Stone Prince

by Emma Alisyn

  The increasing desire to just be done with all of this, over the last few weeks, was no excuse for sloppiness, however. Even if weeks of being under her own devices were beginning to take their toll. There was a peculiar kind of freedom when the only leash holding her was that of her own loyalty to her family, and the vengeance she’d held close for many years. The betrayal.

  Being in this office wasn’t good for her. Twice, Rhina had caught stray, traitorous thoughts in her head. Musings on what it would be like if her life was normal. If this was her real job. What life would be like if it was her own, and didn’t belong to Lavinia, now Lourden, Mogren.

  Bea entered the office in a half run. “I’m late! I know. I burnt dinner and had to scrap it all and start from scratch. And Aeezah’s father is being an ass again . . . .”

  Rhina knew Bea had a daughter and a previous husband. She wondered how Sir Nikolau tolerated another male in his mate’s life. Most warriors found it distasteful to acknowledge that their females had had a previous relationship.

  “It’s fine,” Rhina said. “I was just about to go over invoices, and make a few calls to get updated statuses from vendors.”

  “How are we looking on the guest list?”

  They went over details, and another female walked in, switching on her desk screen to the preliminary trial.

  Bea winced. “Do we have to listen to that?”

  The other female shrugged. “I like to have something to watch while I work.”

  “You aren’t interested in the outcome of the prelims?” Rhina asked Bea.

  “It isn’t any of my business.”

  That wasn’t true. She was Malin’s vassal. The outcomes were, at least peripherally, her business. “You dislike the Mogrens like everyone else,” Rhina said. “It’s going to be hard for any of the family members to get a fair trial.”

  Bea glanced at her. “Are there any who are innocent? Besides children, anyway.”

  “It doesn’t make sense that every person they rounded up had a part in the conspiracy,” Rhina said. “Families have hierarchies like everyone else. The cook—Tyra, for instance—wouldn’t have been involved in planning or execution.”

  “You have strong opinions for a human,” Prince Geza said.

  Opinions that would get her killed, especially since she hadn’t noticed him quietly filling his threshold. “It’s only academic interest,” Rhina said in a polite voice. “Excuse me. It was tactless of me.”

  No human employee would ever be so bold as to express dissenting opinions regarding a political—especially when political meant war and death—matter involving the ruling, Ioveanu Prince . . . right outside of his office.

  “You’re a strange female,” he said.

  She smiled weakly. He didn’t know the half of it, at least not yet. “Uh . . . I just read too much. There’s not much else to do.” There. Let him think she was pathetic.

  He watched her. “Really? All work and go home to do nothing more interesting than read legal-gossip columns? Bea, you’ll have to find something for Rhina to do. We wouldn’t want her boredom to cause her to form the wrong kinds of viewpoints regarding our little matter here.”

  Bea side-eyed Rhina, then cleared her throat. “Well. Rhina, let’s go over . . . .”

  Rhina grabbed the excuse to turn her back on Geza, making sure to hunch her shoulders as if uncomfortable or embarrassed. She’d have to stop letting her anger run her mouth.

  She’d have her hands around his throat, soon enough. She’d have blood, and her explanation.

  4

  The indignity of being confined to walking home was another strike to hold against Geza. She couldn’t use a transport because a human female with her apparent income wouldn’t be able to afford it, and she couldn’t fly for obvious reasons, so she took public ground transportation to the stop a block from the efficiency, apartment building where she currently lived, and walked the rest of the way there.

  It wasn’t the best neighborhood. Was a far cry from the quiet, forested lands of her family estate, tucked behind a wrought-iron gate and guarded day and night from air and ground. Only an hour’s flight from the city, far enough away to be considered remote to humans, but close enough for gargoyles to make the trip, daily.

  Lavinia had flown to her university job every day and then returned.

  Rhina manually unlocked the door of her apartment. It was a one-room flat with a kitchen lining one wall and a Murphy bed that descended with a touch of a button. The walls and surfaces were blank, and she didn’t have a digital screen. Just her laptop and a two-seat table set that doubled as a desk, and a plush, bean bag on the floor. She didn’t need anything else. Once this mission was over, she would either be dead or long gone.

  She prepared a quick meal, regretting as she did each night the lack of a balcony. Maybe today she would risk the night and stretch her wings. There wasn't many gargoyles this way, and she could keep far enough away from any fliers to remain anonymous.

  There was always a risk she’d rouse the curiosity of some male who wondered why a pale-haired female was flying by herself in a section of the human city not known to house gargoyles.

  “Moonshadow, on,” she said, and her laptop powered to life. She was staring in her fridge as if a decent bottle of wine was just going to magically appear when the notification alert pinged.

  Rhina whirled, stiffening. That particular alert sound was coded to one person, and one person only.

  Impossible.

  She approached warily. Her webcam was off, and the security on her device was the best her family had been able to buy since she used it for their business. No one should be able to hack it. Which meant there were factors in place the family head hadn’t told Rhina about.

  Accepting the incoming message, she sat in her chair, heart pounding.

  :Moghrenna.:

  She typed in her code, verifying her identity.

