Chapter Text
It would be a lie to say that Bam’s party, once reunited, had had an easy time ascending the tower, but it wasn’t until the 105th floor that everything had truly gone to hell in a handbasket.
Shibisu scrambled over a fallen tree, still smoking from where a stray shinsu bolt had brought it crashing to the ground. Visibility was poor even with the help of his Observer, the smoke rendering everything more than five feet ahead of him a dull grey haze. Communications were down, the enemy Rankers clearly having access to some kind of dampening technology that they were making full use of in this battle. But however spotty the reports might have been before being cut off entirely, the picture that Shibisu was able to put together from them and from what he could make out with his own two eyes was objectively not good.
A figure burst into view ahead of Shibisu, and he had his sidearm out and primed to fire before he realized that it was someone he recognized, and certainly not an enemy.
“Hatz?” Shibisu asked hoarsely, voice scratchy from all the smoke. “Holy shit, Hatz—is that you?”
“Of course,” Hatz snorted, lowering his own sword. “If it wasn’t me, you’d be dead by now.”
“Haha, that's our Hatz, you always know how to brighten up a situation. I do love that about you.”
“Oh, shut up. This is hardly the time for jokes.”
Shibisu knew that, obviously. It was just… well, when the situation was this bad and it seemed like you were backed into a corner no matter what you did to try and fix it, what could you really be expected to but make stupid jokes? He was a scout, yet he had no idea where the rest of the party was, and now that he could actually see him, Hatz seemed to be favouring his left side. His hand was held firmly over his lower ribs and… yep, that was a not-inconsiderable amount of blood staining his skin and the fabric around it.
“That doesn’t look good,” Shibisu said, trying not to make his worry too obvious—Hatz never took that well. “We should probably patch it up at least a bit. Ideally I’d like to get Khun to take a look at you, but I can’t get ahold of him because my goddamn communications have been on the fritz for the past two hours. Have you—”
Hatz shook his head. “I have no idea where Earrings is, I haven’t seen or heard anything from him since the first attack. I’m fine though, this is barely a scratch—I mean it, we have worse things to worry about right now,” he insisted waspishly when it seemed like Shibisu was going to interrupt. “Look, it’s not just Earrings who’s unaccounted for, I haven’t heard anything from Anaak in almost as long, and Bam… he’s down for the count. He took a really bad hit earlier.”
“What?” Shibisu asked, horrified. If even their Irregular was out of commission, this was even worse than he had thought. “Is he alright? What happened?”
“I’m not sure, it was around the time when I lost contact with the others,” Hatz said, head dropping as he heaved a shaking breath, shifting unsteadily on his feet. “They were coming at us from above, so Bam was in the air trying to hold them off so we could get away. I didn’t see exactly what happened, but the next thing I knew, Bam was falling from the sky and Endorsi just took off after him. I don’t know what happened after that, I was immediately attacked by another group of enemies—probably some of their scouts—and I barely managed to escape. By the time I circled around back there was no sign of anyone, from either our side or theirs. Best case scenario, he was just knocked out and Endorsi got him out of there before I got back. Worst case….”
He didn’t have to finish. Worst case scenario, they were both dead or captured.
“How… how the fuck did this happen?” Shibisu asked helplessly. He had tried so hard to keep calm when he was separated from the others, tried to calmly assess the scenario as their enemies closed in, but he was nearing his limits. “How did… we were so careful. Khun and me spent weeks planning this out, we had backups for our backups. How did they manage to—”
“Get down!” Hatz hissed, grabbing Shibisu’s wrist and roughly dragging him down, pulling them both down further into the cover of the trees. This close to the ground the smoke was a little lighter, and the scent of pine needles and sap invaded his nostrils. It took several seconds for him to see what Hatz had seen, dim lights up above as enemy Rankers flew overhead, likely looking for survivours.
“Holy fuck,” Shibisu whispered. “Holy fuck."
“Calm down,” Hatz said, although it would be more of an effective reprimand if Shibisu couldn’t see the whites of his eyes. “We can deal with this the same way we’ve dealt with it every time something goes wrong. We just have to be patient and wait them out, then find the others. Everything else can come after that. We can do this.”
Shibisu wasn’t sure who Hatz was trying to convince—Shibisu, or himself.
*
They hadn’t come into this situation with any illusions that it would be easy. In fact, Shibisu and Khun had known for ages that one of the things they would most need to be careful of past Floor 100 were the Ranker warlords.
