“So we’ll have something in common, then,” Wesley said. “That should help us join together to stop anyone else from being killed. We are all agreed that dying would be bad, right?”

It was supposed to be a joke, but the mood in the room turned even more somber and Karam stole a glance at Tavia that Wesley did not like. Especially since Tavia then looked pointedly away, in a direction that had no chance of meeting Karam’s stare.

Wesley only liked secrets when he was the one uncovering them. And he especially hated secrets when it came to Tavia.

“Yeah,” Tavia said. “Dying would suck.”

She smiled at Wesley, in the lying way he’d taught her to when they were kids and she needed to get one over on the old underboss.

“Thankfully we’re all pretty good at cheating death,” she said.

It was true, since every person in the room had survived when the odds were against them at least a handful of times. Karam and Arjun just a few days before. They might not have been great at a lot of things, but there was something to be said for a group of outcasts who refused to let life slip through their fingers.

There was a knock then and by the time Wesley turned, the double doors had been pushed open and a group of at least a dozen amityguards filled the room. They surrounded the small circle that Wesley and the others had made, their dark green uniforms pressed and cleared of even the smallest specks of dirt.

The faces of the men were freshly shaven, the women’s hair pulled back into tight ponytails, and each of their belts with a single gun to the left and a host of magic in perfectly organized pouches across the rest of the loops. The Uskhanyan insignia was on their breast pockets and when Fenna Schulze entered the room, they pressed their palms flat against it—against their hearts—and dipped their heads in a show of fealty.

“Wesley Thornton Walcott,” Schulze said. “Former underboss of Creije.”

“Fenna Schulze,” he said back. “Former Doyen of the realm.”

Schulze didn’t afford him a smile, but she did reach out her hand for Wesley to shake and he took it with slow and careful consideration. He was more than aware of the eyes of the amityguards, watching his every move for even a twitch of his fingers.

“I’m still the Doyen,” Schulze said.

“For now. But we all know Ashwood has other plans.”

Schulze sighed and took one of the two empty seats at the table. Wesley took the other, directly across from her.