Chapter Eighteen

"I'm off to training," Kierse said as they pulled back through to the tunnel that led to his house. "What's your plan?"

Graves remained entrenched in his book. "I need to get to work."

She tried to read over his shoulder, but he tugged the book away.

"What exactly do you do for a living? Why do you need to work?"

"I trade in the most powerful resource of all."

She shot him a skeptical look. "Money?"

"Knowledge," he said, gesturing to the book. "And there are things I need to learn tonight."

"You're a spy?"

He laughed, and it was with genuine surprise. "Not for many years." He closed the book and met her expression as he continued. "I make it my business to know everything that I can about everyone of importance. I use that knowledge to get the things that I want and to sway the course of history."

She met his gaze. "You make it sound like blackmail."

"Sometimes," he said without mirth.

"Oh." She nodded as if that made sense.

He weighed her reaction. "You don't seem surprised."

"Should I? I make my living as a thief. You use people and information to get what you want."

"Are you saying we're much the same?"

She laughed. "Hardly."

"Perhaps we're more alike than you think."

She waited for him to say more, but he said nothing. They were just walking around in circles. Every time she felt like she was cracking the surface of who he was, he switched up just as easily as she did.

Dr. Mafi's warning still rang through her mind. It wouldn't change anything about Kierse's plan. She had one objective, one job. She would complete it. But the interaction had made her restless. This was the longest she had gone in years without seeing her friends, and already she missed them. She missed having Gen and Ethan and Corey around. She missed returning to a chastising Colette. She missed home.

When George finally stopped the car, she didn't wait for him to come around to the back and release her. She just opened the door and stepped out.

"Good luck with work," she told Graves as she made for the elevator.

She trekked up to the training facility and headed inside to find Edgar waiting for her. When he finished kicking her ass, she barely had enough time to read a story in the new book Graves had left for her while she scarfed down dinner impeccably prepared by Isolde before face-planting into bed.

The next day was the same—train, read, eat, repeat. Until her muscles ached and her head hurt and she wondered if Graves was torturing her.

On the fourth day of training, she stepped, bleary-eyed, into the training facility and froze.

Graves stood facing the weapons rack. His suit coat was discarded against the bench. The crisp white button-up's sleeves had been rolled to three-quarters, revealing stretches of ivy-tattooed forearms. The corded muscles that the slivers of skin revealed made her swallow. His face was in profile, and the proud jut of his chin and sharp lines of his cheekbones caught the light. He was a Renaissance sculpture come to life.

Her stomach twisted with something akin to desire. She didn't like that she needed to remind herself that this was business.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, dropping her own jacket before striding across the mat.

Graves's eyes tracked her. "Your weapons training thus far has been... unsatisfactory."

She blinked. "Edgar said I was improving."

"I feel like his methods haven't been to my standards with the timeline we're on." He smirked, and she knew to be afraid. "So, I thought I would take over today."

"I see," she said.

She had very real memories of him dislocating her shoulder and tossing her on her ass the first time they ever met. He hadn't broken a sweat, nor did he even need to change out of his suit.

Graves hefted a training spear in his hand and tossed it to her. She caught it with ease, the weight already beginning to feel more normal in her hand.

"I thought you could use some motivation." He picked up another spear and tossed it back and forth between his palms. "Every time you get a successful hit in on me, I'll give you an answer."

She blinked. Well, that was sufficiently motivating. "To any question?"

"To this," he said, producing a thick white envelope.

The kind of envelope that was meant for weddings and funerals. The face of the envelope was blank. No address or name or return label. She turned it over, noticing that a seal of a bird looking backward had been pressed into bright-red wax. It dripped down like blood pouring out of a wound.

"What's that?" she asked.

"That is a question," he said with a smirk as he stepped onto the mat.

She could strangle him. It was just like him to make it a game. But she had to train anyway. Might as well get something out of it.

"Ready?" he asked with a beckoning motion.

Fuck.

"Let's go."

"After you, Miss McKenna," he taunted.

Kierse lunged with the spear in hand. Graves sidestepped her as if she had barely moved. He tapped her on the shoulder with the blade.

"Going to need to do better than that."

She gritted her teeth and tried to work on her focus. She had spent only three days working on this. There was no way she was going to be as good as Graves. But if she could just quiet her mind, slip into that place like slow motion, she could get a hit on him. She knew it.

With renewed fervor, she moved forward with her honed instincts. Graves blocked the first blow, and then he stepped forward, thrusting his spear toward her. The practice tip blazed in her line of sight. Her eyes widened, and then she pushed her body to the breaking point, shifting into slo-mo and dodging the blow. The tip of her spear barely caught the sleeve of his white button-up.

Graves's expression was appreciative. "You already look better than yesterday." He scooped up the envelope and passed it to her. "As to your question..."

She took the envelope in her hand and opened it, removing heavy cardstock festooned with gold embossing that read:

Montrell and Imani Cato cordially invite you to their

residence for a black-tie affair to celebrate their union.

Then it listed a date and time, as well as one additional guest welcome.

"A test for you," he said simply.

"A test of what?"

He gestured to the mat again. "Shall we?"

She breathed out heavily. This was going to be laborious. But he wasn't wrong—she was getting better.

