Night had fallen by the time Prim woke up. Dante had redressed and been sitting on the chaise in her room having turned it to face the bed, watching her with increasing panic. As soon as her breathing changed, he was at her side before she had even opened her eyes.

Prim blinked, her eyes roving to take in the room and light change. “What happened?”

Dante breathed a sigh of relief. “You took a very long, very deep nap.”

Prim sat up, stretching, making a noise of consideration. “Well, I was tired.”

Dante wasn’t convinced that’s all it was. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

She didn’t answer right away, and instead wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her, kissing him in greeting. “I sat down on the chaise and laid my head on Kallia because I was tired. I fell asleep.”

Dante ran his hands over her arms, loving the feel of her. Loving everything about her. Loving her. Which is why he wasn’t going to let this go. “Before that?”

Prim’s face fell. “Looking through the papers about the employee gifts again.”

It didn’t make sense. “That’s all?”

Prim nodded, her face still tight. No. There was something she wasn’t telling him.

His hand stilled on her arms, squeezing lightly. “What else were you doing, Bear?” he asked gently, careful not to sound accusing.

Prim released her hold on him, looking around the room again. “Did you find anything?” she asked in a tone that told him to drop it.

Dante sighed. “Whatever it was, maybe don’t do it again.” If she didn’t want to share, that was her business. But he still felt the need to prevent it from happening again.

Prim pulled her knees in, hugging them, still keeping her gaze averted. “I wasn’t doing anything. Sarasha just said some things…”

That fucking fae. Dante knew he was right not to trust her. “What did she say?”

Prim shook her head again, tears welling in her eyes. “Did you find anything?” she asked again, this time softly, begging rather than commanding him to change the subject.

He would try again another time. If not with Prim, with Sarasha. The guard would need to learn how to keep her mouth shut, especially if her words caused Prim this much pain. He placed a hand over her wrist as it lay across her skirts, gently stroking her skin with his thumb. “I don’t think so. But I brought some of the paperwork back to look through again.”

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Prim’s stomach rumbled audibly beneath her request to see the papers.

Dante stood, but didn’t extract the pages from his pocket. He turned the chaise back around to face the low table that displayed several different foods—including her favorite sweets—that he’d had brought up an hour ago in hopes the smell might tempt her into waking. “Eat first. Then we’ll look through them together.”

Prim and Dante sat knee to knee on the chaise. He’d made her a plate of meat, vegetables, bread and cheese. She’d eaten a single bite of carrots before discarding the plate to eat a blackberry tart instead. It was better than nothing, he supposed. He ate the plate he made her instead.

Prim licked her fingers clean and brushed away the crumbs, holding her palm out. “Papers, please.”

Dante cleared the leftover food and dishes off the table and pulled out the stamped pages he’d brought. Before laying them out on the table, he stared at the top page. The assassination he’d completed. He was trying to decide if he had an obligation to tell her. If she should know. If she’d want to know. Then he noticed something.

The offer was for two thousand golds. He’d done the job for six hundred.

He flipped through the pages to find the other jobs he’d completed. One was another assassination, one a debt collection, and one a message—just roughing someone up. Each one was listed for far more than the money Sol had given him. These amounts must be what Sol collected.

The son of a bitch kept seventy to seventy-five percent for himself.

Dante quickly flipped back to the million golds job. The three hundred thousand golds job. His mouth opened at the realization.

Prim’s hand wrapped around his wrist, pulling him from his discovery. She remained on the chaise in her blue dress and hair braided in the style of the North, her ankles crossed and tucked under her, a look of concern in her face. “What is it?”

“This is it,” Dante breathed, tossing the other papers on the table but gripping the million golds one in his hands. “This is the order.”

Deliver the princess unharmed and untouched for three hundred thousand golds. Sol had offered it to him for a reason. Because his master knew him to be discreet, trustworthy, and protective. Shit, Sol thought he was kind.

Prim gasped, shooting up and leaning into him to look at the paper.

She sucked in a breath. “Oh, gods. I know that stamp. I know who did it.”

She met his gaze for a moment, then ran to her wardrobe, rummaging through her hanging blue dresses. She paused on one and thrusted her hand in the pocket, extracting a piece of parchment. She pressed it into Dante’s hand as she ran to the door. “I have to tell Kallia.”

Dante paused only a moment before following her. Only long enough to see the identical stamp to the one on the order.

And the note above it requesting a tour of the complex in the same hand as those scattered words on the order.

By the time Dante reached Kallia’s chambers, passing a Lanhami guard planted in the hallway alongside the Wassalians, Prim was already pulling at the princess’s locked bedroom door, the escort outside explaining Kallia was entertaining.

That’s when Dante’s heightened hearing picked up Kallia’s whimpers.