Page 28 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

Evermore was the reason I was itching for a thorough debriefing.

I cleared the last half-flight of stairs two at a time up to our secretarial wing, giving the sentries stationed there my hurried thanks as they scrambled to open the mountainous wooden doors guarding the wing. The doors hadn’t even clicked shut behind me before I broke out into a jog down the rest of the hall, flanked by a full span of windows to one side and a lengthy spread of—thankfully shut—doors to the other.

At the far end of the hall, a set of more modestly sized but intricately carved doors awaited me.

I threw one side open without the care the ancient piece of functional art deserved and took in the unoccupied war table that sprawled out in front of me. The usual mess of maps and logbooks, of empty tankards and ashtrays, dotted its surface, but the mismatched chairs around it were straightened to frightening perfection.

“Jasper?” I called out as I shut the door. I chuckled a little as I added, “Back to organizing things within an inch of⁠—”

Jasper appeared in my periphery and took me clean off my goddess-damned feet, sending us crashing away from the table.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he fumed, teeth bared, as he slammed me against the wall, sending pinned maps and papers scattering as his forearm crushed my windpipe.

I may have—possibly—deserved a lick of his ire, but I bared my teeth right back at him and arched my neck the best I could, hissing, “Harder, mage. I need—fuck—more than that to get off.”

He recoiled and stalked away with a flurry of muttered curses, his gloved hands flexing at his sides. “What is wrong with you, Max?”

“You know, my friend, I’m not sure where I’d even begin with that,” I rasped with a chuckle as I rubbed at my throat. “My early childhood, perhaps? Or should we⁠—”

“We had a plan, Max. A fucking plan.” Jasper was pacing now, back and forth, back and forth across the war room’s weathered floors, ignoring me as he gripped the edge of his hood. “Question the princess. Let her recover. Send her back to Odessa before their king throws a war-sized tantrum. We talked about this ad nauseam! You agreed that⁠—”

“I lied.”

Jasper stopped so abruptly, his entire body swayed. He tossed back his hood, peeling back the shadowy glamor with it, and fixed me with a furious stare. “No fucking shit you did.”

“Oh, I will take no grief from you, reverent mage.” I scoffed, shaking my head. “Imagine just what truths you could have surfaced from me if you’d actually kept your feet in the Keep for more than five fucking minutes at a time?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering, “Mina, help me.”

“What? Should I be anything other than a little shocked you just up and vanished after dropping her here? Given everything, I thought you’d⁠—”

He fixed me with a lethal stare. “You know we needed answers, and there was no way I was finding them here.”

“Well, did you find whatever answer you were looking for in the depths of whatever pleasure house I’m sure Eilir had to pull you out of then? Or is that what has your panties shoved so far up your ass?”

“Maksym,” he intoned with so much displeasure, in a way only my mother ever used to. “No, you will not deflect like this.”

“Me? Deflect? Never,” I chuckled. “You reek like the inside of a whore’s dressing room. Not that I’m usually one to judge where one gets their cock⁠—”

“Just shut up,” Jasper’s groan overtook my taunt. “I’ll have you know that was the last place I wanted to look, but it should have been the first.”

He tossed onto the table a velvet satchel that was found tucked in a pouch belted at Enora’s waist. It was full of a fine, pale-blue powder I hadn’t been keen on sampling, given we didn’t have the faintest idea why the princess and her party had been where they were, let alone what powdered substances they carried.

“So?” I said.

He sighed. “It’s called Frost. Comes from a couple of prolific alchemists in the Wastes. Fucking expensive. Most of the workers haven’t seen it cross over here, and the ones that have don’t seem fond of it. Makes them too numb, apparently, to enjoy their craft.”

“Numb?” I picked up the satchel and tossed its weight around in my palm. “Must be quite the commodity in Odessa, then, given recent events.”

Jasper scoffed as he dropped into one of the many weathered leather chairs around the war table and tossed his legs over the arm. “I wouldn’t be surprised. And I’d hedge it explains why she’s been sick, too, if she’s using it regularly enough to travel with it. The girls said it’s nasty to get it out of your system. Probably for the best that old witch pulled her right under those first few days.”

It was my turn to sink into a chair opposite Jasper with a heavy sigh. “So she’s a completely magic-void Odessan, and she’s whim to addiction. What a catch.”

“Bold words coming from the man who’s trying to force the poor woman into a fucking marriage,” Jasper spat back. “What were you even thinking? Odessa is like a lit damned fuse right now, and you know that.”

“I think the better question was, what were you thinking when you thought we could just let her take a holiday here and then send her prancing back to her precious flaming kingdom like nothing had happened?”

“You’re the one making it sound so trivial,” he muttered, focusing his attention upward.