with my rugged good looks?"
"No—hell no. You're just," Lin trailed off and waved her hand in his face, "a baby."
He sputtered, stopping in his tracks as his eyes went wide. "I'm not a baby!"
"Oh yeah? How old are you, ten?"
He stared at her. Moments passed. Lin's eyes flicked down the hall, fiddling with Razo's note.
"I'm fifteen." Oh.
She creased the note some more, shifting weight between her feet as she met Hadrian's eyes. He raised an eyebrow at her, clearly bemused by her discomfort. That in and of itself made her like him a little.
"I actually have to go," Lin said. "I'm sure Pierce is waiting just around the corner."
"Why?"
He was probably asking why she had to go so quickly. She didn't care. "Didn't you hear? His apprentice just graduated. That man would adopt every orphan and bastard he came across if he could. I think he actually kidnapped Julian."
Hadrian snorted and finally let Lin walk away without following. As soon as she was sure he wasn't following her, she dropped the smirk she'd been holding. Damn. Shit. Shit.
No, it didn't matter. The boy didn't matter.
She broke into a run, swinging around corners in the twisting corridors that led to the dorm rooms. Razo said she had to get home now. Now meaning whenever he'd sent the message, which was likely hours ago.
Lin practically snapped the door clean off its hinges when she found it.
Her room was practically barren, only a scattered pile of books in the corner and a futon with a blanket on it indicated anyone lived there.
Everything else had smelled like Alekhine.
If her senses hadn't been increased by the sigils, she could have taken it. She should have been able to take it anyways. But it was their bed and their books. She'd ripped him from her life the same way she ripped him from his. It was better than smelling him fade, better than watching Greymark execute him.
Lin growled and stormed into the attached bathroom, clawing knots from her hair as she went. She didn't have much time. There was still some henna left over from the last time she visited her parents, and a pair of scissors made quick work of the scorched and stained ends of her hair.
If Razo was tricking her, he'd have hell to pay.