Lylia’s gaze lifts to Calum and she grins. “Found you.”
He skids to a stop between Mercy and Tamriel, his heartbeat pounding so loudly he can hardly hear himself when he shouts, “Don’t shoot!”
“Why not? We’ve been chasing these two halfway across Beltharos. Seems like a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.”
“I’ll pay to break the contract,” Calum calls desperately. “My father had money overseas, I-I can get it for you. I’ll pay off Mother Illynor. You can take Mercy and go home.”
“Like hell they will,” Tamriel growls. He steps closer to Mercy, and Lylia follows him with her arrow.
“Stop right there, princeling.”
Soft footsteps approach them from behind. Faye. “Hello, Mercy,” she says.
Mercy tenses, but says nothing.
“Faye, grab her weapons. Calum, hold her still.” When Calum doesn’t move, Lylia draws the bowstring back a little farther. “If you wish to negotiate for your prince’s life, you’ll do as I say.”
Miserable, he grabs Mercy’s wrists and pins them behind her back. She struggles against him, spitting curses.
“You’re pathetic,” she snaps, glaring at him over her shoulder. “When will you grow a spine and do what’s right?”
“Calum, let her go. Please,” Tamriel implores him. His voice is so full of anguish it strikes Calum like a physical blow. “Don’t do this. Don’t help them.”
“Quit struggling, Mercy,” Faye snaps. She tugs Mercy’s daggers out of their sheaths and slips them onto her belt beside her throwing knives. She steps in front of Mercy, making a show of admiring the leather-wrapped handles, the handguard sculpted to mimic the tree branches of the Forest of Flames. “You know, if you hadn’t ruined our Trial, these daggers would have been mine.”
Down the street, Lylia snorts.
Faye scowls, ignoring her. “Mercy, I loved you once. We were as close as sisters and you threw it all away. You’ve used me so many times—for protection from the other apprentices, in the Trial, when you lied to me at the castle. Tell me, did you ever care for me?”
Mercy opens her mouth, then closes it. “Yes,” she finally admits.
A flicker of pain crosses Faye’s face. She elbows Calum out of the way and takes Mercy’s wrists in her hands. “Let’s go.”
“I will never forgive you for this,” the prince snarls.
Calum hangs his head. “I know.”
When Mercy and Faye are halfway to Lylia and Kaius, Mercy jerks her head back. Her skull connects with Faye’s nose with a sickening crunch. Somewhere in the distance, galloping hoofbeats pound against cobblestone. The town guards must have finally been alerted to the chaos.
“Heartless bitch,” Faye growls, her hands flying up to stanch the blood pouring from her broken nose.
Mercy jerks out of Faye’s grip and reaches for one of her daggers, but Faye recovers quickly. She kicks Mercy’s leg out from under her and sends her falling onto her back on the hard stone, wheezing as the air is knocked out of her lungs.
“Mercy!” Tamriel cries. He tenses as if preparing to jump to her defense—as if he could even reach her without Lylia and Kaius filling him with arrows—and Calum is so worried he’ll actually do it that he grabs Tamriel’s shoulder to hold him back.
Faye kicks Mercy in the side. When she tries to stand, Faye flips Mercy onto her stomach and twists one of her arms behind her back almost to the point of breaking. Mercy lets out a yelp of pain.
“You must’ve forgotten, Mercy, that I sparred with you more than anyone. I know all your tricks.” Blood drips from Faye’s chin, bubbling over her lips as she speaks. It transforms her smile into something from a nightmare.
“Don’t move, Mercy,” Lylia calls over the sounds of her struggle, “or I’ll kill your precious prince and be done with this.”
“No! Don’t!” Mercy lifts her head, her eyes wide with panic. Calum watches as her body relaxes and she lies still, her face pressed to the grimy street. “I’ll . . . go with you. If you let Tamriel leave unharmed, I’ll go with you. I won’t fight.”
