Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Graves held his hand out to Kierse. “I did tell you not to steal anything.”
“I thought you meant from the museum,” she said with a dainty laugh as she slapped the watch into his hand.
She didn’t mention the bills she’d taken out of Kingston’s pocket earlier. He wouldn’t miss them. Not that she had any use for British pounds with the current royal’s face on the front. She quickly changed the subject so he didn’t start to wonder what other mischief she had gotten into. “How did you and Graves meet?”
Graves sighed, rolling his eyes. “Oh, this story.”
But Kingston beamed. “It’s a good one.”
“If you say so.”
“And I do!” Kingston cheered. He directed them past the portraits and into some seriously strange room of abstract paintings. Kierse didn’t understand how a circle and a line on a canvas was art. “Graves had recently arrived in London after getting into a spot of trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“The sort that doesn’t need explaining,” Graves said, low and unapologetic.
Kingston tipped his hat at him. “It doesn’t matter, but it was not pleasant. He arrived with nothing but the clothes on his back and a knife wound that split his belly. It was shallow but long. Here to here,” Kingston said, motioning to one side of his stomach and then the other. “People died from worse all the time, especially then.”
Kierse wondered when exactly this had all taken place. If Kingston was from the 1300s and Graves had known Imani a hundred and fifty years ago, there was a lot of time in between. But she didn’t push. Graves didn’t like to talk about his past any more than she did. She could see he was already uncomfortable with this line of conversation.
“I found Graves near dead outside of an inn. He was pleading with the innkeeper for dinner while he all but bled out on the steps. I made to intervene, but then he used his powers. All magic has a sense or a taste or a feeling attached to it. You can get better at masking it, but for the trained individual, it never fully goes away.”
“And you helped him?” she asked. Though she wanted to ask what Graves’s power felt and tasted like. Every time she was with him, she just felt heat.
“No,” Graves said curtly, stuffing his gloved hands into his pockets. “He didn’t.”
“Well, of course not,” Kingston said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I thought he was a street urchin near death.”
“You left him to die?”
Kingston snorted. “Does he look dead?”
“He left me to the innkeeper,” Graves said.
“And bless her poor soul, she felt sorry for you. Nursed you back to health and tried to marry you off to her daughter.”
“That was . . . an unfortunate side effect. Thank you for reminding me of that, Kingston.”
“Anytime. Jolly good.” Kingston laughed. “Well, I didn’t see all of that. But when I came back to the inn a few months later, Graves was all but running the place. He’d even come into some money and was in negotiations to buy out the tavern next door.”
“Yes, yes, we all love a feel-good story,” Graves said grimly.
“He made something of himself, and I decided then to offer him an apprenticeship. Bastard didn’t think he needed it.”
Graves shrugged one shoulder. A confident smirk graced his features. “I didn’t.”
Kingston grinned at Kierse. “He needed it.”
Kierse couldn’t help but snicker as she filched the watch back out of Kingston’s pocket.
Chapter Thirty-Five
They spent hours meandering the halls and hardly encountered anyone else. At one point, Kierse gave up and took her shoes off, walking barefoot across the polished floors. It wasn’t professional, but she just didn’t care. As soon as Kingston left, they had to start running reconnaissance on King Louis and deal with Walter’s wards, and she couldn’t have blisters on her feet.
“One more gallery,” Kingston encouraged.
“I can’t do it. I’m going to go sit on the steps. You keep on.”
“Kingston needs to finish up soon,” Graves told him with a pointed look. He also sounded almost eager to leave. She raised an eyebrow. Apparently, he didn’t love long walks through museums, either.
Kingston sighed. “All right. This will be the end. I’ll look through one more and then we can go.”
Kierse felt such relief even as she put her horrid shoes back on her feet and stepped out into the brisk winter chill.
“So you found it as boring as I did?” she asked Graves.
“Or I found exactly what I was looking for,” he said with a knowing smirk.
She wanted to ask what that meant, but he just turned his gaze from her.
She hugged her jacket tighter around her as they headed down the Met steps and stopped before Coraline LeMort’s statue.
Graves came to her side, his arm brushing against hers. She shivered but not from the cold. His gaze slipped to hers, and without a word, he removed his own overcoat and wrapped it around her shoulders.