Many warlords were related to the Great Families, although they didn’t claim allegiance to any of them in particular. They were a lawless group, viciously territorial and extremely powerful in terms of both abilities and manpower. Luckily for most ordinary Regulars climbing the Tower, they often fought amongst each other for control over various floors and their wealth, large-scale battles that meant they were too busy with their own concerns to spare much notice for the Floor Tests going on in the inner portion of the Tower. But less luckily, Bam’s group was not in the slightest bit ordinary.
The Irregular of prophecy, the FUG Slayer Candidate, was not likely to be ignored by these powerful figures when he entered their territory.
There were a variety of reasons for their enmity. For some, it was a simple desire to recruit a powerful new subordinate, banking on the fact that if FUG could turn an Irregular to their side, they could too. For others, it was because they still felt some loyalty to the ruling powers, the Great Families and Jahad, and saw it as something of a moral duty to bring a potential usurper down. Others feared their way of life might be disrupted should the Slayer successfully carry out his task and bring about a new age, as FUG foretold. Others hoped to be able to ransom him off for a fortune to one of the myriad of powers in the Tower who were seeking to capture or kill him. Any one of these alone would be sufficient reason for one of these warlords to seek to bring their party down.
The worst of these warlords by reputation was also paradoxically the most mysterious, a man who went by the name of Albrecht Glass, or sometimes, as he was referred to in dark corners and hushed voices, the Ghost Duke.
Albrecht Glass was a powerful man, his strength and shinsu abilities bolstered by two different Great Family bloodlines, and he had a reputation as something of a king and something of a pirate. He imposed laws and taxed the people who lived in areas he conquered, yet also had been known to raid and plunder these same groups when it caught his fancy, or when he felt like some form of retribution was in order. It wasn’t a particularly original story, just another Ranker who decided to treat the Tower as his own personal playground, but he did seem to be worryingly successful when it came to doing so.
And he also had one major advantage—his base of operations, his fortress, or wherever he actually lived with his mercenaries and the rest of his followers when he wasn’t on a rampage—was, according to all known sources, a complete mystery. It’s location was unknown. Its size was unknown. What was inside was unknown. What method was used to hide it was also unknown (although Shibisu and Khun did have their suspicions about that, but again, no solid evidence).
They had both lost sleep to the endless hours of work they had poured into researching the warlords and their weaknesses, trying to dredge up any new scrap of information on the elusive Ghost Duke. When they had exhausted all possible avenues, they had done their best to lay false trails in preparation for their arrival, confusing dates and times and dropping tidbits of info to the right parties that would cause the warlords’ attention to be elsewhere while they were on floors in their territories. They had hoped that this would allow them to get in, take their test, and get out before the warlords would learn of their presence and come after them.
It had worked quite well for the most part, but their luck had run out on Floor 105.
Shibisu hadn’t had much of a chance to think about it, but despite the disbelieving words of protest he’d given Hatz, there was really only one possible explanation for why the Ranker’s forces had been ready to descend on them the second they entered the pine forest that marked the start of the testing area. At that point it had simply become a matter of forcing them out of the area designated for Regulars and into the no man’s land where the Rankers were waiting for them. They had clearly been prepared for in advance.
The Test Directors for the floor had been in on it. They had to be. Nothing else would make sense.
After that, everything was a blur of trees and ambushes and running for cover. The team had gotten separated, and then the dampening field had come out of nowhere and they’d been forced to run for their lives.
Which brought them back to the present.
Eventually, Shibisu breathed a sigh of relief when he could no longer see the Rankers, and turned to Hatz. “Now that we have a moment free, let’s see about that injury.”
“I told you, It’s fine,” Hatz said, but thankfully didn’t resist as Shibisu began cleaning the wound. He was just in the process of finishing affixing a gauze pad into place when there came a sudden, blessed sound. It was like music, like angels singing. The long-awaited sound of a Pocket chime.
Communications were back. Finally, some good fucking news.
“Shibisu? Shibisu, is this message getting through? Are you alright?” And what a welcome voice that was, too! Shibisu could have wept.
“Bam!” Shibisu exclaimed into his Pocket. “Thank god, we’ve been so worried! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Bam’s voice said, although it sounded a bit weaker than Shibisu would have liked. “I got hit by something—one of them had some kind of weapon that made a shockwave and I must have been knocked unconscious for a bit, but Ms. Endorsi saved me. I didn’t suffer any lasting damage.”
