by Emma Alisyn
Rhina met his headlong dive, and they crashed into each other in a tangle of arms and wings. No weapons, she had none on her, and her fingers only bore talons, nothing more dangerous. Ha. Her hair whipped around her face, stark and white in the dark the subtle glow under her skin rising with her fury. The glow that heralded her mysterious heritage.
“Moghrenna!” he yelled. “Hurry, fly north before my guards see us. They won’t let me keep you until I do some fast talking.”
Startled, her face lost its snarl of fury. He grabbed her hand and yanked her along until she followed at his side on her own power, shocked into compliance. Was he playing with her?
She realized where they were going moments later, and began to pull up and away. His head snapped towards her, eyes narrowed.
“You will come, Moghrenna. That is an order.”
She laughed at him. “You Ioveanu fool! Do you think I take orders from you?”
“If you want your cousin to live, you will.”
Rhina followed, seething. It was the only threat he could have made, and of course, the Ioveanu made it without blinking a lash. In the back of her mind, she knew she had no right to throw stones. She was the assassin contracted to kill him and his family, after all. As if she could clap at his morality for threatening the only non-combatant on her side.
They landed on the top floor of Prince Malin’s tower. It was a garden for gargoyles. Flat, with no railing, covered in lush grass and clustered, seating areas. A park so high no human should be brave enough to try it.
Their wings snapped closed, and Moghrenna faced him, wary.
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“I suspected.”
They stood two arm-lengths apart. His wild laughter, and his cold snap of command, were gone. In their place was Geza, contemplative, regarding her with his tilted head as if she were a puzzle.
“I was very fond of your mother,” he said.
Her fists clenched. “Don’t you dare speak of her.”
“What did they tell you? I’ve been pondering. What was it that could have made you turn against me? We had an understanding, back then.”
His words were too close to Tyra’s. She needed the truth.
“You were her lover. You shamed her in front of the court and refused to wed her. She killed herself in despair.” Even she could hear the lack of conviction in her voice. The male who had held her so carefully, allowed her–well, tried to allow her–to escape, was not a male capable of that kind of foulness.
“Ah. I imagined it was something like that. There wasn’t anything else I could think of that I knew would make a daughter so angry. Do you think that story is true?”
The question was unexpected. “I don’t know.”
A smile curved his lips. “Lavinia was above lying for the befit of the family, of course. Do you know why I spent so much time with Alexa those summers? My father told me I needed to know our greatest enemy. That wasn’t exactly the methodology he had in mind, but I’m a lover, not a fighter. I wasn’t Alexa’s lover. I was her friend. And yours.”
He approached now, steps slow and deliberate as if he was giving her an opportunity to decide how she would respond.
“I’m supposed to believe you?” she asked savagely.
“You believe Lavinia?”
“The head of my family? The one who trained me—”
“Used you, took away your youth, denied you a—”
“She made me useful to my family! I have a place, a purpose. I have worth.”
“You’re a tool. A tool so well-fashioned that even with her dead and gone, with the entire family brought to their knees, you still don’t take the chance for your freedom.”
“Because you killed my mother!” He didn’t flinch as the ragged howl tore from her throat. “She trusted you.” She had to stop talking, before her voice would break. A youthful, mischievous Geza Ioveanu, with all the charm of budding manhood, superimposed over the cool, slick, sensual Prince standing in front of her. They were one and the same.
Geza had been the only man in her life. He had given Rhina her first gift. Her first bow and courtly gesture. Her first chocolates and flowers when he came to collect her mother. Almost as if he was courting her when he’d been courting Alexa.
She’d trusted him. As much as she could. Thought that maybe one day, if she needed to flee, he might help her. But that was before her mother died. Before Moghrenna was given the choice to serve, or die with her. To become a weapon. To become the Dark Horse, a position that meant an early grave because no one in that role lived past the youthful age of sixty.
“If I had killed your mother, why would I be trying to save you? You know the truth, here.” He reached out, laid his hand over her heart. “You could have come to me any time during the last years, I would have sheltered you.”
He’d waited until her breath was even to spear her with that truth. The words lanced her side, tore out her guts. She almost dropped to her knees, the pain so great. Every Mogren was a tool to be used, but had she been . . . lied to? Fed an ugly falsehood to ensure her compliance and loyalty? Why was her loyalty in any doubt? She was a Mogren.
Why would they think they needed the extra leash of that lie to contain her?
Moghrenna took several steps back, hands covering her face, wings fluttering in agitation. She wanted to rip off her own skin. There was only one reason why Lavinia would have leashed her with such an awful lie. One reason they would fear the consequences of Moghrenna’s disloyalty.
“Who killed my mother?” she asked.
She couldn’t move, frozen in horror. Even when she heard him approach, and when warm hands wrapped around her wrists and tugged her hands away from her face.
“I don’t know,” he said. “My father forbade me from investigating, and by the time I rose to power, it was too late. Who do you think would have profited from her death?”
Tyra’s words. Tyra urging her to consider what would have happened if Alexa refused to allow her daughter to be trained as a weapon. Tyra had said it, and Moghrenna had brushed the words aside, buried them. She hadn’t wanted to face the awful reality.