  :Here.:

  :If you are receiving this message, certain events have taken place and contingency plans are being put in motion. You are one of the contingency plans.:

  She frowned.

  :How are you able to contact me?:

  :This is an automated message.:

  :We desire you to assassinate the Ioveanu Prince, his elder brother, and any heirs in the line of succession.:

  Oh, shit.

  :Acknowledgement Required.:

  If she acknowledged the order, then it would be recorded. If the family head ever got out of prison, and she had not carried through on the instruction, her life would be forfeit. But Prince, elder brother, and any heirs in line of succession was clear.

  Geza, fine. She’d already decided to do that on her own. But Prince Malin, Surah . . . the garlings? She'd never killed a female, or garlings. She wasn’t naive enough to think her family hadn’t had females and garlings killed before, but they always knew better than to ask Rhina. She was weak in that way, and Mogrens didn’t break their tools. They used them, strategically.

  She leaned her head on the desk.

  :Acknowledgement Required.:

  This was an automated message, which meant she couldn't argue. It would have been programmed to recognize and accept certain responses, and respond to her based on that. She had to acknowledge the directive before it could proceed. Doubtlessly, her hesitation was also being recorded. She typed, face smooth and cold as stone.

  :Acknowledged:

  :Succeed in your mission, and you will be elevated to Heir of the house.:

  Rhina stared at the screen. The message said several contingency plans were in place. There was no way in hell that this message would have been activated if she wasn’t the last contingency.

  She was going to have to kill all the Ioveanus. That meant killing Niko and Bea as well, because they were too close to the family.

  Her breathing sped up, and she recognized the sign of a panic attack and took immediate steps to counteract it. She hadn’t had a panic attack since her mother's death. Since
Lavinia had revealed why her mother had killed herself.

  Since it was revealed that Prince Geza had seduced and abandoned her mother to shame, and that had been the final straw in the female’s sense of worth.

  :Acknowledgement Required:

  :Acknowledged.:

  The second part of the message came through, with more detailed instructions as well as the pickup location of the assets she would need to complete an assigned task…before murdering the entire Ioveanu family.

  Well, the Mogrens never did anything by half measure. Either fly home victorious, or be flown home dead. There was no such thing as try again and hope to succeed the next time. It was the Mogren motto, and Rhina was Mogren even if her gargoyle veins were diluted. She believed in it with all her heart. The only time she had failed a mission she’d been punished, severely, with the warning that next time would mean death. She’d taken the punishment, even as her mother watched and then offered comfort. Not because she’d been punished, but for the humiliation of having failed.

  Not even her mother could have saved her if Rhina had failed a second time.

  She signed off, grim, and stared at the wall.

  Rhina didn’t sleep that night. As a result, when she arrived at the tower for work, just as humans were getting off their shifts, Rhina was in a foul, restless mood.

  Rhina walked into the office uneasy, knowing that the people she worked with daily would soon be dead by her hand. To rub her brooding misery in her face, Princess Surah entered the office along with Bea, the garling running ahead of them both shouting something about vanquishing enemies as she spread her small wings.

  “Not near the papers!” Bea exclaimed as the child sprinted into her uncle’s office, upending stacks of folders on the desk.

  “Surah!” came the expected roar, but Rhina heard the tinkle of a child’s throaty giggle, so he couldn’t be that upset.

  It struck her, the sound of him playing with a child. He’d played with her once, a long time ago, for a few minutes while he waited for her mother to prepare for one of their outings. That was the first summer her mother had brought her to court, when she’d still been a girl. He probably wouldn’t even remember, but Rhina remembered. Remembered years later when she was approaching the age highborn gargoyle females began putting out feelers for suitable matches. That summer had been more tumultuous than others, and the times he’d taken to sit and talk with her. She’d thought, foolishly, that they were becoming friends as well. Not like him and her mother, of course. He hadn’t seemed to care about her different looks and her half-blood, and that she was quiet. Not a vivacious, sparkling, courtier’s daughter.

  She’d thought he’d cared about her.

  Months later, when they were home and Alexa was dead . . . she’d never heard from him. Not even an unofficial email to offer regrets over her mother’s death. The bastard.

  “Good evening, Rhina,” Bea said as Surah strolled into her brother’s office to retrieve the little Princess.

  “Good evening.” Rhina kept her voice bland. She’d double-checked her glamour to ensure everything was in place. If there was a time she might slip up, it would be now when her emotions were in an unexpected turmoil.

  “We’ll consult with the Prince to finalize the menu tonight,” Bea said. “We have a stack of files to go through. His Highness prefers the candidates be sorted by hand, rather than put through the software he spent a fortune to have developed.” She looked sour for a moment. “For which I consulted for months with Prince Malin’s IT department over.”

  “He likes the personal touch.”

  “Exactly,” Geza said, sweeping out of his office with the little girl on his shoulders. “I wouldn’t trust a computer to pick my future Princess, after all.”

  “What?” A murmur went through the office. Of course, not a single member of staff hadn’t heard his words

  He blinked at Rhina as he walked past. “Bea didn’t tell you?”