Calum’s hand is still on Tamriel’s shoulder. He feels the moment when the fight leaves Tamriel’s body, all the tension slipping from his thin form. It transforms him into an echo of his father, tortured and hollow.
Lylia still doesn’t look convinced. Her bow strains in her hands.
“Please,” Mercy continues, clearly humiliated at being made to beg. “I’m the one you hate, remember? Tamriel is nothing to you. Let Calum buy his life. Take me back to the Guild.”
Lylia hesitates, hatred for Mercy shining brightly in her unnatural eyes. Then she lowers the bow. “You have your life, princeling—for now. Come here, Calum. Let’s go.”
He breathes a sigh of relief.
When he starts after Lylia and the others, Tamriel catches his arm. “Calum, please, do not let them do this. Don’t let them take her from me.”
“I’m so sorry, Tam.” He rests a hand on his cousin’s cheek, feeling hollow at the broken heart he sees in Tamriel’s eyes. What he has done is despicable, unforgivable, but he’ll return to Firesse, he’ll do what she wants, and he’ll ensure Mother Illynor annuls the contract on Tamriel’s life. Knowing Tamriel will live is almost enough to drown out his guilt.
He steps out of Tamriel’s grasp. “Goodbye, Tamriel.”
His feet leaden, his heart aching, Calum begins the long walk to where Kaius and the Assassins wait. He feels Tamriel’s gaze on his back, the grief and guilt of Master Oliver’s death on his shoulders. It feels like he has walked a mile, and he hasn’t even made it halfway. Behind him, hoofbeats clatter on the cobblestone streets. The town guards have almost found them.
Suddenly, Mercy screams, “NO!”
Calum’s eyes focus on Lylia just as she lifts her bow and looses an arrow at Tamriel.
He doesn’t stop to think.
He dives.
Agony rips through him when he hits the hard cobblestone, searing pain throbbing in his side. Gasping, he looks down at the arrow embedded in his chest. It’s buried so deeply inside him the point sticks out his back.
Tamriel cries, “Calum!”
Dimly, Calum registers something sticky and warm pouring out of him, scenting the air with its metallic tang. He drops his head back onto the ground. His ears ring, drowning out everything else around him. Then all the fight leaves his body and his vision fades to black.
43
Tamriel
Tamriel stands frozen in shock in the middle of the street, his eyes glued on Calum’s unconscious form. Unconscious, he tells himself. Not dead. But the pool of blood under him continues to grow, his face paling by the second.
The clatter of hooves stops, and he whirls to see Akiva and Clyde sprinting past him with swords drawn. They immediately dive into combat with Kaius and the Assassins. While Faye is distracted, Mercy darts forward and reclaims her daggers, slashing a long gash in the Assassin’s side before she jumps back. She fights ferociously, but it’s obvious that she’s exhausted and in pain. Tamriel has no idea how long she’ll last. He’s still shaken from how close he’d come to losing her forever.
Lylia has thrown aside her bow and slashes at Akiva with two razor-sharp knives. Clyde darts forward and nearly disembowels Kaius with a sweeping arc of his sword, but the lithe archer jumps out of the way just in time, a wicked-looking hunting knife clutched in his hand.
Shaking himself out of his stupor, Tamriel roars in rage and unsheathes his sword, hurtling toward Lylia. While she’s distracted by Akiva, the prince plunges his sword into her back. She lets out a hideous scream and sways before crumpling to the ground, a spray of blood flying from her mouth when Tamriel pulls his sword out of her back. While he hurries to help Mercy with Faye, Akiva thrusts the point of his sword into Lylia’s ribcage, straight through her heart.
Faye turns on Tamriel immediately, slashing out with her rapier so quickly he has no choice but to stay on the defensive. He bl
ocks or dodges Faye’s every move, but before he can recover, she’s darting forward again, her rapier arcing dangerously closely to his face. Mercy dances forward and back beside Tamriel, searching for an opening. She only holds one of her daggers, he suddenly realizes. Her other hand is clamped on her side. The handle of one of Faye’s throwing knives sticks out of her abdomen, her dark blood staining her shirt.
