As if he could read Annetteās most secret thoughts, Railin opened it, laying a finger against his lips with an almost aggressively seductive smile.
āItās a magic artifact. Good for finding people.ā
With that explanation, he closed his eyes, muttering something. The compass on his palm glowed with a faint blue light, and the needle, which had been wavering aimlessly, suddenly jerked in a new direction.
āHe must be that way.ā Railin held out his hand to her matter-of-factly, but Annette only stared at it silently. Railinās smile never left his eyes as he bent to whisper. āThere are a lot of people. You might be lost.ā
For a moment, Annette looked disgruntled, but slowly grasped his hand. Railin was right. Her vision was limited by her hood, and she couldnāt get her bearings in this place. It would be hard to find Railin if she lost sight of him, and she didnāt want to make a mistake with her target so close.
Biting her lip, she looked where the needle pointed.
Heās here.
Ben March, or Ivan, as she had known him when he was her coachman, was here. She was in the same place he was, though until recently, she couldnāt have imagined where that might be, after he had been let out of prison. None of this felt real.
That man had framed her and taken away her future. And he was also the only maternal relative of Raphael, who knew something of his very secret past. In her last life, she would never have been able to find him, no matter what she tried.
Now she was taking her final shaking steps toward this meeting. Even in this crowded place, Railin followed the compass easily, and Annette leaned on his hand for balance. She was so nervous, her heart was pounding, and her mouth was dry.
Railin stopped, nodding toward a point in the distance as he whispered in her ear.
Under the shadow of her hood, Annette peered intently in that direction. There were several men seated at a shabby blackjack table, but it wasnāt easy to tell which of them was Ben March. Annette hadnāt seen him in five years, if one counted the years since her regression.
Ben March was an utterly ordinary man. His unremarkable face was even more so in this crowd. But after scanning for a few seconds, she found him sitting at the center of the table, and her pupils shook as if through an earthquake.
Heā¦went bald?
That explained why she had had a hard time recognizing him. There was a big difference between having a little hair and having a bald pate that shone like a spotlight. Unconsciously, she covered her mouth with one hand.
Perhaps there was indeed a God in the world. The person who had destroyed her life had gone bald as a boiled egg. Of course, that didnāt completely balance the scales, but it did ease a little of her resentment.
At any rate, she had found him, and now she had to capture him. For all her searching in her last life, she had never come so close. The King was after him now. She was afraid he would disappear again if she didnāt do something right away. But Railin quickly pulled her against his side to stop her.
āWhere are you going now?ā
āCanāt your magical device tell that?ā
Railin only smiled reassuringly and tried to dissuade her. Sliding an arm over her shoulder, he surreptitiously pointed a finger toward the dealer at Ben Marchās table. The unusual-looking man had an eye patch over one eye, and a fierce face.
āIn illegal casinos, the safety of the customers is the priority,ā he murmured. āWhat kind of trouble do you think there would be, if we tried to seize him here?ā
Annetteās delicate brows wrinkled as she understood. But he wasnāt finished.
āAs soon as we act, he will turn those lights on us,ā he went on calmly, pointing at another worker. āAnd while we are blinded, they will send their customers out through a secret passage under the table, and shut the door. The guards over there will quickly eliminate any force that dares to disrupt the business of the casino.ā