Night's Honour(73)

Xavier said, “As far as what happened to Jackson’s boy, it may be your word against his, but that’s not true of anybody else you saw Malphas entrap.”

Julian straightened out of his lounging position and sat forward.

Xavier’s clear, gray-green gaze was intelligent and warm. He smiled at her. “You saw other people rack up large debts and overheard things they said. Do you remember any names?”

She blinked rapidly. “Yes.”

“What about the man with his wife? The one who said it would never be over.”

Nodding, she told him, “I remember them. They had a Minnesota address.”

Julian grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from the table and strode over to shove it into her hands. “Make a list of all the names you can remember.”

Moving to one of the couches, she started scribbling.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Julian walk to the cabinet, open it and pull out a bottle of what looked to be bloodwine. He poured ruby red liquid into two glasses as Xavier joined him.

Julian offered one of the glasses to Xavier, who shook his head. With a shrug, Julian tossed back his head and downed the liquid.

Julian asked, “What’s your goal in all this? We’re not going to win any political leverage from the information. The Djinn are notoriously difficult to bargain with, and pariahs won’t necessarily keep their word anyway. If it was a straightforward attack, I could hold him pinned, but only for a little while. If we decide to pin him, we’d have to kill him—and we would need a hell of a lot of backup for that, and right now, I don’t think any of our allies would be willing to take on the kind of damage that a fight with that Powerful of a Djinn would entail.”

While it was clear Julian wasn’t speaking to her, he didn’t bother to lower his voice, and neither did Xavier.

“The only leverage I’m looking for is insurance,” Xavier said.

“What kind of insurance?”

“I want my people to live without fear of reprisal or some kind of revenge attack. I want Tess free and clear to do whatever she wants to do. Her life is in danger as long as Malphas believes she’s the only one who knows what he’s done, but if it were as simple as that, all we would have to do is go public with our suspicions. We have to take it a step further to make sure he doesn’t take vengeance on her—or on anyone else—like he did with Jackson’s son.”

As what he said sank in, she stopped breathing. She didn’t know what to do with herself, or with what she had just heard.

Xavier wasn’t just working with her to solve a dangerous problem. He was actively standing up for her.

Nobody had ever stood up for her before. Nobody, not for anything. Not one of her foster parents—certainly not the bastard who loved to hit kids with a belt—and none of the other children she had fostered with, either.

Tess was always the strong one, the one who had stuck up for them. Maybe that was why Eathan had gotten to her in the first place. He’d needed help, and so she had stepped up.

While she struggled to absorb the enormity of the concept, Julian refilled his glass and said, “I might have known you would be doing all this for one of your attendants.”

It was impossible to decipher the expression in Julian’s voice, and she didn’t even try. It was Xavier she was interested in, and she watched him covertly.

“She’s not my attendant any longer.”

Lit only by the fire and a few recessed lights, the room was filled with strong shadows, and Xavier stood in profile. He was slighter than Julian’s broad, tall figure, and more graceful, but no less masculine.

If Julian was a battle axe, or perhaps a trebuchet, built for battering and sheer brute force, Xavier was the rapier, elegant and deadly in single combat. With a simple, perfectly timed thrust, he could pierce the heart, while the rest of the body and soul stood amazed and dying.

Piercing the heart. She thought it over.

Yes. That was exactly how it felt as she looked at him and listened to what he said.

Julian shot Tess a quick, frowning glance. Ducking her head, she focused on the paper in front of her. He said, “While the Djinn might be notoriously reluctant to police pariahs, I think I’d better talk to Soren. I’m going to make the call in the other room.”

Tess didn’t know many personalities from the Elder Races, but she recognized Soren’s name as the head of the Elder tribunal. He was another first-generation Djinn, one of the most Powerful of his kind.

Xavier nodded, and as Julian left the room, he walked back to the couch to sit beside her. She set the pen and pad of paper facedown on the table and turned to him.

He asked, “Have you written down everyone you can think of?”