“And then you told him it was Mazir?” Aina asked, remembering her old colleague’s glassy eyes staring up at her in the alley.

“I had to or else he wouldn’t trust me,” Tannis said in a quiet voice. “The Jackals tried to move in on the job. Kohl couldn’t stand that, so when he let you go, he knew the Jackals would come after you and that you would kill enough of them that he wouldn’t have to worry about them for a long while.”

Aina crossed her arms and scoffed. “You’re saying he cut me off because he knew I would end up doing his dirty work for him?”

“Yes, but I doubt he knew it would end up this way. If you looked at the reports close enough, you’d see a job or two that I was sent on. But I killed my marks and no one saw me, so Kohl had no reason to cut me off. Bautix still blamed ‘a murderer from the Stacks,’ but he didn’t investigate any further because the job was done. All that mattered was that no one connected it to him. But then when Hirai survived … Bautix had to keep up the search for you, at least until Hirai was killed, and I bet he was putting pressure on Kohl to finish the job. I think Kohl knew you would manage to kill Hirai eventually, but Bautix wanted the job done before the princess arrived.”

“So then Kohl killed Kouta himself, but didn’t even notice that Kouta had the note in his pocket that would doom Kohl and Bautix’s entire plan.” Aina let out a bitter laugh at the irony. Kohl’s confidence had finally derailed him instead of helped him.

He hadn’t turned everyone against her. Maybe together, she and Tannis could change things.

“Before you came to fight Kohl last night, before I turned on him and saved you … he asked me to be his backup to kill the princess right as she’s given the black diamond at midnight,” Tannis said, glancing over her shoulder down the hall. “There’s not much time left.”

“What will you do instead?”

“Stop him,” Tannis said immediately, her gold eyes flashing in the dark hall. “Let’s fight him together, but I’ll let you have the killing blow. You deserve it for what he did to your parents.”

Aina smiled. “Looks like we finally understand each other.”

44

They traversed the next fifty feet of the hall in silence. Aina’s eyes flicked to every dark corner for a sign that Kohl might be here.

Voices rose nearby as the stone balcony appeared on their left. Laughter echoed and glasses clinked from the ballroom below filled with unsuspecting guests. On the right, a wide-open window curved toward the ceiling with only a knee-length ledge separating them from the edge. The view showed the grasslands behind the Tower. Rain fell in steady torrents outside, sweeping diagonally and pattering steadily on the window ledge and the first foot of space inside the hall.