“The last time I saw your whoring carcass, you were weeks away from paying them off.” Indeed, Arobynn had paid so much at the Bidding two years ago that Lysandra should have been free almost immediately.

The courtesan’s eyes flickered. “Do you have a problem with the tattoo?”

“That piece of shit Archer Finn had one.” They’d belonged to the same house, the same madam. Maybe they’d worked together in other regards, too.

Lysandra held her gaze. “Archer’s dead.”

“Because I gutted him,” Aelin said sweetly.

Lysandra braced a hand on the back of the couch. “You—” she breathed. But then she shook her head and said softly, “Good. Good that you killed him. He was a self-serving pig.”

It could be a lie to win her over. “Say your piece, and then get out.”

Lysandra’s sensuous mouth tightened. But she laid out Arobynn’s plan to free Aedion.

It was brilliant, if Aelin felt like being honest—clever and dramatic and bold. If the King of Adarlan wanted to make a spectacle of Aedion’s execution, then they would make a spectacle of his rescue. But to tell her through Lysandra, to draw in another person who might betray her or stand witness against her … One more reminder of how easily Aedion’s fate could be sealed, should Arobynn decide to make Aelin’s life a living hell.

“I know, I know,” the courtesan said, taking in the cold gleam in Aelin’s eyes. “You needn’t remind me that you’ll skin me alive if I betray you.”

Aelin felt a muscle flicker in her cheek. “And the warning you came to give me?”

Lysandra shifted on the couch. “Arobynn wanted me to tell you the plans so that I might check up on you—test you, see how much you’re on his side, see if you’re going to betray him.”

“I’d be disappointed if he didn’t.”

“I think … I think he also sent me here as an offering.”

Aelin knew what she meant, but she said, “Unfortunately for you, I don’t have any interest in women. Even when they’re paid for.”

Lysandra’s nostrils flared delicately. “I think he sent me here so you could kill me. As a present.”

“And you came to beg me to reconsider?” No wonder she’d brought the child, then. The selfish, spineless coward, to use Evangeline as a shield. To bring a child into this world of theirs.

Lysandra glanced at the knife strapped to Aelin’s thigh. “Kill me if you want. Evangeline already knows what I suspect, and won’t say a word.”

Aelin willed her face into a mask of icy calm.

“But I did come to warn you,” Lysandra went on. “He might offer you presents, might help you with this rescue, but he is having you watched—and he has his own agenda. That favor you offered him—he didn’t tell me what it is, but it’s likely to be a trap, in one way or another. I’d consider whether his help is worth it, and see if you can get out of it.”

She wouldn’t—couldn’t. Not for about a dozen different reasons.

When Aelin didn’t respond, Lysandra took a sharp breath. “I also came to give you this.” She reached a hand into the folds of her rich indigo gown, and Aelin subtly shifted into a defensive position.

Lysandra merely pulled out a worn, faded envelope and gingerly set it on the low table before the couch. It shook the whole way down.

“This is for you. Please read it.”

“So you’re Arobynn’s whore and courier now?”

The courtesan took the verbal slap. “This isn’t from Arobynn. It’s from Wesley.” Lysandra seemed to sink into the couch, and there was such an unspeakable grief in her eyes that for a moment, Aelin believed it.

“Wesley,” Aelin said. “Arobynn’s bodyguard. The one who spent most of his time hating me, and the rest of it contemplating ways to kill me.” The courtesan nodded. “Arobynn murdered Wesley for killing Rourke Farran.”

Lysandra flinched.

Aelin glanced at the old envelope. Lysandra dropped her gaze to her hands, clutched together so tightly that her knuckles were bone-white.

Worn lines marred the envelope, but the chipped seal had yet to be broken. “Why have you been carrying a letter to me from Wesley for almost two years?”

Lysandra wouldn’t look up, and her voice broke as she said, “Because I loved him very much.”

Well, of all the things she’d expected Lysandra to say.

“It started off as a mistake. Arobynn would send me back to Clarisse’s with him in the carriage as an escort, and at first we were just—just friends. We talked, and he expected nothing. But then … then Sam died, and you—” Lysandra jerked her chin at the letter, still lying unopened between them. “It’s all in there. Everything Arobynn did, everything he planned. What he asked Farran to do to Sam, and what he ordered done to you. All of it. Wesley wanted you to know, because he wanted you to understand—he needed you to understand, Celaena, that he didn’t know until it was too late. He tried to stop it, and did the best he could to avenge Sam. If Arobynn hadn’t killed him … Wesley was planning to go to Endovier to get you out. He even went to the Shadow Market to find someone who knew the layout of the mines, and got a map of them. I still have it. As proof. I—I can go get it …”

The words slammed into her like a barrage of arrows, but she shut out the sorrow for a man she had never taken the time to consider as anything but one of Arobynn’s dogs. She wouldn’t put it past Arobynn to use Lysandra, to make up this entire story to get her to trust the woman. The Lysandra she’d known would have been more than happy to do it. And Aelin could have played along just to learn where it would take her, what Arobynn was up to and whether he’d trip up enough to reveal his hand, but …

What he asked Farran to do to Sam.

She’d always assumed Farran had just tortured Sam in the way he so loved to hurt and break people. But for Arobynn to request specific things be done to Sam … It was good she didn’t have her magic. Good it was stifled.

Because she might have erupted into flames and burned and burned for days, cocooned in her fire.

“So you came here,” Aelin said, as Lysandra discreetly wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief, “to warn me that Arobynn might be manipulating me, because you finally realized what a monster Arobynn truly is after he killed your lover?”

“I promised Wesley I would personally give you that letter—”

“Well, you gave it to me, so get out.”

Light footsteps sounded, and Evangeline burst from the kitchen, rushing to her mistress with a quiet, nimble grace. With surprising tenderness, Lysandra slipped a reassuring arm around Evangeline as she rose to her feet. “I understand, Celaena, I do. But I am begging you: read that letter. For him.”

Aelin bared her teeth. “Get out.”

Lysandra walked to the door, keeping herself and Evangeline a healthy distance from Aelin. She paused in the doorway. “Sam was my friend, too. He and Wesley were my only friends. And Arobynn took them both away.”

Aelin just raised her brows.

Lysandra didn’t bother with a good-bye as she vanished down the stairs.

But Evangeline lingered on the threshold, glancing between her disappearing mistress and Aelin, her lovely hair glimmering like liquid copper.

Then the girl gestured to her scarred face and said, “She did this to me.”

It was an effort to keep seated, to keep from leaping down the stairs to slit Lysandra’s throat.

But Evangeline went on, “I cried when my mother sold me to Clarisse. Cried and cried. And I think Lysandra had annoyed the mistress that day, because they gave me to her as an acolyte, even though she was weeks away from paying her debts. That night, I was supposed to begin training, and I cried so hard I made myself sick. But Lysandra—she cleaned me up. She told me that there was a way out, but it would hurt, and I would not be the same. I couldn’t run, because she had tried running a few times when she was my age, and they had found her and beat her where no one could see.”