The Emerald Assassin

by Ellie Margot

  The Emerald Assassin

  Ellie Margot

  Laurie Starkey

  Michael Anderle

  BrixBaxter Publishing

  Contents

  Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Continue the Saga

  Author Note

  About Seven Sons

  About The Author

  Copyright

  Description

  When the land of Vitan needs a savior, one will be born...

  Unfortunately, her people don't recognize the savior—they believe she just has an anger problem.

  However, Riette's problem isn't anger. It's passion.

  She’s supposed to inherit the Elf land of Vitan, but what good is an inheritance if it has been destroyed?

  When her best friend’s girlfriend and right hand’s sister goes missing, Riette will start a quest to get her back and fix her land for good.

  The only other option is to die trying.

  Chapter 1

  The elemental flame inside her felt like it would burn her up from the inside out, but Riette couldn’t force her feet to take her into the one place where she could learn to control her new power. The door to the Fire Elemental training room loomed in front of her, smoke billowing out of it. Not the most inviting sight.

  The training room had been woven into the trunk of one of the living trees that towered over the forest. The Vitan tree wasn’t hurt by the flames of the training Elves inside, but her own skin was not so resistant.

  Biting her lip, she considered her options. She had every right to stay outside—and hate herself for it—or she could walk inside and own her life, including the newer parts. She had mastered her earth-elemental powers well enough in her training. Training with fire shouldn’t be any different, except for the fact that she shouldn’t be able to use the elemental fire at all.

  Each Elf could only use one of the four elemental powers, and Riette had been no different until this new flame element showed up one day. If she wanted to tame it, she needed to walk through the damn door.

  Until that point, Riette rarely had reason to enter the place at all. She had been a child when she’d last visited the place, watching her father play with the flames that frightened her then. He hadn’t really been playing though, had he? Everything in the room was serious, and Riette couldn’t stomach seeing the room without him in it.

  She wished she had paid more attention to her father for several reasons, the primary of which was represented by the entryway in front of her. The smell of ashes enveloped her before she even entered the hall. It was her time to prove her worth to the other Elves.

  Steadying herself, Riette let out a breath, pushed the fire energy down, and tucked her long, jet-black hair behind her ears. She took a step toward the entrance, but voices from inside the training room stopped her. She slipped back into branch cover just outside the door and listened.

  “Think she’ll show?” a voice asked inside.

  “She will to piss her mother off maybe,” said another.

  “Or maybe she’s being forced to show so she doesn’t burn the trees down?” asked another Elf. The voice belonged to a female this time, but she laughed in chorus with the males inside.

  Something low and hateful burned deep in Riette’s belly. She wished it was a new feeling, but it wasn’t. Her father’s passing had birthed something horrible in her that she feared. Something angry, biting, and vengeful. And these people? She knew she shouldn’t unleash whatever was in her at them, but their words made the urge hard to curb.

  “You good?” asked Mekhi from behind her.

  Riette yelped and glanced over her shoulder. A flash of red hair showed her it was her cousin before she even saw his face. Shit. He’d snuck up on her, and that didn’t bode well. If she was ever going to gain the respect of the fire Elves inside, she needed to be able to hold her own. Being caught off guard before even entering practice wasn’t going to earn her any respect.

  “Things are going swimmingly,” Riette said, giving her cousin a quick look. His water powers made him an easy target for ocean jokes.

  His smirk appeared quickly before disappearing.

  “Obviously, you’re nervous,” said Mekhi.

  “Obviously, you’re out of your mind. Why would I be nervous?”

  “Because you’re not inside the practice hall yet, and it’s already five past, and you’re making sea jokes at me,” Mekhi said, stepping closer to her. He smiled, but his eyes still creased at the corners. He respected her. Many didn’t. It was hard for them to see their future queen not feeling in control.

  Mekhi didn’t seem to blame her for feeling out of sorts, though. Elves like the ones inside the Fire Hall weren’t the most welcoming bunch, and now she’d have to find her way into their ranks as one of them.

  They both turned at the sound of the creaking vines as someone else joined them.

  Each Vitan tree had a landing to make such arrivals look effortless, but since they were in the training trees, the journey to travel to them, even by vine, was made all the more difficult by the sheer height of the trees themselves.

  Cassian landed beside them. Standing taller than her and her cousin, with dark hair and darker eyes. He carried an air of authority that Riette knew she needed to master herself.

  “You both came to check on me?” Riette asked.

  “I came to check on the others, myself,” said Mekhi. “I’ve heard of at least three bets going on right now for how long it will take you to burn one of the others.”

  “If I burn anyone, it’ll be because they asked for it,” she said.

