7 Deadly Instincts (The Sinfire Chronicles Book 1)

Gray’s head was still spinning when they finally left Emerilia’s shop. That warm wind swept through the city like a kiss, but it was late, the market was emptying, and the vendors were closing up their stalls.

Lilian had asked that Gray be with her while Emerilia examined her core and her meridians. He was surprised by that, but he went in there with her. Lilian didn’t need to take off her clothes, though, only her jacket and blouse.

Still, seeing his old lover in just her pants and top covering had brought back any number of memories. Then there was the strange encounter he’d just had with the Widow and his wives. Emerilia’s little smiles at him took his breath away.

But then the Widow’s whole demeanor changed when she finally took a look at Lilian’s core. No more smiles. Nothing but frowns and fear. It didn’t go well after that. Lilian stormed out while Gray stayed to talk about enchanted items. He wasn’t going to be able to know what different magical items did, not by just looking at them. It was far more complex than that.

Emerilia did tell him that if the item glowed with the same color mana as the user’s core, it was probably because they could charge the item themselves. If it was a different color, it might not need to be charged or it reacted different to their magic. Enchanting items as a very complex thing, which was why Emerilia stayed in business.

The Widow also warned him that Hama Hama Avarica couldn’t be trusted. The old dwarfess only cared about two things—money and power. There was no loyalty there. If Miss Hama knew that Gray had poached mana for his brands, she would watch his public execution while eating butterbang and sipping cherry coya.

Gray knew it was true—but he had the idea that wasn’t just true in Greed City, it was true for all the Watchfire families. It was why poaching had been made illegal in the first place.

Exhausted, Emerilia had asked him to leave, and so, he’d gone.

Only to find his squad worried—Pinch had disappeared. Again.

And so Gray headed over to Avarica’s. Rynn and Ames had offered to join him, but he’d told them he felt like being alone. Besides, if Pinch was in a bad mood, he didn’t want any of his squad members to have to deal with her but him.

Lilian had basically ran back to Ruin Manor the minute she left Excellent Inventory Unlimited. Tomi and Midj agreed to chase after her.

Once again, there was so much drama and emotion with these women.

At least with Pinch, he found her right away.

She sat by herself at a table near a beer tent as the dwarves cleaned up around her. She was sipping a big mug of spicy mulled ale.

When she saw him, she smiled for a second before her normal frown found her face. “I just want to be alone. I’m not going to the chaos house or Avarica’s, though I want to. Fuck, do I want to.”

“Why stop yourself?” he asked.

Pinch sipped her drink which was far too big for her. “Because if I sat down at a gaming table, I wouldn’t stop, not with how I’m feeling. Get drunk, throw dice, wining or losing doesn’t matter, because each throw is so full of promise. It’s the future in every roll. Not the fucking…the fucking past.”

Then her face crumpled and she started to cry.

Gray went and held her.

She pushed the mulled ale into his hand and the curled up in his arms. She didn’t cry for more than few seconds before she sighed.

It was her father. Seeing him again had shaken her.

“You can have some of my ale. I got too much. I thought I wanted to get drunk, but it’s not a good idea. I wouldn’t want to sober up again, and I am not missing the Reckoning, not when we’re so close to winning.”

“Or being murdered,” Gray said with a laugh to lighten things up.

“We’ve always been on the edge of being murdered. It’s First Field. It’s the way things are there, but Lust City probably wouldn’t be any better, not for me. Not with my history.”

Thinking of Lust Cit made him ask, “Why does the fae queen never show her face? She’s always behind a screen. Why?”

“Because she’s a husk,” Pinch said simply. She pushed herself off him, grabbed the mug, and took a huge swallow. “Everyone knows it. We don’t know what core oath she broke, but it had to be something big. We pretend it doesn’t matter because that’s how things are in Lust City. It’s all pretend. Fuck, that’s how things are everywhere. You want to talk about murder? We murder the truth, or at least I do, every single fucking day.

“How?” Gray asked.

She stared into his soul with her purple eyes. And didn’t say a word.

He was the one to finally look away.

She laughed a little. “It can’t be a surprise.”

“I suppose not.” He needed to change subjects. A love affair with Pamalee Thornpinch was impossible for any number of reasons. Sex with her just might kill her, and then, there was her core oath to consider. If she allowed herself to love her, it would break her core, and she’d become a husk.

Gray remembered his vision of her and her mother—how colorless her mother had been, gray, even hair, a limp white, even her eyes, a faded lilac nearly white.

To see Pinch like that would break his heart. She was difficult, fiery, a pain in the ass, but she was so vibrant and alive and so full of contradictions. And she had bet her whole life and future on him and Squad 23.

