AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Arkimedes’s shadows instantly surged out of control around him, the voices calling to him in hushed tones.
“He can’t hurt her,” one soul fragment insisted, raising gooseflesh across his skin.
“She is ours,” another hissed.
“I get that a lot.” The girl’s trembling voice gave away her nerves. Surely, she didn’t think she could fool them.
Arkimedes was about to ruin this girl’s life. If the Society wanted him to kill Celeste, then they would recruit her daughter into the king’s army without a second thought. That was, if she was fortunate enough not to suffer the same fate as her mother.
A new wave of dread crawled up his skull, chilling his body as the misty shapes around him grew ever angrier.
“You look too young to be a gardener,” Devon drawled, and Arkimedes turned to meet his brother’s perceptive gaze.
Devon had come to the same conclusion as he had: this girl was lying and was likely Celeste’s daughter. Celeste’s hidden child. If nobody knew of her, did that mean Arkimedes could help her vanish without facing consequences from the Society?
Either way, he doubted Celeste was here. She would never allow them to speak to her child freely. They needed to lie in wait for the traitor to return home. That would give him just enough time to convince his brother to let the girl go.
“Do you know when Miss Celeste will be back?” Devon asked.
The girl jumped, trembling like a rabbit under a predator’s gaze. When she shook her head, her long, wavy hair stuck to her sweaty skin. “She’s out at the market with my mother because we are the closest neighbors she has,” she lied. “I can tell them—I mean, tell her you came around.”
“Where did you say you lived?” Devon asked, moving forward. The look on his face only fed Arkimedes’s rising panic.
What could he do? Push Devon away from her and give her a chance to run? Why was his chest burning like this, like a spell branding his skin?
“I didn’t.” The girl leveled them with a harsh look and placed her gardening tool inside the basket. Then she straightened her shoulders as if to make herself bigger. Brave and foolish, perhaps. It still warmed his dark heart either way.
Few dared to confront a Crow, let alone a Dark One like him.
“You aren’t supposed to tell strangers where you live,” she whispered. “I can tell Celeste you came by, or you can try to catch her at the market.”
Arkimedes doubted Celeste would be near any market.
Devon moved toward the girl, but he froze when Arkimedes’s shadows reached out for him, a silent warning to his brother to stay away from her. Devon glared at him from behind his hood.
“Not now,” Arkimedes whispered to him.
His brother grunted his displeasure and turned around to head to the horses. It wasn’t as easy for Arkimedes to leave, not with the way his heart suddenly ached. How could he even dream of leaving her here…
Arkimedes tightened his fists and shoved those unhinged feelings away. For crying out loud, the girl was too young to be anything other than a nuisance. And she would consider him a villain the moment he carried out the Society’s orders. If he were a better man, he wouldn’t return at all.
He turned away. Perhaps, in a few hours, this temporary madness would have passed. “Please tell her the Society of Crows came to see her.”
Arkimedes descended the stairs, not looking back. That burning sensation seemed to be carving a hole in the center of his chest with each step he took.
Celeste had betrayed the Society. He had to remember that. She had brought this on herself.
“Why did you stop me?” Devon snarled at Arkimedes when he caught up with him past the imposing gate. “Since when do you have a vested interest in a random gardener?” Devon’s last word dripped with sarcasm.
“I don’t.” If only he could explain it. The reaction of his aura had been purely emotional, almost instinctive. He was clearly tired from his trip to the Copper Kingdom. And losing his damn mind.
Why had the girl not flinched when she’d seen him? As if not even the curse of his power intimidated her.
“If you don’t care, then we should go back. Take the girl and wait for Celeste inside the house.”
Arkimedes knew they should take care of the problem like the higher-ups had commanded. Devon was well aware of their orders. And this would be Arkimedes’s last task before departing for the Copper Kingdom forever.
But he couldn’t simply kill that girl’s family and condemn her to serve the people who’d ordered the execution. It wasn’t the first time the Society had requested an assassination of him. Still, this time, there was one simple difference.
