Page 8 of A Kiss of Flame
“What is this about, Barith?” she asked, this time with more gentleness.
He looked up, his amber eyes flecked with gold meeting hers. There was always a warmth and sincerity in them she’d found endearing, but at that moment, all she saw was a storm lurking beneath. Barith sighed heavily through his nose, and his shoulders slumped. “I came to make sure you were safe,” he repeated.
“I am, for the moment. Though it’s been a rather trying day,” she replied coolly. The dragon was going to take a bit more coaxing.
Barith shifted in the tub. “How’s the ankle?” he asked, glancing at it.
“Fine. Nothing a healing tonic couldn’t fix,” she said—and a few more glasses of wine.
“What’d you find at the house?” he pivoted, steering the conversation away from himself.
“Something I hope will help me track down these thieves,” Levian said vaguely.
Barith gave her a pointed look. “I gathered that, mage,” he replied dryly. “But fine. Dinnae tell me.” He ran a hand through his damp hair to push the loose strands from his face, the muscles in his arm and chest bulging. “What’d they take?” he asked, changing tact.
Levian fiddled with a few frizzy pink curls that had escaped the silken scarf she’d wrapped them in. It was not like her to feel so self-conscious in front of Barith. He usually was the one looking a mess, and she was perfectly manicured. It was unnerving for their roles to be reversed. She’d always been bookish but never used it as an excuse to look anything less than fabulous, an achievement she was failing at currently. Exhaustion had her feeling and looking rather haggard.
“The thieves? Which time?” she responded, half distracted. Barith looked grumpy but rather fine; his freckles were more prominent over his tanned shoulders thanks to spending shirtless hours in the sun. It hadn’t escaped her notice that his Scottish brogue was more pronounced from his time back home, either.
Barith’s brow furrowed as he leaned back, his bulging arms resting along the tub’s edge. “All of ‘em,” he prompted.
Levian sighed before taking a hearty sip of her wine. “There have been five thefts or at least attempted thefts that I’m aware of,” she began. “The first was a mage in Japan, but I only got involved after King Thurin realized items were missing from his private vault. At first, I thought Nestra might be behind it—” Barith’s expression darkened at the mention of Nestra, the former zephyr High Priestess who had tried to kill and steal their friend Gwen’s magick the year before. “—but then someone triedto steal from Abigail,” she continued. “After that, other whispers of thieves with a similar description began to crop up.”
“Similar description?” he questioned.
She nodded. “They always wear black masks—droll, I know. They use rather effective glamours to shield themselves except for the masks.”
He grunted. “There’s plenty of creatures that can see through glamours, but it’s an odd choice.” he pointed out.
Levian had thought the same. “I think they want people to see the masks, but I can’t quite figure out why,” she admitted, swirling her glass. The most apparent reason was that they’d wanted to be recognized, but the thefts hadn’t been high-profile or public enough to warrant a calling card.
“So yer out to avenge Abigail and retrieve King Thurin’s stolen property, is that it?” Barith pressed her.
“Not quite,” she replied haughtily. “Thurin was reluctant to admit anything had been taken from his vault, but when it was clear Nestra wasn’t responsible, he asked me to investigate discretely given that both the items were of Dökk origin.” Levian paused, deciding how much to reveal. She hadn’t even told Carvatticus the full details of the thefts, but he hadn’t exactly asked her either. And this was Barith. She’d worked with the dragon and Sirus to track down thieves many times before and could use someone to bounce theories off of. Levian sat on the bench near the tub and leaned over the edge. “He was missing the journal of a Dökk Lord who helped open the Abyss and a ring that belonged to the same Lord,” she whispered loudly. “A ring allegedly imbued with some dark power.”
“You believe him?” Barith asked, concerned.
Levian shrugged. “I can’t say, but Thurin was concerned about its theft. More than merely angered at it being stolen.”
Barith leaned forward. “So he asked you to tack them down,” he said, trying to follow the story. “And you went to Council?” He added the last with a touch of disbelief.
She sipped her wine before continuing, “I realized quickly that one of the king’s own guards had stolen from him and fled the island. It took me a time to track him down, but when I did, he admitted openly to being hired by brokers who wore black masks and that they’d only paid him half what they’d promised. What they had paid him, he’d already squandered on some new drug called Opal. I didn’t bother to drag him back to Thurin for punishment.”
She brushed her fingers around one of the blooms floating in the bath, swirling it in circles. “I went to Council only after I learned about the mage who’d been robbed in Japan. I couldn’t deduce what had been stolen, but I did discover that his attackers had also worn black masks.”
Barith grunted. “And they asked ye to investigate?” he asked skeptically.
She fiddled with the flower. Levian knew what he was hunting for, and it grated that she was about to give him exactly what he wanted. “Not exactly,” she admitted.
“I figured as much,” he grumbled with admonishment and satisfaction at finally getting her to admit it.
Levian flicked the water from her fingers and pulled away from the tub in annoyance. “They never take me seriously,” she defended sharply. “So I decided to do a little investigating of my own. A pixie friend of mine told me of an item stolen from a collector not long after an auction,” she continued. “A Dökk blade.”
Barith shuddered in the tub, sending water sloshing to the edges but not quite over the top. Dökk blades were rare daggers forged of fae silver and a darkness only the Dökk themselves knew how to forge. Though fae silver could cut and scarimmortal flesh, the injuries would heal. A wound inflicted by a Dökk blade healed agonizingly slow, and a direct strike to any vital organ meant certain death.
“Damned black market,” he grunted with disgust. “Those Dökk weapons should all be destroyed.”
Levian agreed. Especially after Sirus’s run-in with one last winter while trying to rescue Gwen. They’d all thought the vampire would surely die, and he would have if not for Gwen and her magick.