40

The Death Song

“I know what you’re thinking,” the Tiger says, still gripping my shoulders. “I know the pain in every part of you. It’s eating its way through you, tearing out your heart.”

Thénardier walks over and prods Tomasis with his foot to make sure he’s dead.

“You think it’s the end,” the Tiger says in my ear. “But you’re wrong. It’s the beginning. I’ve been thinking about you, little Cat.” He frowns. “Don’t look so alarmed. It doesn’t become you.”

He lets go of me and raises his hands to show me he’s not about to attack.

“I’ve been remembering it all from the beginning. I played it over and over in my head,” he says. “I said to myself that this one hadn’t been with you very long when I offered for her.” He looks over his shoulder at Ettie. “Strange that you would be so attached to her. So reluctant to give her up. You even took the stripes for her. But it wasn’t her you were trying to save, was it?”

He smiles at me.

“Thénardier told me I took something else from you. A sister … What was her name?” He throws the question at Thénardier, who opens his mouth to answer.

“Don’t you dare speak her name,” I hiss.

Thénardier eyes me and decides it’s in his best interest to obey me. “They were close” is all he offers.

“A mother to you, was she? Brought you up? Loved you? Then it all makes perfect sense. I took your sister from you, and there was nothing you could do about it. My taking her made you run to Tomasis. Made you beg him for protection. Everything about you, from your rage to the stripes on your back to the dagger in your hand is because of me. I made you, like my father made me the moment he sold me to the slavers’ whips.”

He reaches out and runs a finger from my forehead down my cheek, drawing a mirror of the stripes on his own face.

“You already bear my scars on your back. I carved my name into your skin. You belong to me.”

I flinch. “I belong to the Thieves Guild. You are without honor, without Law—”

He gives a short bark of laughter. “Law? Where was the Law when I was taken, broken by my father so he could live? He made me what I am. I am the failure of the Law. I am the nightmare it birthed. I am its vengeance.”

He takes me by my shoulders and drags me toward him.

“The Miracle Court fears me. They bow, scrape, and hide. They’re so afraid that you can smell the fear on them. They’re weak.”

He cocks his head at me.

“But you … you’re not like them, are you? You’re the little kitten that took the lash. The Cat that attacked a Guild Lord. The only one who dared defy the Tiger,” he says.

He leans closer, his lips inches from my ear. I try desperately not to tremble.