  “Or because they looked at you funny, insulted your pet, took your toy before you were done playing with it,” said Cassian. He wasn’t one to smile quickly, but he did still get joy from giving Riette a hard time.

  “Ha, fucking, ha,” said Riette.

  “I’m here because I knew if I didn’t drag you two inside for the briefing meeting in the Hollowed Hall, you’d be late,” said Cassian.

  “Shit,” said Riette. “I may have forgotten about it temporarily.” Her lip burned from her biting it as the idea of being surrounded by many of the Elves her age set in. Each week, they had a meeting to test their talents and to see how ready they were for war, if one were to occur.

  “And I was supposed to remind you—” said Mekhi.

  “Yet here I am, saving both of you and myself in the process from the stern looks from your mother,” said Cassian.

  All three moved closer to the edge of the platform. Each of them raised their hands to bring the vines closer so they could gather them and travel to a neighboring tree.

  “Alluette’s stern looks aren’t that bad,” said Mekhi.

  “That’s because you hardly ever get the really ugly looks,” said Riette. “I swear she’s confused about wh
ich one of us belongs to her.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I singlehandedly keep you out of trouble, Princess.”

  Riette’s face burned at the title. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to hearing it by now, but it didn’t make it easier to swallow.

  “That sounds like a full-time job,” said Amina, the young female fire Elf.

  All three turned to acknowledge their new companion. It was one thing for the three of them to give each other a hard time. They had grown up together. They were family, Mekhi in blood and Cassian in spirit. However, others would do well not to engage her or the two men who never left her side. It wouldn’t go well for them.

  Ignoring the comment, Riette allowed the vines to wrap around her, engulfing her from her waist, down to her toes, and then back up to her arms and hands. The words she wanted to sling as insults to Amina were quieted on her lips by the wind that whipped around her. She ascended from their current tree to the Vitan tree that housed the Hollowed Hall at speeds that would make any non-Elf nervous. Terrified even.

  Mekhi and Cassian followed her, both wrapped in their own vine transportation. The journey was short but staggering to anyone who wasn’t used to the atmosphere. The forest was dense with massive trees, the biggest of which held the homes and structures the Elves lived in. Vines hung in ropey curtains as far up the towering trees as one could see, adding bulk to the vivid greenery that grew abundantly around them.

  The three landed on the wooden platform outside of the largest hall they had. It was the only place that could hold all the Elves at one time, even if it wasn’t comfortably.

  The meeting didn’t have to hold them all today, though, just the ones who were younger than Riette or at her level.

  Many had already begun practicing to show off their strengths when called. That format, everyone sharing the same hall regardless of their type of power, was something that occurred at least once a week, or more if Alluette, Riette’s mother, deemed it necessary.

  Cassian’s little sister, Corin, was already inside. At seeing them, she stopped the flames she was burning in her hands to come closer. She flipped some of her shoulder-length brown hair over her shoulder and started to walk toward them, but she didn’t make it far before being stopped by another. Riette tried to quiet the emotions floating inside of her. She didn’t hate Corin—far from it—but it didn’t stop the fact that Corin being around made everything wrong with Riette all the more magnified, even if Riette was the only one who felt it. It was hard to call herself normal when Corin was the shining example of what a girl gone right looked like.

  Corin had a button nose and the prettiest lips in the village. Mekhi knew she might not have agreed about her lips, but it was a detail he always noticed.

  Riette smirked at him looking and smiled. Cassian grimaced when he saw what Mekhi was looking at, and Riette rolled her eyes, as Cassian being angry about something wasn’t new. Riette was the only one who rivaled him in pissed-off energy. She dropped the smile and glanced around the room. Her mother wasn’t around, though, not yet.

  Stop looking. Riette tried to argue with herself, but she knew she wouldn’t listen. She never did.

  The Elves in attendance had already clustered by element. They grouped without being told because they wanted to find the familiar. Their friends.

  Riette looked at the group of earth-wielding Elves she normally practiced with. They were talking together. No one was looking for her. No one missed her being gone from their group.

  There was nothing to confirm these suspicions for Riette, but she wasn’t stupid. She made them uncomfortable by being there. She was the unofficial hand for her mother in their eyes, even if Riette had told them otherwise. So if she wasn’t around, it was a good day for the rest of them, and Riette knew that.

  At the thought, a warmth sparked in her hands. It was a ticking energy, the feel of a crackling fire beneath the surface of her skin. The new fire powers inside of her were why she wasn’t normal and wasn’t one of them. Flames started to flicker to life right above her fingertips. It was a gas shimmer in the air just before it fully ignited. Then it did, and though the flames were small, Riette knew it was a barely maintained control.

