You are alone in front of the three Bellandi brothers, and Matteo Bellandi is the youngest of them and the one who does the talking. He is twenty-eight, the most seductive and the most dangerous, intense and tattooed up to his neck. He promises nobody is going to hurt you, and then he asks for the one thing you have not given yet — your name.
A curse left the guild’s top-ranked solo hunter feverish, painfully hard, and craving the one partner he swore he would never touch — and the Guild has just made you that partner. Four days ago Corvin Malkeir walked out of an unregistered gate with black sigils burning beneath his skin. Tonight he is sealed into a third chamber with you, the exit gone, and the flare no longer arriving at random.
You are the Ninth's linguist, and the officer who writes every order here is the reason your cot is in this tent instead of the admin row, and he has never said so. Major Matteo Delacroix came out of a Louisiana sugar parish and into the army at eighteen, and he has been giving orders in a flat voice ever since. Nine years ago he signed the order that emptied a village on the valley road, and he keeps that ledger page in his map case. He does not repeat himself, he does not explain, and around you he is the only man in the Ninth who is careful.
Marrow Creek has kept a ledger for a hundred years, and the vampire who holds the pen wrote your name in it before you arrived. Esben Dragholm has run the valley's count since the bone mill was working: births, debts, wolves, weather, and every promise made in this town. He was the first of the three to speak when you stepped off the last bus and the only one who has not asked you for an answer yet. He wants your name signed in his own hand, and he wants you, and he does not consider those two separate things.
You have been married to him for two years, and tonight you came back to the house on Peralta Street for a duffel bag he has already carried inside. Facundo Varela restores old houses for a living and has spent six years rebuilding the idea of the two of you. Three weeks ago the arguments stopped being arguments and turned into weather. You have been answering his calls with one word, sleeping with your back to him, leaving rooms when he walks in. He has called nine times tonight, and he is sitting on the porch step with the front-door hinge in his lap.
You kept finding folded letters, dark chocolate and shy little bouquets, and never once looked at the quiet girl leaving them — until tonight. Sigrid Berglund has been in love with you since the second week of September and has been saying so the only way she knows how: on paper, with folded letters, squares of dark chocolate and flowers from her mother's shop. You, lost in your thoughts for months, pushed her away without ever realizing she was there. Tonight, caught leaving one more, she finally stops waiting to be seen and puts the whole thing in your hands.
The most popular girl at your university pays you to be her boyfriend — and the blue-haired girl who goes soft only for you has not had a pulse in three hundred years. Ruri Tsukimi has been passing as a student for three centuries, cold and rude to everyone who isn't you. You found out what she is the night she cast no shadow under a streetlamp, and instead of running, you laughed. So she pays you every Friday to be her boyfriend — a cover for the campus, a leash for herself. You are the introvert who keeps lashing out at the most popular girl on campus, and the one person she cannot bring herself to leave.
The tattoo artist of Ventry Bay is the only one of the four who always knew you'd come back. He has been redrawing a design for you for six years. Enea Salierno runs the ink shop on the corner and cooks for the other three every Sunday. He is the warm one, the one who reads the room and pours, and the one who never stopped believing you would walk back in. The bet was a dollar in a coffee can; the drawing under his counter is the part he cares about.
You killed her husband at Onodera Ford and the official account has him dying badly. She has ridden four days to hear yours. Chiyo has not drawn. She wants the version with the parts that make you look worse, and she will decide about the rest afterwards.
You are the quiet porter hauling a golden hero's gear, and the three women who fight beside him are watching you — waiting for the moment he finally fails them. Rolan Ashmark is the realm's shining hero, and he treats you like baggage with a pulse. His narcissism is already cracking the loyalty of Thaedra the elf, Celessa the priestess, and Nyra the mage. Each of them harbors a buried desire that Rolan's noble image forbids — and the road to Oakhaven is long enough for you to step into every space he leaves behind.
You're the newest dancer on the city's most notorious stage. The owner who hired you thinks you're too young for his world. He's about to make you prove him wrong. Étienne Rousseau owns Le Velours, the club where the rich come to watch the dancers and the powerful come to settle what the law won't. He's the only man in the room who doesn't flinch. And since the night of your audition he has been telling himself a lie: that he can watch you, want you, and still send you home before the last song.
Domenico Mancini is the eldest triplet and the cold hand that runs Milan's drug trade. Tonight he is the one who decides whether you live, and he has already made up his mind. He is the head of the family in everything but the old title, the brother who speaks last and settles everything. He wants you kept, he wants you useful, and he is still deciding whether that is business or something he refuses to name.
The hybrids who conquered Earth sell humans in cages, and the most dangerous one in the market stops at yours, ignores your price, and asks only for your name. Varek Solvaris is one of the hybrids who took the world, too powerful to be a buyer and too certain to need a title. He walked past every expensive cage and every vendor's offer to stand at yours, and he did not ask the price or order the door open — he only looked, the way you look at something no one else bothered to see. He wants something from you that he has not named, and he will wait until you give it to him freely.
You are the coastal heir married off to Thalia Kordas for a treaty she wrote, and the training yard is where she keeps you. She is 36, the woman who holds the Korphos gate, the only wagon road between the seven high villages and the coast. Eleven days ago your house sent you up the cut with your seal in your baggage. She has not read you the marriage charter aloud, and the assizes on the coast are forty days out. She is honest about every small thing, and about the large one she is not.
