Free Ecstasy Unveiled by Larissa Ione

and marriage. “So? The chick who kicked your ass hard enough to land you in the hospital?”
    “She was defending my target,” Lore said carefully, because although the assignment was good news, he didn’t want Sin to know that her life could end if he failed.
    “Freelance job?”
    “No.”
    She turned to him so fast he heard her neck crack. The blade in the air came down and embedded in the arm of the couch. “Are you serious? Lore? Are you fucking with me?” She hit the mute button on the remote, cutting off Ann Curry.
    The rhythmic thump of his heartbeat in his ears filled the silence. “I’m dead serious.”
    She squealed. His sister never squealed. “Oh, my God! I thought you’d say no. This is your hundredth, Lore. We’re almost free!” She splashed liquor into a shot glass with a shaky hand.
    “Yup.”
    “Okaaaay.” She put down her glass. “You don’t seem very excited.”
    Shit. “I am. We’ve wanted this for decades, right?” Felt like centuries, though, since the day he’d agreed to a hundred kills in exchange for both his and Sin’s freedom.
    “It’s the deadline, isn’t it?”
    He blinked. “How do you know?”
    “It was a guess, because I have one, too. A job. With an impossibly short deadline.”
    Dread curdled the contents of Lore’s stomach. They’d never had to complete an assignment in under two weeks before. “What happens if you don’t make your deadline?”
    Sin’s gaze skipped away, and she retrieved her knife.
    “Sin?” Lore’s voice cracked. For the first time in a very long time, he was afraid. Not for himself, but for Sin, who had been through more than her fair share of misery in her life.
    “He’ll sell me,” she said between clenched teeth. “He’ll hack off my arm so I can’t use it to kill, and sell me to the Neethuls.”
    Oh, Jesus. Neethuls were an incredibly cruel race who bred, trained, and traded slaves… particularly sex slaves. Before being sold to Detharu, Sin had suffered as a slave who had to do anything her master wanted, from selling drugs to killing enemies, but the Neethuls would make what she’d gone through seem like a day at the beach.
    “That won’t happen,” he swore. “I’ll help you take out your target. Who is it?”
    “You have your own mark to deal with.” She tested the edge of her blade with her thumb. “What happens if you miss your deadline?”
    “Nothing.”
    Her gaze turned steely, silver shards against a black backdrop. “Bullshit. Tell me.”
    “If I miss the deadline, Deth gets to double my time of service,” he lied.
    She regarded him warily, as though trying to decide if he was telling the truth or not. She had a tendency to question everything, especially if it came from Lore, and he wondered if she’d ever fully trust him again.
    “You won’t miss your deadline,” she said finally. “You never do. So what happened while you were trying to take out your mark? It’s not like you to get caught out like that.”
    Outside the open window, the high-pitched warble of a bird sounded like laughter, which was fitting. “I got cocky.”
    “Now that I believe,” she said wryly. “So who is it? Your mark?”
    It was a question no assassin asked another—the risk of someone homing in on your kill and stealing it from under you was too great—but Lore and Sin had always shared deets. “Remember I told you about that human asshole I brought back to life? It’s him. Should have left him dead, I guess.”
    Sin’s grip on her knife tightened. “Ah… isn’t that guy friends with…” She trailed off, because she refused to say it. Our brothers.
    “Yeah. It’s okay. I’ll handle it so they never find out it was me.” Doubt set her jaw in a stubborn line, so he steered the conversation away from Kynan and the potential trouble Lore was in. “What about you? Who’s your mark?”
    Sin stretched out on the couch and tucked an arm behind her head. Dark circles under her half-lidded eyes revealed her