Page 23 of The Forsaken

Testy? “I’m a bloody master of self-control.”

“Of course you are,” she gave him another pet like a favored dog.

He dragged air slowly through his nose. It was no use. He had been a master of restraint until her.

Nothing this chit or her outlandish family did could surprise him anymore.

“I am confused, darling.”

“I knew—”

“By the fact you risked your life, virtue, and good name to have some charlatan predict your future.”

From the corner of his eye, he caught the shift of a crowd moving in on them.

This had gone on long enough.

Andromena tugged his arm like a bell. “I’ve made it all this way to meet with this…seer. Please, allow me to finish, and then I promise to leave.”

The hell you are, he was going to say. That, along with a few other choice phrases. But then, she slanted back her hood, revealing enormous eyes which defied categorization. They were neither green, brown, nor amber, but a swirling prism of hues—and the flecks of gold caught in them felt like a peculiar kind of sorcery.

“Ten minutes.” Continuing to eye their bloodthirsty audience, he spoke through a rigid jaw. “And I’m stationed in the room.”

“You can’t be.”

The brazen young woman truly believed she held the reins.

For an instant, he spared her his full attention. “Why the hell not?”

“I don’t want you to hear my future.”

“Do you mean the future you won’t have the longer you remain here?”

He opened his mouth to set her straight when she turned her begging-kitten eyes up at him. “You may, however, search the room, and then wait outside.”

“Ten minutes.”

And the absolute only reason he found himself marching close behind—checking every corner of a space no bigger than a cupboard—was not because of those ridiculously wide eyes she had turned on him, but because it meant he’d have them both out of here faster.

Then, Kerr was going to kill her. Culross would have to understand. It wouldn’t take much to convince him. How could it when presented with her brazen audacity?

Chapter 4

The fortune teller who referred to herself as the Siren explained on the tavern floor that Andromena must say she was at Rat’s Castle to have her palm read. Andromena naturally assumed it was just a disguise to get the real information from her blackmailer.

That idea flew out of Andromena’s head the moment she stepped into the Siren’s Divination Room. The elaborate layout managed to both match Andromena’s expectations of a seer’s parlor while defying them entirely.

Of a certainty? No one would put this much effort into a facade.

Downstairs, Rat’s Castle looked just like its name: a dirty, smelly, rat-filled ruin. But up here, it could be one of those magical places her brothers recounted in their travel stories.

Andromena walked about the improvised parlor.

The space here was clean and well kept, unlike the area downstairs that had not seen fresh paint in forty to fifty years. It also abounded with evidence of the occult.

Burgundy and gold velvet curtains framed a mahogany-footed table at the center of the room. A tasseled green tablecloth hung halfway down that bold piece of furniture. Various decks of neatly stacked cards flanked a mirrored glass ball.

On adjacent white walls, framed in matching gold, hung Goya prints of Witches’ Flight and Witches’ Sabbaths. Hand-colored charts of stars covered the remaining space. Pausing by a table, Andromena stared at a circular star wheel. Its many equal slices looked just like the famed holiday mincemeat pie the McQuoids fought over every Christmas.