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Letting her hands grip the edge of her desk, Madame took in Nash last. “I’d ask you to pardon my curiosity, but you’ve barged into my house, broken my rules.”

After a pause, she lifted a finger. “But this is by far the most compelling thing that’s happened here in a long time.”

Blade’s mouth cracked a devious smile. “Too late to inquire about membership?”

Pushing off the wood desk, Madame made her way to her glass window. She watched the crowd, all moving in sync. “Maybe it’s fortuitous that The Oracle’s mercenaries stumbled in here. It’s quite rare for anyone to enter The Station… unaffiliated.”

Swallowing hard, I realized what she meant. The people we’d mingled with downstairs, the ones ordering drinks and fucking like wild animals in that tunnel, they’d all been powerful. Dangerous even.

All of them belonged to societies like Laniidae and The Oracle.

Except us.

Madame grabbed a cut-crystal rocks glass from her desk, an amber liquid inside. After she took a swig, she spoke over her shoulder. “Get out of my office. Consider it a favor.”

Without needing more, Cyrus moved toward the door. As she swung it open, making room for Nash, Blade, and I to leave the powerful woman’s office, Madame raised her voice. “But when I call on you, you will answer.”

The door slammed behind us as we entered the empty service corridor.

52

NASH

It was only a matter of seconds before the security guards reappeared, guiding us down the stairs.

But as we walked, the shock hadn’t worn off.

We’d gotten away with it. Somehow.

With every step, a part of me believed that the guards would take us down a dark corridor and dispose of us.

I’d like to see them try.

If they laid a finger on my Sweet Lamb, I’d rip them limb from limb.

Moving back down the hallway, we walked past the door that we’d entered from. Instead, we were guided to the end of the service corridor.

The guards threw open the door, pressing their hands into our backs and chucking us through. I kept my eyes on Tess, making sure they didn’t so much as breathe on her. They only tossed Blade, Cyrus, and I, letting Tess walk herself through the threshold and into The Station’s main terminal.

The music was still thrumming through the stone depot.

Standing up, I straightened my suit jacket and put a hand on Tess’s lower back. “You okay, Sweet Lamb?”

As Tess looked back over her shoulder, we realized the guards had already disappeared. And the doorway they’d thrown us from had swiftly closed behind us. It blended nearly seamlessly into the marble slabs along the walls.

“Can’t believe that worked.” I laughed over the music.

Cyrus licked her teeth as she looked around the place. All around us, the party was still raging.

Letting herself take a deep breath, Tess turned toward the metal staircase at the back of the terminal.

But Blade grabbed her hand, spinning her back around.

Her face scrunched up with confusion. “We were told to go?”

“Madame didn’t say how fast.” A sinister grin crept onto Blade’s face, one I’d seen a hundred times — which meant she was thinking exactly what I was.

Tess’s blue eyes flicked to Cyrus and I, looking for a more rational opinion than feral Blade’s.