  The fact that she had inherited a new power? That was icing on the cake nobody wanted.

  “Shit. Riette.” Mekhi’s voice shook. He must have noticed her hands, but she refused to let herself sink into the panic around her.

  “I know.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I know.” Riette’s word came out harsher than intended.

  Mekhi stiffened beside her, but there was still humming tension in her twitching fingers that caught Cassian’s attention.

  Cassian grabbed her hand, ignoring the fire softly hovering above her skin. He closed his eyes at the contact. The searing was instant but short. Him grabbing her hands cut off air to the flames and startled the energy coursing out of her. Cassian’s air powers had worked to cool the flames that came to life inside of her. He was the quiet to her storm.

  If he hadn’t stopped the fire, everyone in the room would have seen the flames and how little she could control them. Riette couldn’t afford that knowledge to get out if she planned on ruling the Elves any time in the future.

  Riette wanted to thank him. Part of her did anyway. The other part was mad that he felt he needed to babysit her. Was it a lapse in her control? Yes, but it wasn’t something she couldn’t fix without burning his hand, give or take a few burned articles of clothing.

  Other Elves didn’t have to worry about such things, and it was starting to piss Riette off.

  She scowled. “I could have—”

  “No one is saying you couldn’t,” said Cassian, not looking down at her but releasing her hand. Mekhi watched them both. His eyes flitted back and forth between their faces.

  Mekhi followed Riette’s eyes to where the fire Elves stood across the hall. Looking back at Riette, his eyes held sympathy, and she tried to release the tension in her shoulders and the defensive lean in her posture.

  The meeting was going to be interesting. Or painful, depending on the parties involved.

  “I need to get this over with, right?” Riette said, squaring her shoulders.

  “It’s not battle, Ri,” said Mekhi.

  “It’s war,” said Riette, but she smirked as she said it. They shared a laugh that Cassian didn’t follow.

  “Stay out of trouble. Both of you.” He gave them a look before crossing the room to the other wind-wielding Elves. The circle widened to let him in, and the two Elves on either side of the gap clapped him on the shoulder. They smiled at him, and Cassian smiled back.

  It was a detail that Riette didn’t miss. She couldn’t. She couldn’t stop her need to watch people. How they worked with others. How they talked. What they did with their hands. She even watched how their faces moved. It was like other people got to feel more emotions than she did.

  Maybe she had them, too, before her father’s passing. Or maybe she had always been broken.

  “You don’t have to watch out for me now,” said Riette. “Go on.” She pushed Mekhi’s shoulder softly.

  Mekhi looked to where Cassian stood across the hall from them. “And have him one-up me again? I’ll pass. I can stay with you. You may burn the shit out of me—”

  “For the record, I haven’t maimed anyone.”

  “Your records are fucked. I have a scar above my eyebrow that says—”

  “You’re the clumsiest person I know?”

  Mekhi mussed her long black hair. They were both tall—all Elves were—but the little bit of height he had on her was something he took advantage of.

  Riette stumbled a little as she moved to get out of Mekhi’s reach, and then she felt eyes on her. A breath escaped her. She knew she put on a show wherever she went. Everyone wanted to see what the princess would do and what she would mess up, mostly the latter.

  She tensed again when she saw the fire Elves looking, Amina and Zander in particu
lar. They had rushed here. Riette could tell by the flush of their faces. She had caught them getting in a last practice before arriving, something she had wanted to do but didn’t have time to start.

  “Shouldn’t it be me telling you to go meet your little friends over there?” Mekhi asked. “You’re a Fire. It’s going to have to happen eventually.”

  “I don’t have any friends.” Riette felt Mekhi’s scoff before she heard it. “I meant, why would I need friends when I have you and Cassian?”

  “And me,” said Corin as she came up beside them.

  Riette didn’t say anything about the addition. One, because it wasn’t exactly wanted, and two, she saw her mother entering and knew better than to speak when she was in boss mode. The fact that the practice leader over all of the elements, Blaine, was with her didn’t bode well, either.

  “Come,” said Corin. She pulled Riette’s arm, and Riette let her, fully noticing the smile she gave Mekhi before turning. Anyone with eyes could see that smile from a country mile away. They nestled into the fire group just before the meeting officially began.

  “This is a test,” said Blaine. “You are here to show your skills. Call it an exam. Call it fun. I don’t care what the fuck you call it, but I expect your best to be on display.”

  “I’m good, but why should we give a shit about showing off to the others?” asked Zander. His boldness was only exceeded by his mouth and, to some extent, by his talent in fire powers.