“Husks can still function?” Gray asked.

“Barely,” Pinch said. “It’s why the queen has so many so-called advisors and relatives around her all the time. Well, adopted relatives. Without a core, nothing much works. She’s been queen for so long, no one dares to try and usurp her power—all the viziers are firmly in control. She’s a figurehead they like to parade around. My father would love to be in that inner circle, but no, his best chance was to stay married to my mother but he fucked that up. He fucked up everything because he thought he was in this love with Rosy fucking Sweetrose, and he wants to talk to me? Me? Fuck him. I hate him so much. It makes me want to cut my heart out and burn it.”

She paused for a long time. “Maybe that’s the only good thing about being a husk. You don’t feel…you don’t feel much of anything. You become a ghost, floating through life. Just. Floating.”

Gray took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be. You didn’t fuck up the world. It was the gods, or demons, or whatever shit they want you to blieeve. Angels, maybe. But no, Gray, you’re fine. You stepped in. You and Lilian.”

Lilian Everheart. Gray couldn’t stop thinking about what Emerilia had discovered, but then, there had been any number of revelations that night.

A voice called out from the darkness. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t my two favorite recruits.”

It was Settie, come from the pink palace, after being grilled by the magistrate for hours on end.

She sat down, eying the mulled ale.

Gray handed it over to her. She pulled away her mask and hat and set them on the table. Then she drank a good amount of the ale before sighing contentedly. “I’ll have to pay to clean the marble. All in all, I don’t mind.” Her eyes found his. “Were you really able to draw mana out of Lilian’s core?”

“Mana and a good amount of the fire. It appeared under my clothes, which started to burn, but luckily, I got out of them in time.”

Settie smiled, which was odd. “Another uniform for Grayson Fade. I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet, I am. This is wonderful. Between the two of you, we’ll have an ocean of mana for the Reckoning. For you see, Pamalee’s acolyte ability expands her core to act as a mana reserve. If you could mimic that reserve, it could double your capacity.”

“I had the same thought,” Gray said.

The captain’s eyes hesitated on Pinch. “Are you all right, Pamalee?”

“Sure,” the fae girl snapped. “For being your battery. I’m just fucking fine. I had a lovely night escaping my father and then being interrogated. Lilian, however, seemed to have a worse time of it than me, and so I should probably be grateful.”

Gray wanted to talk about the power of gratitude in self-mastery, but his heart wasn’t in it. His head was too full.

And Settie saw it. “What is it, precious Gray? Out with it. This is as good a place as any, and the mulled ale is especially potent. We have some lust rock left for the fire and it’s a warm night anyway. The seasons are changing. Good. I fucking hate the cold.”

“You get used to it,” Pinch murmured.

Gray glanced at her. Could he talk about everything in front of the fae girl? Yes, he found he could. He trusted her, which was a strange feeling, since she’d been their enemy for so long.

“The dragons are behind the payments to Pamalee’s old squad. They funneled the money through the fae, but they originated with the dragons. Those sister’s on Blythe’s team are a bit less subtle. I think they were brought in to take us out.”

Settie nodded. “They come from a bad family. I know of them. I am not pleased to deal with their ilk. How do you know this?”

Gray told her of his conversation with Froggy, including receiving payments to replace Steffy with Grist.

The captain closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know which lives longer—dragons or the resentments of dragons. It does make me feel…a sort of guilt. You all are in danger because of me. I thought that maybe a winning squad would show I’ve changed, but I should’ve known better. Now, your lives are in danger because of my naivete.”

“No,” Pinch said grimly. “Our lives are in danger because we’re at First Field. We’re all fucking idiots. But at least it will all be over soon.”

“This portion of it will be,” Settie agreed. “There is still the Training and the Hunting but first things first.”

Gray had a plan for the Reckoning, but he hadn’t quite gotten all the details together to talk about it. There were a fair number of people he needed to talk to first. However, the Reckoning wasn’t going to be as straightforward as the magistrate or his own squad though it would be.

The captain sipped more of the mulled ale before giving it to Pinch. “General Fangfarr is probably behind the entire operation to sabotage me. I still have a few allies in Pride City. I’ll see what I can do.”

“There’s something else,” Gray said. “But I don’t know if we want to talk about it here.”

Pinch guessed why he was hesitant. “Talk about it here or talking about it in front of me? It’s about Lilian. The Widow Stone found something in her core, didn’t she?”

Gray nodded. “You could say that.”

Settie’s eyes widened. “Oh, you paid Emerilia another visit. Was it as…stimulating as the last time?”