She was what she was. Cold. Evil. A killer. A fatherless female, and a weapon for people who knew no other use for power than their own advancement. Unloved, unwanted, unknown.
She wasn’t a coward. She had some honor.
“What did Lourden ask you to do when you broke into his cell?” the Prince asked, voice impossibly gentle.
Wings rustled in the sky and he glanced up briefly, then focused on Moghrenna.
“Kill you,” she whispered.
“That’s a given. You’re the Horse.” His expression was thoughtful. “We’d wondered if we’d caught him.” Geza laughed. “But it was a ‘her’, not a ‘him’.”
“How do you . . . how do you know about—?”
His smile was humorless. “Did you really think the Ioveanus didn’t know? Come, Moghrenna, you’re smarter than that.”
She was empty. A husk. Nothing. She’d betrayed her family. She couldn’t kill Geza, not when she was so conflicted. Short of his death, what purpose did she serve?
“You’ll have to decide that,” he replied, and Rhina realized she’d spoken aloud. “What else did Lourden order you to do?”
Several guards landed. Geza made a gesture, and they stayed back.
“Kill Prince Malin. Princess Surah.” Ice coated her voice. She said the words with no inflection. “The garling. I would have had to kill Sir Nikolau and Bea, as well.”
Someone growled, the sound of a blade sliding from its sheath loud in the night. So. Niko must be one of the guards that landed, though her vision was obscured for some reason. Cloudy, unfocused.
“You thought you would get away?” Geza asked. Contemplative, speculative. Not angry. Barely even concerned.
“No. I prepared to die.”
Die she would. With her heart shattered in her chest. The idea that her mother had been killed
by her own family settled with the weight of truth. Betrayal. Pain. Everything solidified into a darkness that covered her like a death shroud.
Tyra was taken care of. Tyra would be okay.
Moghrenna lowered herself to her knees, back ramrod straight, and bent her neck. She knew the bite of the blade would be a bare second. She’d feel nothing.
“Get back,” Geza snarled as boots approached.
“Highness, even she realizes her confession merits execution. Look at her.”
“The next person who speaks will feel my blade at their neck.”
She didn’t understand what was going—ah. He wanted to kill her himself. She’d rather it was Geza than anyone else. At least, his kindness, once upon a time, had been genuine. The fight to not accept what her soul knew was over, and with it came a rush of peace. Now that she knew he had not treated her mother dishonorably, she was content to die by his hand.
“I didn’t expect things to go this way tonight,” he muttered to himself. “Or for her to have a streak of melodrama. Niko, prepare her a room in the tower. Make sure it’s secure.”
“Are you mad?”
“Do it.” Silence, then a retreat and voices speaking in the background. Well, growling. “Moghrenna. Look at me.”
She heard her name. Processed the command. Looked up.
“You didn’t do anything I can’t forgive you for,” he said. “You didn’t do anything they can make me execute you for.”
“I tried to kill you.”
He laughed. “That? Female, if you had truly wanted to kill me, I would have been dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
Geza rolled his eyes and reached down, grabbing her wrist to pull her to her feet.
“I’ll figure something out. I’ll have to talk to Surah, though, and fast. She’ll run interference with Malin.” His eyes widened, and he turned. “Niko! Do not comm Malin, damn your wings.”
15
Once the numbness of shock wore off, she had to grit her teeth against the realization that they had her current home address. If Geza knew about her, he knew about Tyra. Or would guess, once his brain caught up with him.
Niko shoved her into a room on the interior of the tower . . . i.e., no windows, no balcony. Small for a gargoyle, so it was likely meant for human guests who had offended the Prince. It could have doubled as a cell if they’d taken away the furniture.
“Did you really think,” the warrior said, each word a shard of broken glass, “that we would have let you kill our Prince and our females?”
Moghrenna turned and smiled at him. Because she knew it would piss him off, and if she felt any contrition, it was only for Geza. This male would not be gifted with an iota of regret.
“You might want to double check your mate’s hiring practices,” she said.
Someone in the hallway grabbed his shoulder and hauled him away when he would have lunged at her. She sighed as the door slid closed and locks activated. It wasn’t very nice of her to bait him . . . she bore no ill will towards Bea. There was no one to take her increasingly ugly mood out on.
“Your Highness,” Niko said to his back.
Geza stiffened but didn’t turn. They’d returned just in time. Five more minutes, and the evening rainstorm would have lashed them as they flew. The hard rain drenched his hair, plastering his shirt to his body, but the weather suited his mood. Dark, seething, turbulent.
She’d knelt at his feet, the posture one of complete submission and broken pride, expecting to be summarily executed. His father would have, without blinking an eye, no matter that she was a female combatant.
He wasn’t his father.
“Geza.”
The Prince turned, meeting Niko’s eyes. Niko’s face was tight. He was in no mood to be challenged, even by the head of his personal guard. The only thing—just barely—that kept Geza from dismissing him was the fact that Niko had clearly heard the threat against Bea.