The Guild will not take her from me, he vows.
In Tamriel’s peripheral vision, he sees Kaius dive out of the way of one of Clyde’s slashes and scramble back before Akiva’s sword catches him. The hunter darts back and picks up his bow, nocking and loosing an arrow with the speed only a lifelong archer possesses. Clyde hisses in pain when the arrowhead pierces his stomach. Kaius nocks another arrow and looses it at Akiva. Then he sprints down the street and lifts Calum’s unconscious body into his arms.
“No!” Tamriel shouts.
Faye lets out a triumphant laugh when Kaius darts into an alley and slips out of sight. Without losing her momentum, she lunges forward with her rapier one more time, ducks Mercy’s attempt to stab her, and bolts. Mercy lets out a cry of frustration and pain, her face pallid. She drops to her knees as Faye disappears around the corner.
“Go after them!” Tamriel yells at Akiva and Clyde.
“We can’t leave you behind, Your Highness.” Akiva winces as he speaks, gingerly resting his weight on his left leg. One of Kaius’s arrows sticks straight through his thigh. Beside him, Clyde sways dangerously. His face is bloodless, his eyes wide as he stares down at the arrow jutting from his abdomen.
Tamriel flinches, every emotion seeping out of him except exhaustion. Akiva will walk with a limp for the rest of his life, but Clyde will be lucky to last an hour. “Where are Nynev and Niamh?”
“Hidden safely outside the city with the Cedikra. We returned as soon as we could.”
He nods, going numb as the adrenaline of the fight leaves him. “Search her body,” he says wearily, gesturing to Lylia. “Remove anything that could link her to the Guild.”
As they work, he sinks to his knees beside Mercy, clutching her hand—the one which isn’t covering the knife sticking out of her stomach. His voice is pinched with panic when he asks, “How bad is it?”
Mercy grimaces. “I’ll live. The wound isn’t too deep.”
He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close, being careful not to brush against the knife’s handle. Mercy winces but embraces him, letting out a shaky sigh.
“We’ll be all right,” she murmurs, her voice thick with pain. “They haven’t killed us yet.” She backs away from Tamriel and stares down at the blood staining the front of her shirt. Thankfully, the wound has already stopped bleeding. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“I thought you were going to die,” she whispers, shuddering.
“Not yet.”
She scrunches her nose. “Not ever.”
Tamriel leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together. He closes his eyes. “Not ever,” he promises.
Thundering hoofbeats pound down the road a few minutes later, pulling them from their silence. A dozen town guards appear around the corner, and the commander drops from his saddle the second he sees Akiva and Clyde crouching beside Lylia’s body.
“What the hell happened here?” he sputters. When Tamriel rises to speak to him, the commander blinks in confusion. “Your . . . Your Highness, is that really you?”
“It is. I’ll explain everything, but please, my friends desperately need a healer.”
“Rupert, Felix, find Healer Bennett and bring him here immediately.” He pauses, his eyes roving from the knife in Mercy’s stomach to the arrows poking out of Akiva and Clyde. “. . . Tell him to bring all his supplies.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the guards ride away, the commander turns back to Tamriel. “Tell me everything.”
Which Tamriel does—a highly fictionalized version of events, leaving out any mention of the Guild, the Daughters, or Firesse and her clan—while the healer tends to Mercy and the guards. They have enough to worry about with the plague; they don’t need rumors of Calum’s treachery or Firesse’s impending attack inciting more panic. Lylia, Faye, and Kaius had merely been thieves, he claims, although the commander doesn’t look convinced. Fortunately, he has the good sense not to question his prince.
“Did you find Master Oliver a few streets over?” Tamriel asks. “Is he alive?”
The commander shakes his head. “He didn’t make it.”
His shoulders slump. He should have known better than to hope. “He was my father’s Master of the Guard. I’ll need his body prepared for travel back to Sandori.”
