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On the exhale, I sprung from the bed.
23
ARRAN
The sound of the heavy doors crashing open was nothing to Veyka’s deafening roar as she leapt over the bed, shoving someone bodily aside.
Her dagger caught the light as she slashed, but the assassin jumped backward out of her range. Veyka rolled off the bed, head over feet, landing in a crouch with teeth bared and blade ready.
The assassin, clad in clothing so dark it seemed to swallow the light spilling in from the antechamber, took one look at her and turned to flee. The balcony was open. If they could shift, they’d be gone in a minute. I lunged forward, swinging my battle axe overhead in a motion that was as natural as breathing.
Something zinged past my ear, but I didn’t pause, not with threat of escape steps away from the assassin’s grasp.
Until the black-clad form crumpled, two paces short of the ledge.
I drew myself up, raking my gaze over the assassin’s limbs, searching for some sign of a feint. But I knew what I would find.
Veyka’s knife—buried to the hilt in the center of the assassin’s back.
Before I could lean down to check that they were really and truly dead, Veyka herself was at my side. She kicked the figure hard in the gut. When that elicited no response, she aimed for the head. Nothing.
Only then did she lean down to retrieve her weapon. She held it loosely in her hand, but her muscles were still taut as she nudged the figure over onto their back. Without a glance back at her audience, swelling by the moment, she slit the male assassin’s throat.
She stared at the vacant face for several long moments.
Then she straightened, turning to survey the other occupants of the room. Her gaze swept over the female who’d been asleep in her bed. Delicate white wings, a simple white silk nightgown, and neatly plaited copper hair. Two more females, similar in appearance, huddled against the wall next to an open door on the other side of the bed. Handmaidens, I guessed. And the one in the bed had been a decoy.
With a shaky snap of her fingers, the winged woman in the bed lit the braziers on the walls. The ever-burning hearth, which had been at a low simmer, roared to life once more.
Veyka’s sharp blue eyes swept over the guards—hers and mine—much more quickly. Before they landed on me. They were fathomless, unreadable.
The elementals were famed for their ability to hide their feelings, to present a lie to the outer world. But Veyka had seemed less capable of it, her passion and temper showing through like it had after the Offering and in the royal council meeting. Now, though, she had that indifferent mask in place.
Indifferent? A small voice inside my head asked. Or disappointed. If Veyka had been the one in the bed, would she have bothered to defend herself?
“You are bleeding.”
Suddenly, I could feel it. My battle-worn brain had been trained to ignore small hurts. But I could feel where her blade had nicked the tip of my ear and shaved off several strands of hair.
I did not reach up to stem the flow.
“Who is he?” I asked instead.
Veyka bit her lip, but did not answer. She looked past me, to the three Goldstones who always seemed to be near.
“He is not a member of the elemental court,” the blonde one said, stepping forward. Gwen had told me her name—Lyrena.
I recognized the dark-haired one I’d relieved of his arm the day I arrived in Baylaur. He glowered at me, no circumspection evident. Clearly still bearing a grudge. But I didn’t have time for that now.
Gawayn, the captain, stepped forward. My elder by at least two hundred years, his light brown hair was shot with gray already. I wondered how much of it he had gained since tending to the new queen.
“Is he a terrestrial?” he asked.
Gwen growled, shifting in the blink of an eye to say: “We do not travel with assassins.”
Osheen offered a more diplomatic approach. “He did not come with our delegation. But it is possible.”
There was one way to find out. The eyes of all the elementals in the room swung to us, their terrestrial counterparts. They were all just as capable as us as stepping forward to make the determination. There were only two races of fae in Annwyn.