The threat had been against Geza as well, and his brother and half-sister with her unborn infant, and his niece.
“She made her choice,” he told the male. “She was prepared to accept execution.”
“Because she couldn’t have escaped.”
“She could have fought. She could have taken at least one, if not more of us, with her before we killed her.”
“Why?”
The question hung in the air between them. “I am not my father.”
“You feel sorry for her mother.” Niko’s gaze was keen, slashing through any flippant response Geza would have given.
The Prince paused. Did he have a secret softness for mothers and their daughters? Yes, probably. He’d always felt the need to protect Surah’s mother. It seemed every female he’d been close to had suffered some kind abuse at the hands of her family. The males in her family.
“It wasn’t her fault,” he said finally. “She wasn’t given a choice in what she became.”
“We are all given choices.”
“Do you really believe that?” A girl, motherless, grieving, on the cusp of adulthood and part of a family of vipers that would eat their own young while clawing up a tower to achieve ultimate power.
“What do you think you can do with her now? Even if it wasn’t her fault, how she was shaped, it’s too late now. You saw her eyes. You were looking into your own death.”
“You aren’t worried about my death, you’re riled because she mentioned Bea.”
Niko said nothing, and Geza laughed. “You know what I’m going to do with her? I’m going to make sure she’s on time to her shift tomorrow evening.”
“You’re . . . that’s . . . .”
Geza grinned. He’d never seen Niko speechless. He liked making people speechless. Now, his evening was complete.
“You think I’m insane?” He shrugged. “I’m Ioveanu.”
“What will Malin say?”
“Malin is not the ruling Prince. Besides, what better way to rehabilitate her than mind-numbing office work while basking in the glow of my august presence?”
Niko’s expression was priceless. “She really will murder us all.”
They entered his suite, leaving behind the rain. “She may still try. No one is to lay a finger on her as long as she confines her murderous intent to me.”
“Why?” Niko asked again.
Why? Always why. Why couldn’t he just make a decision without twelve different people questioning him? What happened to the flawless, instantaneous obedience his father had inspired? Geza ran a hand through his hair, sighing in aggravation. That’s what he got for wanting to cultivate a different kind of court.
He stared at Niko sourly and lied. “Because I owe Alexa. I should have protected her. I should have tried harder to find out what happened to her daughter.”
His friend considered the statement. “Did you love her?”
“Alexa? No. I cared about her. I knew she was vulnerable, but I did nothing.”
“You aren’t responsible, Geza.”
“I was the only one who cared. I was responsible.”
“What will you do with her if she’s rehabilitated?”
Geza smiled. He wasn’t nearly stupid enough to tell his guard what he had in mind, the inkling of an idea that had sparked when he’d flown with Moghrenna, the mad rush of wind through wings as they scrapped in the air, the molten silver of her hair silky against his face.
Yes, he probably was going mad. If the female could be rehabilitated, he figured she’d make him a decent Princess. He wasn’t about to tell anyone that he suspected he was in the first stages of mating.
A guard showed up at her door the next evening, right as the sun set beneath the sky. She felt it; every gargoyle would feel it and begin to rise for the night, stumbling from their beds, reaching for coffee or whatever other stimulant of choice was needed.
She stared at the door, unmoving as it slid open to reveal a cold-eyed Sir Nikolau. Assessing his expression, she realized he would look much happier if he’d been o
rdered to escort her to her execution.
“How go the trials?” she asked. It would be the last day of the preliminaries, and soon the court would officially try each of the Mogrens. “Am I to be tried?”
The male stared at her. “Anyone who knows who you are has been sworn to secrecy. I’m escorting you to work.” He said the word as if it were a particularly foul lump of congealed vomit stuck in his throat.
“That makes no sense,” she said. “Geza must have ordered it.”
“You will address him as Highness or Prince or Lord.”
She crossed her arms. “Why? I’m dead, anyway.”
“Put your glamour back on and follow. If you try anything, you will feel the edge of my blade at your neck.”
After a moment of hesitation, she followed, the glamour slipping over her gargoyle form. “Is he going mad already?”
Niko growled.
Okay. “Does Bea know?”
He stopped, shoulders hunching, as he had to restrain himself from putting a fist through a wall.
“If it helps,” she continued softly, “I don’t think I would have done it. I was trying to talk myself out of it. Not Geza, of course, I would have slit his throat in a second. But, not the females and garlings.”
“You speak that way about a male who has shown you more mercy than you deserve.”
“Yes.” She considered the situation. “He really has gone mad, hasn’t he?”
Bea gave her a long look when Moghrenna entered. So, they had told her.
“Good evening, Rhina,” she said. “We need to start setting up the space tonight. It’s complicated by the fact that the trial is—” Bea stopped speaking.
Rhina barely suppressed her grimace. Working here would be intolerable if they were going to tiptoe around things like she was delicate.
“In the way,” she finished. “I get it.”
“No, I don’t want her near any exits,” Niko snapped. “Don’t you have some paperwork for her to do?”
Bea sighed and threw up her hands, looking at him as if they were picking up the thread of a previous argument. “Prince Geza said—”