He was probably making light of his injuries to make them feel better, any hit that could take down Bam had to have been devastating, but at the moment Shibisu was simply relieved to be hearing his voice. “Well, that’s the best news I’ve heard in some time. Are you still in contact with Endorsi?”
“Yes, we’re together,” Bam replied and bless him but he definitely had no idea how that sounded.
He couldn’t say the same for Hatz, who snorted, averting his eyes and kicking at a pinecone on the forest floor that Shibisu was almost certain had done nothing to him.
Unfortunately, now that they knew that Bam was at least awake and functional and the most recent crisis was averted for the time being, Shibisu would most likely have to be the one to deal with Hatz’s… pique over the speed at which Endorsi had left him behind to rush to Bam’s aid.
Every day Shibisu wondered what he had done to deserve to spend every precious hour of his life bathing in such a vast cesspool of hormones and unrequited feelings. And speaking of….
Still no sign of Khun. That was worrisome, and now that Bam was awake, there was no doubt that he’d be reacting to this in the same way that he usually reacted when it appeared Khun was in some sort of danger. Which is to say, poorly.
”Hey is anybody there?” another voice joined the call, this one higher pitched and considerably more grumpy-sounding than Bam’s. “Tracksuit, hag, anyone there? Answer your damn Pockets!”
“Anaak?” Shibisu asked. “Anaak, is that you? What’s your status?”
“Who else would I be, Urek Mazino? And don’t worry, it’s all fine on my end,” Anaak said dismissively. “What about the hag? I haven’t heard from her yet, did she get her heel caught in a hole and die?”
For all that her words sounded harsh, Shibisu thought that she wouldn’t have asked that question if she hadn’t been more than a little bit concerned. It was pretty cute actually, although Anaak would definitely kill him if he said as much.
”Who got caught in a hole and died?” a shrill voice came out of the Pocket and Shibisu winced. It seemed like Endorsi had joined the call. “Maybe a poor little toad with short legs, I can’t imagine who else would be so clumsy!”
“This forest is pretty dense, did you run your broomstick into any trees lately, witch?”
“Well at least I don’t—”
“All right, all right, break it up!” Shibisu demanded. “We’re all separated, we need to be using the comms for important messages now, not throwing insults!”
“Who died and made you king, ugly?”
“Yeah, who do you think you are—”
“Guys,” Bam cut in, his voice steady and reasonable and slicing through the chatter like nothing else could. Shibisu could have kissed him. “I know we’re all confused and frustrated, but we really should listen to Isu right now. We still need to figure out what our situation is and what we’re going to do going forward. Are you all okay with that?”
The Pocket went quiet for a few seconds, and then….
“See, that’s just what I was about to say,” Endorsi said with a huff. “Focus, everyone! This is no time for arguing!”
“Says the one who caused the most trouble in the first place,” Anaak grumbled.
“As I was saying,” Shibisu interrupted loudly. God save him from this mess of a team, Khun had better show up soon to restore order or Shibisu was going to kickflip off the deep end. “The first thing we should be doing now is determining who all is accounted for. I can speak for myself and Hatz, we’re both doing alright. Hatz is a little bit dinged up, but he's been treated and isn't in immediate danger.”
“I told you I was fine,” Hatz said, a little moodily.
Whatever, Hatz.
“Ms. Endorsi and I are together,” Bam said, and again with that phrasing. “We’re both fine.”
“Laure?”
“Sleeping Ugly is with me, for all the good he’s doing,” Anaak said, and there was the sound of a distant grunt, like Anaak had driven her foot into a sleeping man’s side on the other end of the line. It sounded pretty much exactly like that, actually. “And obviously, I’m alive as well.”
Shibisu frowned, considering. “So that means that we’re all safe and accounted for except for Rak and Khun, does that sound right?”
There were murmurs of agreement over the comm, the argumentativeness seemingly dying down again as it became clear that not all was well yet.
They stayed hidden for the next few minutes, although it was quickly becoming apparent that none of their party had actually seen the enemy in some time. It was a reassuring development, but not one that Shibisu would trust at face value. They were, however, beginning to cautiously suggest how they could go about reuniting the party.
Another chime, a different one than the Pocket chime earlier, alerted Shibisu to another development.
He had set his observer with the task of identifying the source of the interference that had been messing with their communications. If it was ringing now, it meant that the machine had finished its analysis, and he could finally isolate the identity of at least one of their enemies. When he finally saw it, however, the ID of the source made him do a double take.