“It was,” Gray said with a smile. “We ran another test of my core. There was another burst of energy. This time, it was a bit different.”

Pinch’s eyes moved from Gray to Settie and back. “Did you have sex with Lilian? I mean, recently, since we all know you two fucked each other senseless back in Cradleport.”

“Not with Lilian,” Gray said. “But with my wives. The Widow Stone was there.”

Pinch snorted. “I’ll bet. I knew that little dwarf woman wasn’t what she appeared to be. No one is that kind and innocent. She probably is rubbing her little dwarven quim right now, thinking of you and your wives.”

Settie laughed, which was still kind of startling. “Now that is an image. Emerilia is pretty, but no, I think she likes wanting to rub herself but not, in the end, rubbing herself.”

“Oh, she’s one of those.” Pinch sipped from the mug and handed it to Gray.

He took a turn drinking from the mug. The mulled ale had cooled, but the mana went right to his head. He was glad he was feeling light-headed because talking about Lilian with the two troublesome women wasn’t going to be easy.

“What did Emerilia say about Lilian?” Settie asked.

There it was. The crux of the conversation.

Gray drank more wine, thinking to finish the mug, but Settie grabbed it from him. “From the look in your eye, it seems like I’m going to need some of that.”

Gray shrugged. “It’s probably nothing.”

Pinch’s one single laugh was like the vase shattering in the Widow’s workroom. “I am unconvinced. Ames said she was empty, weak, and dangerous. Did Emerilia confirm that?”

Settie waited for him to say something.

“She confirmed the dangerous part. She never said Lilian was weak or empty, not at all, but I could tell that Emerilia was troubled by what she saw. There’s something wrong with Lilian’s core in how it processes mana, especially when she’s feeling a certain way. I think…I think it’s despair. She generates so much mana when she’s in that dark place, too much really. She has trouble regulating it, and that’s why she has that single attack that drains her. In some ways, she’s the exact opposite of me.”

Settie stared in the middle distance, holding the big mug but not drinking from it. “If you’re an ocean of mana, then what is she”

“A firestorm. I keep my mana. She burns hers all up, but it’s not just that. If she were to use her new fire abilities, but if she was in that place of despair, it would become a loop. She would generate mana even as she burned it up and it wouldn’t stop. If I hadn’t been there to siphon off some of her mana, she might’ve burned up the entire pink palace if not all of First Field. If not the entire city. Emerilia was surprised that only my clothes were scorched. She thinks that maybe there’s a scenario, especially if Lilian were bonded, that her fire would leap from core to core to core. It’s why Emerilia felt something had gone wrong tonight at First Field because Lilian’s core is so powerful and so oddly connected to the world.”

Settie’s face had lost all expression while she listened carefully. But then she smiled. That smile turned into laughter. “This is wonderful. Yes. We have our weapon. I’m glad she’s dangerous. We need dangerous. We need a fire to burn up all of our enemies. If the dragons want to stop me, they’ll have to deal with both of my unlikely weapons from the Null Breaks. Who knew that two such consequential recruits would come out of Cradleport.”

“Born on the same day,” Gray said.

“Why are you worried then?” Settie asked, with that bright smile still on her face. “Why is Emerilia?”

Gray cocked his head. “Don’t you get it? She could destroy the city.”

“And I say good. This city needs to be destroyed. So we can rebuild it. And not just the city, the Wrath Tower as well.”

Pinch snatched the mug away from the captain. “Let’s avoid the murder of innocents, shall we? We all know that Lilian is a fucked up as I am, and you wouldn’t give me such devastating power, not if you wanted to sleep at night.” The fae girl drained the cup. “Gray is worried that he won’t be able to stop her if she gets going. We just need to trust in us fucked up girls, that we’re not so far gone that we can’t pull ourselves back from the edge.”

“What if she can’t?” Gray asked.

Pinch put a hand on his leg. “What if I can’t?”

He didn’t have answer for her, but he trusted Pamalee Thornpinch far more than he trusted Lilian Everheart.

* * *

On the way back to Ruin Manor, Settie told them what the Reckoning would entail. Gray had been thinking how he could stack things in his favor and the nature of this last event of the Testing brought everything into sharp detail.

He didn’t tell Settie his plan—no, she might not agree with him but it really was the only way. It wouldn’t just allow them to survive the Testing when three of the squads wanted them gone…or dead—it would also make sure that those same three squads wouldn’t win the event.

His wives knew something was up—they were still awake when he got home. Gray told them what he was thinking, and the two elven women agreed with smiles on their faces. It was daring.

No, his plan was perfect… as long as he could convince certain people it was for the best.