Chapter One
AXIS HATED HIS CURRENT location.
It had nothing to do with the elegant office and its gleaming mahogany desk—he kind of liked that. And there was a certain class to the silver inkpot with its matching pen and the gaslamps with their white-on-white silk shades.
His tension wasn’t even caused by the hard as hell chair he was occupying, the back of which was purposely angled to pitch him forward. Oh, he was definitely meant to be uncomfortable on this side of the desk.
But that wasn’t his problem.
Axis wasn’t nervous about being here—he was pissed off.
That was because he hated being forced to have any kind of dealings with a man like the one sitting across the desk from him.
The Snow King of Dorn.
Ryever—just the one name, naturally, like a goddamn prima donna—had earned that “title” after rising to the top of the city’s underbelly food chain. There were conflicting stories about his origin. Some said he grew up on the streets of Dorn; others claimed he was from the northern islands of Ferro and had set up shop in Dorn because the city was the right mix of money and crime. Whatever the case, he was the Snow King now, the creator and sole purveyor of the expensive and highly addictive white powder that had become a staple in the city’s pleasure houses and clubs.
Not what Axis was here for.
No, Axis had a special project he needed help with, and the Snow King was known to be as versatile as he was dangerous.
The man sure as hell didn’t look dangerous.
As Axis watched Ryever examine the vial he’d brought, he tried to imagine this poised, elegant man, with his gray suit and silver waistcoat, gold pocket watch, and neatly trimmed blond hair parted with razor precision on the right side, beating someone to death. He just couldn’t see it. Those elegant fingers looked more suited to a musician than a crime lord.
Of course, the meat grinding was most likely done by the two thugs currently waiting out in the hallway. The ones who kept making the floorboards creak as they shifted their tremendous muscled weight around—just to remind Axis they were there.
By the Wanderer, if those two only knew how much Axis would love to work out some of his frustration on them…
The Snow King set the vial on his desk. Except for the vial and that silver inkpot, the desk was an empty stretch of polished mahogany. In fact, the whole office, though beautifully appointed, was a little severe. Not even a single book.
All of which suggested this wasn’t a place Ryever really worked.
He met people here—people like Axis.
Ryever leaned back in his massive leather chair. It was a statement of power, the Snow King surveying him from that leather throne while Axis’s ass was on bare wood, with the don’t-get-comfortable-angle. It annoyed Axis, but none of this—not the chair, not the fact that he’d been disarmed at the front door, not even the thugs outside—had the anxiety-inducing effect it was undoubtedly meant to.
If Ryever understood who was sitting across from him right now, he’d be the one anxious to wrap things up.
Axis hadn’t hidden his identity, but he’d given only his birth name, Axis Lures, not his title. His father’s title, rather. Axis had never used it and never would.
Then again, few knew the history of the Lords of Blackcoat Castle, or that of the lands just north of here. The northern lords tended to be insular, their interests only in their own territories. Those who did deal in the larger world tended to bypass Dorn entirely and do their business farther south in Arris, the king’s city.
But there was too much control there, so men like Ryever were in Dorn, where they could profit in the shadows.
“The Tinker made this,” Ryever commented as he propped his elbows on his chair’s padded arms and threaded his fingers together, resting those elegant hands on his trim, silk-clad waist.
“He did.”
“The Tinker does very good work. Why have you come to me?”
The answer wasn’t something Axis was happy about, given the way the drug had been failing, making things…dangerous. But that was his own business, so he kept his face a mask of cool neutrality and said only, “I need it stronger.”
“And the Tinker found himself unable to strengthen it?”
“Unwilling.”
A dark blond eyebrow winged up the Snow King’s handsome face, then he dropped his eyes to the vial once more. Rocking forward in his chair, Ryever pulled open one of the desk drawers and withdrew several items, which he placed neatly on the desk. A syringe. A small ceramic dish. Several jars with different colored powders. A number of tiny spoons.
Ryever picked up the syringe, uncapped it, and inserted the needle into the vial’s rubbery top. With a practiced hand, he extracted a small amount then depressed the plunger just enough to force a bead of the serum to appear on the needle’s tip. The Snow King brought the needle to his nose. Nostrils flaring slightly, he sniffed the drug. Then he opened his mouth and tapped the syringe with a finger.
When a drop fell on his tongue, he coughed.
Setting the syringe on the ceramic dish, needle pointing up to keep it clean, the Snow King said, “It’s very strong already.”
Axis wasn’t going to repeat himself, so he waited for Ryever to take the conversation in a more productive direction. The Snow King’s lips quirked, like he was reading Axis’s silence correctly—and was amused.
Yeah, that extra torque on Axis’s already-strained patience? Not a good idea.
Fucking keep it together, he commanded himself. He needed this.
God, what he really needed was a smoke.
It didn’t help that he was catching traces of something subtly spicy and herbal wafting from Ryever’s expensive clothes. Axis was tempted to reach into his overcoat pocket for a joint and his lighter, but a fellow smoker would recognize the agitation in the habit, and Axis knew better than to show any weakness to a man like Ryever.
That annoying smirk was still on the Snow King’s face when he said, “So. The Tinker got squeamish. Good to know where he draws his moral line.”
Axis recalled the withered old man shaking his head in a way that had made his wispy white hair fly as he’d snapped his gaudily painted shop door closed. The shop was a front, of course, the clutter of broken pots and pans, shoes and tools all a distraction from the work he did in the back.
The Tinker wasn’t the original maker of Axis’s drug, but such men didn’t last long in a cutthroat city like Dorn—unless they got to the top, like the Snow King.
The Tinker had improved the formula six months ago, but it was already lessening in its effect. Axis didn’t care for the stab of anxiety that gave him.
What the fuck was he going to do if it stopped working?
His mind tried to skip back to the days before the drug, but he slammed an iron door on that. There was nothing in the past he wanted to see.
There was nothing in his future either, so…
The present. It was all he had.
He hated wasting any of it here. But, needs must and all that.
Axis said, “I’m not sure it was a moral line so much as a fear that a more powerful formula would strain even the elastic principles of the city watch. If it ever came to their attention.”
When the Snow King flashed a set of white, even teeth, enjoying the joke, Axis wanted to knock that smile right off his face. This wasn’t a bonding moment. It was business, and Axis wanted it concluded.