The dampening field hadn’t actually been coming from the enemy at all.
That was Khun’s Lighthouse code—Shibisu would recognize it anywhere. There was no mistake, no misunderstanding, the dampening field had been Khun’s doing.
But why? A Lightbearer taking out his own communications network in the middle of a battle would be like shooting himself and his whole team in the foot. Because of that dampening field, they’d all been cut off, separated and forced to take cover. It was incredibly dangerous; they could have all died. So why would Khun do that?
Unless….
Unless it was because they were tracking our transmissions, Shibisu realized. He couldn’t know for sure, but it would make sense. If the enemy was capable of tracing their locations based on the signals their devices were sending out, then it would be impossible to escape as long as they continued sending out communications to each other. Their only hope would have been to cut communications entirely and go to ground to wait for backup from FUG, which the dampening field had essentially forced them to do.
It was likely that Khun had understood how closely they were being monitored and realized that he had no way to share this information with the others without it being picked up by the enemy, and had acted without explanation because of that.
But then where are you now, Khun-my-love? he wondered. What did it mean that communications were back up now? Did Khun disable the dampening field himself because he decided the risk was gone, or had it been unintentional on his part? And then there was Rak, who was still missing….
“... is it on? Turtles, are you there? Can you hear me?”
“Mr. Rak!” Bam’s voice was the first to pipe up at the sound of his friend’s voice over the Pocket. “Thank goodness, we were all worried. Are you alright?”
“I am… fine. Are all the rest of you turtles safe?”
Shibisu thought Rak sounded uncharacteristically subdued, and he was beginning to worry.
“We’re all fine, but we’re still missing Khun,” Shibisu said. “He’s the only one unaccounted for now. We’re just trying to keep our heads down until we can be sure the danger is over.”
“... it’s over now,” Rak said.
A sudden chorus of voices came over the line.
“Wait, you mean the Rankers are gone? Is it safe?”
“How would you know?”
“Where are you--"
“For god’s sake everyone, just give the man a chance to explain!” Shibisu said in exasperation. He’d probably pay for using that tone with them later but… well, he couldn’t really regret it. “All yours, big guy,” he said. “What’s the situation?”
There was a pause.
“Black Turtle’s minions are here.” Rak’s deep voice, when he spoke up sounded heavy and tired over the line. “They came and the enemies ran, but it was too late. Black Turtle, I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop them.”
“Minions?” Bam asked. “Wait, do you mean FUG is here? Who couldn’t you stop?”
Shibisu’s mind was racing. If FUG was here, that could explain why they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any of their enemies for quite some time now. Shibisu had little love for the organization that had caused his friend so much grief, but if their presence was enough to send a Ranker warlord scurrying for cover then he couldn’t deny that their backup certainly had its uses. The only problem was….
“It was that Ranker turtle, the one we had been warned about.” Rak said, the words plummeting into the expectant silence like stones into a well. “He was here, and there were too many for me to fight off, and when he ran away he took the Blue Turtle with him. I wasn’t strong enough to stop them, I’m sorry.”
Shibisu didn’t need to see Bam’s face to be able to tell what kind of expression he must be wearing.
Far from being over, it was looking like things were going to get very ugly, very fast.
*
“That crocodile creature seemed pretty determined to prevent us from taking you.”
“Yeah?” Khun said, in as disaffected a voice as he could muster. He would have waved a hand dismissively if they weren’t both tightly secured behind his back. “He’s something like a pet, I guess he got attached.”
That idiot Rak, he’d better not have gotten himself killed or Khun would march right back and kill him himself.
When Khun had decided to make himself the distraction, to ensure that the only communication devices the enemy picked up would be his own, he hadn’t expected Rak to have been so nearby or so virulently opposed to letting him be captured. Khun had barely managed to keep himself from screaming at him to run when he saw the crocodilian hopelessly outnumbered and bleeding from numerous wounds, but doing so would have ruined his plans, so he’d held back. He didn’t know how that fight had turned out—he’d been bound, tossed into a ship and carried off before it was over—but one thing he was certain of was that Rak would never have run away, whether Khun had ordered him to or not.
It was true that Khun didn’t love this plan either, but he’d been almost fresh out of options and it had come down to either doing nothing and letting the Ranker’s army pick them off one by one until they eventually got to Bam, or Khun playing the role of bait and hoping that any situation he found himself in would be one he could fight or talk himself out of. He chose the lesser of two evils based on one truth, and that was the simple fact that any option, any result was better than losing Bam.
