Era of Wrath (Chrim Chronicles #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Gaspar

The scythe glowed bright green even though it'd been covered in a layer of blood that dripped down on the black marble floor. In the far corner, Wren stared at the floor with her chin leaning on her knees as she hugged her legs. If she feared Maeve, she finally did something right. Even Clyde, who was feared by all the seven families and a good portion of Tartarus, secretly feared this sister. Deirdre he could keep under his control, barely but still, but Maeve was a whole other story.

"How did you find us?" I asked as I sat down.

Maeve, sitting in the dead emperor's throne, dropped the chicken leg she held between her fingertips and looked up with an amused expression. "Clyde sent me to find you. Considering your job lay here, it was the obvious place to search." Unbothered by the bloodshed and the emperor's corpse at her feet, she chewed a chunk of chicken and washed it away with a gulp of white wine. "Unlike you two donkeys, I am actually useful and efficient." She dropped the clean bone on a tray and dabbed her mouth clean with a velvet napkin. "I mean, you are aware that you were sent to find the Watcher, kill the emperor, and then return, right? Not to sit here and have a damn picnic with the lot."

"We..." Tavi started, but Maeve didn't let him finish.

"You are incompetent idiots."

I took the carafe containing white wine and refilled her cup in an attempt to soften her. "It's complicated, Maeve. We ran into..."

"It's rather simple," she interrupted, and sipped the wine. "You're imbeciles. It's that simple." Reaching behind her, she seized the scythe leaning against the wall and handed it to Tavi. "Be useful and find this a good hiding place. Go." As Tavi walked away with the scythe, she looked at one of the guards and snapped her finger. Once a guard stood across from her, a bald man with a patch of black hair on his chin, she took the machete strapped on his belt and handed it to me. "Cut off the emperor's head. Death will be here any minute, he's going to want it."

Wren stirred and looked up with wide open eyes. "Death? He's coming here?"

"Don't worry, he's not here to take you back. All he wants is Andras' head." Drumming her fingers on the armrest of the throne, she locked my eyes as she spoke the next words. "As Gaspar is very well aware, seeing as he failed himself, the plan was to make a deal with Death, the emperor's head in return for your freedom."

Grabbing a hold of his blonde curly hair, I started sawing into his neck. "Won't he want his scythe back? Shouldn't we keep it close so we can give it back to him when he gets here?"

"That was the deal, yes. But, seeing as we're hiding it, even a donkey like yourself should be able to add two and two together and figure it out." Maeve offered Wren a chicken leg, and shrugged when she declined, stuffing it inside her own mouth. "That scythe is the most powerful weapon ever made." While chewing, she smiled and shook her head. "No, you imbecile, we are not handing him back the deadliest weapon to ever come in our possession. Death can suck it. It's ours now."

"Does..." Wren swallowed and frowned at the floor. "Does Clyde know? About the baby."

Meave tilted her head aside as she looked at Wren from the corner of her eye. "No, but he will soon. I sent the word out the moment I heard you and Gaspar talking out on the balcony."

Wren's mouth dropped open. "You heard that?"

"It was the only opening and the only way in, so I climbed up to enter through your room and waited for you to finally leave." She popped an olive in her mouth. "Imagine my surprise when I found out that you, some little flea from Chrim, had just sold my brother's child to the highest bidder."