Prologue
Analleia
Six Months Before the Paravellian Balls
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EVERY GREAT ASSASSINATIONplot required three vital elements: a setting, a target, and a marksman.The setting tonight featured the imposing castle of Ravenwood overshadowing the sleeping village, our target the vicious overlord guilty of depraved crimes ignored by the nobles.The marksmen consisted of me and my two companions.
Only unlike them, I’ve never killed anyone.
My gloved fingertips dug into the grooves of the stone wall, my leather boots finding their footholds as I climbed up the side of the tower.If I’d worn a cloak, it would have billowed behind me in the brisk wind, flapping like a dragon’s wings from this height, but the cloth I wore stretched across my skin as close and dark as the night around me.No fear crippled my limbs as the ground fell farther away beneath me, as I reached the dizzying height, but they trembled from the strain.The two dark shadows of my companions beneath me followed the path I traversed upward.
The ledge of the upper window grew closer, and I paused as I came up on the left side of it, peering into the room.No candles illuminated the interior, but moonlight identified the large shapes of the furniture.I listened.Nothing.Either it was vacant or the occupants were asleep—as we wanted them to be.I stepped onto the ledge, easing through the window and onto the gray stone floor with utter silence.
I stilled.
Nothing.
One step.
Two steps.
My companions slipped into the room behind me as I scanned our surroundings.Two forms lay in the bed beneath a mound of covers.Asleep.I crossed the room to guard the chamber door, slipping my dagger from its leather sheath.No noise from the outer hall drifted beneath the doorway, but we needed to be quick.We were all too aware that the presence of a stranger in someone’s room had the uncanny ability to raise them from the deepest slumber.
Desmond waited by the window as Nadiyah stalked forward, gliding across the floor to the edge of the massive bed like a wraith.The flip of a coin flashed in my memory, the determining factor over who would wield the lethal blade.The art of assassination took its toll—and I was thankful for their willingness to spare me from committing the actual deed.
I measured my breathing, my fingers curling around the hilt of the dagger as I watched Nadiyah draw her own.
The slightest twinge of movement drew my gaze to the shadows of the right-hand corner, where my eyes locked on a piece of furniture I’d given no thought to.I heard a faint intake of breath and watched a tiny foot rise above the walls of the bassinet.I froze, the life of this nameless child we were about to orphan playing out before me, twisting through my own memories and carving out my heart.No.We couldn’t do this.Years of training to feel nothing, to act without emotion, all faded at the thought of the child.
“Wait!”
The frantic whisper left my lips without thought, without consideration for the consequences.
Someone’s breath caught, out of rhythm, before—
The scream ripped through my ears like the wail of a banshee and echoed off the stone walls, magnifying it by a thousand.A woman’s scream.Our target next to her startled awake, and Nadiyah swiped out with her blade.He jerked back before it slit his throat.The door burst open behind me, flooding the room with torchlight as heavy boots sounded on stone.
I spun, the woman continuing to scream as she leapt for the baby, but my gaze locked on the guard who had charged into the room.A wide scar traveled down the right side of his confused face, the remnants of a burn from long ago.
A burn I recognized.
Fear overwhelmed me, choking the air from my lungs as the sight of his scars took me to a different time.To a different castle with different screams.But screams had the power to awaken dark memories—memories I had tried for so long to repress.They clawed at me now.I could feel the maid’s hands on my arms as she pulled me from my bed, shoving me into a hidden stairwell.Shouts echoed behind us, the cries of dying soldiers reverberating off the walls.Someone grabbed my arm, yanking me back, and I threw my lamp at my attacker, a roar ripping from their throat as the hot oil burned through their flesh.I fled down the stairs, tripping on my nightdress—
My eyes refocused, remembering the scene around me.The tower.The assassination.The baby.
My dagger was in my grasp, but I couldn’t raise it to the scarred guard.I couldn’t kill him.He stared, weapon raised, hesitating as he narrowed his eyes at me in the dim light.I saw the flicker of recognition in them a second before the words left his mouth.
“I know you.”
A knife sailed past my ear and sank into the man’s chest.I stared at it in shock, trying to reacquaint myself with reality.Another guard lay dead on the floor as more in the hall rushed toward the room.Our target held a knife, dodging darts from Nadiyah as his wife huddled in the corner with the crying baby.
Reason clawed its way out of my mind.I raced back to the window ledge as Desmond glared at me.He and Nadiyah slithered out and down the tower.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.In and out in less than a minute.Undetected.Undiscovered until morning.That was the job.And I’d ruined everything.Cost us everything.
Guards poured through the doorway as I swung over the ledge, but they had already spotted me.Light streamed out the window and set off a domino effect through the rest of the tower, shouts and raised voices echoing off the stone within.