Maybe if he’d been able to convey this idea more articulately to Rak ahead of time the idiot wouldn’t have had to go and get himself all bent out of shape when he’d emerged from the trees to find Khun surrounded and his Lighthouses in pieces around him. Maybe then Rak could have trusted him and avoided getting so badly injured—it was completely senseless.
“You seem remarkably calm about this. I admit that I did expect considerably more death threats and screaming.”
Albrecht Glass, the Duke himself, seemed to be in a reasonably good mood for someone who had basically just turned tail and run. Khun admittedly didn’t quite have a read on him yet, but he didn’t look like a man who had just suffered a loss of any kind, and it put him on edge.
Albrecht Glass wasn’t very remarkable looking. He was a tall man, dark haired and fairly lanky, not overly muscular in appearance. He was a fairly good conversationalist, and had a resting expression of polite inquiry, like he was genuinely interested in hearing what you had to say. Khun knew better than to be taken in by his appearance, however. If half the things he’d heard about this man were true, he had killed more people than Khun had ever met.
And they weren’t just having a polite conversation, either.
Khun had been carried away blindfolded and restrained, and he’d only been able to see again after he’d been shuffled onto what was presumably Albrecht’s main ship. It was much larger than the one he’d arrived on, but the humming of engines in the background had made it apparent that they still weren’t anywhere on land. He’d been taken to a space like a cozy study where he’d been seated in an armchair across from Albrecht, although his bonds hadn’t been removed and a pair of guards remained at his side, blades at his throat.
Implicit threats under a thin veneer of civility, was his impression of the man and his style of hospitality.
And this wasn’t a polite conversation, it was an interrogation.
“You really think I’d do something as undignified as that?” Khun scoffed. “Please, as if I would ever need to resort to such things to assert myself. You know I got used to having influence of all kinds with Viole. I had a lot of fun horrifying polite society and reaping the rewards of being associated with a Slayer Candidate, even if I knew from the beginning that it couldn’t last forever.”
“So all this time you’ve spent working for the FUG Slayer Candidate, you were simply after the power and prestige that you thought you would get out of it?” Albrecht asked skeptically.
“Of course. Oh, that and the promise of revenge against my scumbag father. As far as I’m concerned, the whole family deserves to go down in flames. Making myself indispensable to an Irregular sounded like the best way to go about making that happen at the time.”
“I see,” Albrecht said with an idyllic smile. “It seems that things didn’t turn out that way.”
“Obviously,” Khun replied just as carelessly, “I mean, he did kind of screw me over in the end. In case you hadn’t noticed, he abandoned me.”
Albrecht nodded, his expression openly sympathetic in a way that had Khun’s hackles immediately raised, although he did his best trying to keep any evidence of that from reaching his face. “That’s true, it seems that Jue Viole Grace did escape and leave you behind in the process. However,” he said, rising from his seat and approaching, making Khun stiffen even further, “perhaps I would be inclined to be more sorry for your plight if not for the fact that I know that any plans that Jue Viole Grace acts on come not from him, but from his favourite strategist.”
Albrecht stopped in front of Khun and his captors, and in a swift move his hand came up to clamp around Khun’s jaw in a vice-like grip, keeping him in place as the Ranker forced him to look into his eyes. Khun immediately stilled, knowing instinctively that any struggling now would only get his throat swiftly cut, and he was forced to stare at his own pale visage as it was reflected back in those cold green eyes.
God but he was actually scared. How pathetic. Thankfully, repression was pretty much second nature to him by now and he managed to force it back down again.
“And as we are both well aware, Jue Viole Grace’s strategist is none other than you,” Albrecht continued, his voice soft and belying his harsh grip. “If you were the one we found and captured, it was because it was part of your plan, not his.”
Khun had somewhat expected this development, which was fortunate because it meant he had an answer ready. In this instance, it actually worked in his favour that Khun had a decently far-reaching reputation for being dishonest, because it meant that whatever he offered as an explanation in the first place would likely be automatically discarded as lies and misdirection. That in turn usually made it easier to sell the second set of lies.
“You’re right,” Khun said. “I wanted to meet with you, so I made sure that I’d be the one you tracked down.”
“Interesting. Why would you do that?”