Kierse hefted the spear in her hand, then practiced the thrust that she and Edgar had been working on yesterday. The first one was sloppy, all arms. He narrowed his eyes at her as he got the first hit with ease. And the second hit. She missed the third on a razor's edge and nearly tossed the thing down in frustration. Maybe that first hit had been just damn lucky.

But she wouldn't give up.

And the next time he came at her, she used her old knife reflexes to switch thrusts and catch him off guard by half a second. Just long enough to get a hit in.

She put her hands on her knees and glanced up at him for answers. "A test?"

"Of your magic." He offered her water, which she gulped down as he continued, unfazed. "I already know that you can walk through wards. You're walking through mine every day." Was that bitterness in his tone? "I also know that you're a good thief. You got into my house undetected. I've looked into your past."

Her eyes narrowed. "What about my past?"

"Do you want me to answer that?" he asked.

She ground her teeth together. She had more important questions to ask. "No."

"Sources confirmed you're good at what you do."

"Great. So what is this test?"

He lifted his spear, and she nearly groaned. This was going to take all day. But maybe that was the point. Maybe he wanted her training to take longer so he could tire her out and extend the answers as long as he could. It was a good strategy. No, an excellent strategy. Because now she was fucking invested.

And when she finally landed the next hit, she thought she'd pass out from the effort it took to get back into that zone. Equally frustrating knowing that he barely looked affected.

"It's threefold," he began as she rested her already aching body. "First, to test if you have limits to your powers. Second, to see how you react to a large amount of magic. And third, to see how you work under pressure at another monster's house before I send you into Third Floor alone."

Her mind spun at that answer. There were more questions in there than the answers she could possibly get from this one training session. But he had given her more than she'd thought. The place they were going had monsters and magic. So likely other warlocks? She didn't know what to think about the possibility of discovering that her powers had limits, but it seemed like a good thing to know.

So, she needed to get the information he hadn't already provided.

"Are we stealing from them? Because this is tomorrow night," she said.

He hefted his spear once more. "Again?"

"Fine," she grumbled.

Before she could get started, though, Graves moved behind her. The heat of him seared through her as his body came nearly flush against hers. He put one hand on the spear and the other on her arm. Her breathing hitched as her body betrayed her. It was impossible not to react when his hands were on her and his breath was brushing against the skin of her neck. No matter how much she told her mind that it meant nothing, her reaction said otherwise.

"Use your body weight, rather than just your arms, to guide the thing forward." Graves directed her through the movement. She was jerky at first, unaccustomed to him at her back. Then she relaxed and tried again. "Like that."

When he released her, she exhaled softly and shook her arms out to try to get her head back in the fight.

He didn't wait for her approval this time, just moved forward. She met the hit with her own, exactly as he'd shown her, and followed it up with a second. Graves blocked it, but something lit in his eyes. She was getting better.

Her arms felt a hundred pounds each as she pushed through the next few thrusts and parries. The tip of Graves's spear came within inches of dragging across her cheek, but she blocked it at the last second, whirled, and got another hit in.

"Better," he said with a nod. "Yes, we're stealing from them tomorrow night."

"Fuck, Graves, that's not enough time," she said. "An impossible heist inside Third Floor in a few weeks and I'm supposed to do another one tomorrow? That's not possible."

He didn't seem concerned. "I'm acquainted with the place. You'll have everything you need. But to get inside, you can't go as a thief. You have to go as my..." He trailed off, his eyes devouring hers. "Pet."

She stayed perfectly still as that word heated her through. "And... what does that entail?"

He made a come-hither motion as he raised his eyebrows, the wouldn't you like to know painted on his face.

Her hands shook on the spear. Yes, yes she very much would like to know what being Graves's pet would be like...

He made the first move, and she countered. Thrust, parry, thrust, parry. She wasn't as fast as him and was flagging quickly. She'd had momentum when they'd started, but she didn't know if she could keep it up. She needed that answer, though. She needed it.

Her next thrust went wide, and Graves moved at full speed. Her mind could barely comprehend it. His movements were precise and calculated. Then he tucked his shoulder and tossed her easily over his back and onto the mat. All the air released from her lungs in a gush and left her gasping.

Graves carried through on the roll, landing on his knees with his body over hers. Her lungs were burning, and she could barely catch a breath as she stared up into those gray eyes. And for a second, his gaze swept downward, to her lips, before pulling back up again. As if he, too, was thinking about the precarious nature of the position they were in... and what exactly they could be doing instead with him on top of her.

"You'd be at my beck and call." Graves answered the question even though she'd failed. And her core tightened at the words. "Letting everyone assume we're in a," he began, his voice a caress, "physical relationship."

She accessed all those years in Colette's house and let the charm ooze out of every pore. "I can do that."

For a second, the balance of power in the room shifted. As if, in that one moment, he was caught in her snare. She used his lapse in concentration to flip their positions and toss him onto his back.

"I used to live in a brothel," she reminded him.

"Good." He cleared his throat and came swiftly to his feet. "You'll have to put on a good act, because we cannot let them know that you are immune to magic. And you'll have to do it without weapons."

He collected the practice spears from where they'd been discarded and replaced them on the rack.

Her stomach was still fluttering as she said, "Gowns can hide knives just fine."

Then his eyes were on her again, and she felt trapped all over. "The gown you'll wear won't have enough material to hide even a single knife."

Kierse's eyes widened as he headed to the door without a dismissal.

Another challenge.

She'd be so fucking good at it she'd wipe that smug smirk right off of Graves's face.