  Rhina turned to Bea. “Tell me what?”

  The human sighed. “And the cat is out of the bag. Great. I was hoping to keep the gossip to manageable levels, so we didn’t foul the candidate pool with title hunters.”

  She got it without Bea saying anything more. “He’s using the ball as a pretext to find a wife. I thought it was just to recruit more females for the new, inclusive guard program.” So he could also continue playing matchmaker.

  Bea grimaced. “No.” She took Rhina’s arm. “We’ll talk about it somewhere else, I don’t want everyone listening in. Look, I’ve got to go through the files, and there’s the meeting with the caterer.”

  “I’ll take the food, you take the females,” Rhina said.

  Bea eyed her, then nodded. “I suppose you already know Geza is not a vegetarian? Nothing frou-frou. The caterer and the tower chef are going to fight over territory, too, but you just have to manage it.”

  The kitchen on site wasn’t designed to handle gatherings of more than a hundred Rhina knew, so hiring a caterer had made sense. Having to meet in the kitchen area would put her in position for the task she needed to complete tonight.

  “I can handle it,” Rhina said. “The details are in the cloud folder? Perfect.”

  5

  She took the elevator down to the first-floor kitchen. It never ceased to amaze her, the medieval mentality behind the architecture of the Ioveanu compound. Their kitchen in the basement and beneath that, the state-of-the-art, catacomb-style prison system. As if it hadn’t occurred to them to build a separate building for their high-ranked criminals. The Princess Surah had her laboratory and medical offices in a separate building. But then, she’d probably insisted on it, just to get away from her brothers.

  The meeting with the caterer and chef was a study in barely-concealed hostility, and all over food. The chef disliked the infringement on his territory, and the caterer was loftily amused that a chef insisted planning food for a banquet was the same thing as making dinner. Rhina had had to prevent them from coming to blows, hampered by the fact that she was supposed to be human. She’d let just a bit of her glamour drop, just a touch to let some of the danger show in her eyes, and averted disaster.

  Once that was done, she clocked out using her wrist unit and mentally clocked into her real job.

  How Lourden had managed to get her the key codes she didn’t know, and didn’t care. All she knew was that during a very narrow window of time she would have an opportunity to enter the catacomb prison undetected in order to speak with the current acting family head in person. She wondered why the contingency plan hadn’t also included a strategy to break the Mogrens out of prison should it come to that, but Rhina accepted that there were machinations going on behind the scenes. For now, she had one grim, bloody task, and she would have to complete it.

  Somehow, she would have to deaden her heart enough to complete it. Killing Geza was one thing . . . but his family, not even his older brother, deserved the fate the Mogrens had in store for them. To do that he would have to ask her face-to-face. She wasn’t going to carry out that kind of order from a wingless message bot.

  The elevator to the catacombs opened when she punched in the code. A weakness in their security, that they didn’t require thumb or eye prints. But then, the Ioveanus hadn’t had high-level prisoners with the malice and reach of the Mogrens in decades, maybe even a century. They’d become complacent.

  She’d been informed that the camera system would be infiltrated for twenty minutes, long enough for a looped feed to hide her presence, but not long enough to be detected. Guards were pulled away from duty with a series of false communications and orders which by the time the incidences were investigated, Rhina would be long gone.

  Ice coated her emotions, sharpening instincts and reflexes. Nervousness and fear would only slow her down, make her sloppy. There could be no hesitation, even though discovery would mean her imprisonment and likely, execution. Ioveanus did not suffer spies, or assassins, and certainly not betrayal. If Geza ever realized she
wasn’t Rhina Janson, but Moghrenna Mogren, his retribution would be merciless. She didn’t fool herself for one second that his indolent, near-flighty, and self-indulgent exterior hid anything but a ruthless Ioveanu ruler.

  The elevator opened into a narrow hall wide enough for three people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder, wings closed. The bland walls were lined with steel doors, each blinking with a digital lock that indicated whether the cell was occupied. There were no names on the cells—the Ioveanus weren’t that stupid, evidently. In the event security was breached, the infiltrator would have to know where a particular person was being held.

  Of course, she knew exactly where Lourden Mogren’s cell was, and steeled herself against the meeting. She checked the time on her wrist unit. A countdown clock let her know she had nineteen minutes, sixteen seconds before the guard on the outer door would be back. She had to be out of the catacomb and up the elevator in fifteen minutes to be safe.

  Lourden’s cell unlocked and she stepped in, meeting the eyes of the family head as he stood. She bowed. The Mogrens considered themselves Princes in their family, and she was only a dark knight.

  “I knew we could count on you, Moghrenna,” he said quietly.

  A tall, lean male with a deceptively-somber expression and dark hair cut gladiator short. He wasn’t cruel, or necessarily malicious, but he was a Mogren, and he believed wholeheartedly in their cause. That the Ioveanus were corrupt, wicked, and had ruled long enough as a mongrel disgrace to gargoyle honor.

  “Yes, Sire,” she said.

  “If you are here, it means our final contingency plans have failed. You know what your task is.”