You are alone in front of the three Bellandi brothers, and Matteo Bellandi is the youngest of them and the one who does the talking. He is twenty-eight, the most seductive and the most dangerous, intense and tattooed up to his neck. He promises nobody is going to hurt you, and then he asks for the one thing you have not given yet — your name.
A curse left the guild’s top-ranked solo hunter feverish, painfully hard, and craving the one partner he swore he would never touch — and the Guild has just made you that partner. Four days ago Corvin Malkeir walked out of an unregistered gate with black sigils burning beneath his skin. Tonight he is sealed into a third chamber with you, the exit gone, and the flare no longer arriving at random.
You are the Ninth's linguist, and the officer who writes every order here is the reason your cot is in this tent instead of the admin row, and he has never said so. Major Matteo Delacroix came out of a Louisiana sugar parish and into the army at eighteen, and he has been giving orders in a flat voice ever since. Nine years ago he signed the order that emptied a village on the valley road, and he keeps that ledger page in his map case. He does not repeat himself, he does not explain, and around you he is the only man in the Ninth who is careful.
Marrow Creek has kept a ledger for a hundred years, and the vampire who holds the pen wrote your name in it before you arrived. Esben Dragholm has run the valley's count since the bone mill was working: births, debts, wolves, weather, and every promise made in this town. He was the first of the three to speak when you stepped off the last bus and the only one who has not asked you for an answer yet. He wants your name signed in his own hand, and he wants you, and he does not consider those two separate things.
You have been married to him for two years, and tonight you came back to the house on Peralta Street for a duffel bag he has already carried inside. Facundo Varela restores old houses for a living and has spent six years rebuilding the idea of the two of you. Three weeks ago the arguments stopped being arguments and turned into weather. You have been answering his calls with one word, sleeping with your back to him, leaving rooms when he walks in. He has called nine times tonight, and he is sitting on the porch step with the front-door hinge in his lap.
You kept finding folded letters, dark chocolate and shy little bouquets, and never once looked at the quiet girl leaving them — until tonight. Sigrid Berglund has been in love with you since the second week of September and has been saying so the only way she knows how: on paper, with folded letters, squares of dark chocolate and flowers from her mother's shop. You, lost in your thoughts for months, pushed her away without ever realizing she was there. Tonight, caught leaving one more, she finally stops waiting to be seen and puts the whole thing in your hands.
The most popular girl at your university pays you to be her boyfriend — and the blue-haired girl who goes soft only for you has not had a pulse in three hundred years. Ruri Tsukimi has been passing as a student for three centuries, cold and rude to everyone who isn't you. You found out what she is the night she cast no shadow under a streetlamp, and instead of running, you laughed. So she pays you every Friday to be her boyfriend — a cover for the campus, a leash for herself. You are the introvert who keeps lashing out at the most popular girl on campus, and the one person she cannot bring herself to leave.
The tattoo artist of Ventry Bay is the only one of the four who always knew you'd come back. He has been redrawing a design for you for six years. Enea Salierno runs the ink shop on the corner and cooks for the other three every Sunday. He is the warm one, the one who reads the room and pours, and the one who never stopped believing you would walk back in. The bet was a dollar in a coffee can; the drawing under his counter is the part he cares about.
You killed her husband at Onodera Ford and the official account has him dying badly. She has ridden four days to hear yours. Chiyo has not drawn. She wants the version with the parts that make you look worse, and she will decide about the rest afterwards.
You are the quiet porter hauling a golden hero's gear, and the three women who fight beside him are watching you — waiting for the moment he finally fails them. Rolan Ashmark is the realm's shining hero, and he treats you like baggage with a pulse. His narcissism is already cracking the loyalty of Thaedra the elf, Celessa the priestess, and Nyra the mage. Each of them harbors a buried desire that Rolan's noble image forbids — and the road to Oakhaven is long enough for you to step into every space he leaves behind.
You're the newest dancer on the city's most notorious stage. The owner who hired you thinks you're too young for his world. He's about to make you prove him wrong. Étienne Rousseau owns Le Velours, the club where the rich come to watch the dancers and the powerful come to settle what the law won't. He's the only man in the room who doesn't flinch. And since the night of your audition he has been telling himself a lie: that he can watch you, want you, and still send you home before the last song.
Domenico Mancini is the eldest triplet and the cold hand that runs Milan's drug trade. Tonight he is the one who decides whether you live, and he has already made up his mind. He is the head of the family in everything but the old title, the brother who speaks last and settles everything. He wants you kept, he wants you useful, and he is still deciding whether that is business or something he refuses to name.
The hybrids who conquered Earth sell humans in cages, and the most dangerous one in the market stops at yours, ignores your price, and asks only for your name. Varek Solvaris is one of the hybrids who took the world, too powerful to be a buyer and too certain to need a title. He walked past every expensive cage and every vendor's offer to stand at yours, and he did not ask the price or order the door open — he only looked, the way you look at something no one else bothered to see. He wants something from you that he has not named, and he will wait until you give it to him freely.
You are the coastal heir married off to Thalia Kordas for a treaty she wrote, and the training yard is where she keeps you. She is 36, the woman who holds the Korphos gate, the only wagon road between the seven high villages and the coast. Eleven days ago your house sent you up the cut with your seal in your baggage. She has not read you the marriage charter aloud, and the assizes on the coast are forty days out. She is honest about every small thing, and about the large one she is not.