“Because I’m not getting anything out of working for Viole anymore, so I thought it was time to seek out a better option,” Khun said. “Obviously your intelligence isn’t lacking if you were able to catch us so completely off guard, so you know I don’t have any new information for you. And I can’t be ransomed to my family, either. You know enough about me to realize that they wouldn’t trade so much as a single mouldy crust of bread to get me back.”
Khun paused a moment to let that sink in. “But what I can do is offer you my assistance—I still haven’t achieved my goals yet, and now that Viole’s proven himself to be so easily defeated and I’ve parted ways with FUG, you just might be the best chance I have of getting it.”
Mix lies with the truth. Wrap it up all neatly for him and put a bow on top. Buy it, please buy it….
“So you’re saying you got captured because you decided it was time to cut your ties with the Irregular and seek out stronger allies,” Albrecht said, his hand moving from Khun’s jaw to cradle his cheek instead. Far from helping him relax, the action only scared him more. “It seems that you two didn’t have quite the perfect friendship it appeared you had on the surface. I guess that’s to be expected, you are quite the actor from what I’ve heard, and you have a reputation for being coldhearted. Whether you’re capable of feeling any sort of loyalty at all is up for debate in a number of circles in the Tower… you’d probably be surprised at how far your infamy has spread.”
At any other time the words might have left him gutted, but Khun was simply relieved that the man seemed to have bought it, at least for now. It felt bad to denounce Bam’s importance to him, but it was all he could do at the present to try to prevent Albrecht from using him against his friend. As he’d known before, having a reputation for being treacherous could be helpful when applied correctly.
Albrecht chose that moment to stroke his thumb across Khun’s cheek, tracing the skin right under his eye, and Khun had never wanted to kill someone so badly in his life. “Of course, that only covers how you feel about him, not how he feels about you.”
Khun’s whole body went cold, as if he’d been dunked in a tank full of ice water. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, straining to keep his voice even. “We were useful to each other for a time, that’s all.”
“You said your family wouldn’t do anything to get you back, and I believe you. But if you’re half the liar I think you are, you must have given Jue Viole Grace ample reason to keep you around. Whatever you may say about your relationship, I do find it telling that you had to go to such lengths and plan behind his back just to get away from him. That speaks to a very particular kind of attentiveness on his part. I’m sure you understand what I’m implying here.”
Of course he did. This rat bastard, Khun would kill him one day. He would hardly be the first to interpret Bam and Khun’s relationship that way, and worse…
… it wasn’t even entirely wrong. He didn’t seem to know anything that couldn’t be picked up from hearsay, but it would be a lie to say that his suspicions were entirely off the mark.
“I understand the implications,” Khun confirmed stiffly, eyes narrowing. “I don’t understand why someone in your position would listen to such baseless rumours, though.”
Albrecht laughed, hand dropping back to his side. “No need to get angry, after all, I’m going to give you what you want,” he said, pulling away at a speed that left Khun dizzy. He made his way back to his own chair and sat down, looking him over speculatively, eyes traveling over his body in a way that Khun didn’t like at all. “I’ll gladly accept your services, as it just so happens, I have a position open that would be perfectly suited to someone like you. And I’ll even do you the favour of helping you hide from that clingy Irregular as a bonus. Never let it be said that I can’t be generous with my people. ”
“You say that, but you seem entirely too confident that Jue Viole Grace will care enough to come after me,” Khun said. “I doubt he’s eager to be held up on such an unimportant floor by an unnecessary conflict that is completely unrelated to his mission to destroy Jahad. What’s to stop him from quickly passing the test and leaving this floor while you’re idling away here?”
“Because,” Albrecht said, smiling indulgently. “I am certain he would never willingly leave this floor without you. Especially after he learns what’s become of you in his absence.”
The whole picture snapped into focus, and Khun’s carefully honed brain quickly put together the pieces of what he knew with the little tells throughout their conversation and understood exactly what kind of position the man had in mind for him.
“I’ll kill you,” Khun said slowly, through gritted teeth. The gloves were off, the scenario he’d been trying to construct was a haphazard mess, but at the moment, Khun didn’t care. “You won’t even have to worry about Bam coming after you because I’ll kill you first.”
“Finally, this is the most genuine you’ve been since we started this little discussion,” Albrecht said. “Not that I think you’ll have the chance to try to kill me, but I do think it’s nice to see the face of the real Khun Aguero Agnis. Honesty is important in a marriage, wouldn’t you agree?”