“Of course, Your Highness.” The commander and his guards bow. “I’ll have my men patrol the roads out of the city. With luck, we’ll find the people who attacked you.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you any preference what we do with her body?” the commander asks, gesturing to Lylia.
Tamriel turns to Mercy. In any other circumstance, he suspects Lylia’s body would be sent back to the Guild to be buried at the Keep, but he doubts Mercy will offer her tormentor that much respect.
Mercy winces as she stands. The healer had attended her first, removing the knife and cutting away her shirt so he could sew up the wound in her stomach. Mercy had been right: the blade hadn’t gone deep enough to do damage to her organs, but she’ll bear the scar for the rest of her life. Just one more for her collection, she had joked dryly. Tamriel had flinched and silently vowed never to allow another scar to mar her skin. He’ll do everything he can to uphold that promise.
Mercy frowns down at Lylia’s corpse. When she looks up at Tamriel, the hatred and triumph in her eyes make his breath catch in his throat. Her lip curls in disgust. “Leave her to rot.”
44
Mercy
The silhouette of Sandori rises like a mirage from the miles of farmland, its tall buildings and old, moss-covered walls dark against the dawn sky. Mercy tightens her grip on her horse’s reins at the sight, fighting the urge not to burst into a gallop. After being treated by the healer in Xilor and speaking to the guards—who, it turns out, had not managed to find Faye and Kaius after their deadly fight—they had set out on the road for the capital and ridden each day until they could no longer hold their eyes open. Each day, Tamriel had pushed them farther and harder than the last. His desperation is obvious in the gauntness in his face, the guilt and grief in his eyes, the fitfulness of his sleep.
Mercy rides up to his side. She deliberately avoids looking at the cart tethered to his horse and the two large coffins it carries—one for Master Oliver, the other for Clyde.
She reaches over and grabs Tamriel’s hand. “We made it.”
Tamriel offers her a sad smile. “We’ve endured so much death to make it back here. For all the sick and for all the men we’ve lost, we have to make this cure work.”
“We will. We’ll find a way.”
“Ride ahead and alert the guards to open the gates,” Tamriel says to Akiva, who rides on his other side.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
When they reach the gate, the guards’ jaws drop at their meager group. For a moment, the guards stand in shocked silence as their eyes roam across the five haggard faces before them to the cart of Cedikra and, finally, the coffins. Akiva nods grimly.
“Is that . . .?” one of the guards begins, his face turning ashen. “Where is everyone?”
“I must speak to my father immediately,” Tamriel responds, shrugging off the question.
“Y-Yes, Your Highness. Of course.”
Tamriel starts his horse down the empty street after the guards, Mercy, Akiva, and the Cirisians falling in behind him. Their horses’ hoofbeats clomp loudly on the cobblestone, and a few sleepy people open their shutters to peer out at the noise. Their expressions morph into surprise and curiosity when they recognize Tamriel at the front of the line. A few point at Nynev, Nia
mh, and Mercy and mutter insults under their breath. Whispers flutter down the street before them as more and more people are awakened by the commotion.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mercy sees Tamriel slump with relief when the wall surrounding Myrellis Castle finally comes into view ahead of them. The second they pass through the gates, Ghyslain bolts across the lawn, dressed in only a rumpled tunic and hastily donned trousers. His feet are clad in two different boots, and he slips on the slick grass a few times as he runs.
Tamriel stops his horse in the middle of the carriageway and dismounts. The second his feet touch the gravel, Ghyslain tackles him in a hug. Tamriel immediately stiffens.
“I thought you weren’t going to return. I thought you were lost forever. By the Creator, I never should have let you go,” Ghyslain rambles, his voice thick with emotion. He pulls back and grips Tamriel’s shoulders, gaping at him as if unsure whether his son standing before him is merely a figment of his imagination. “I thought . . . Cassius said that you wouldn’t—”
“We’re fine,” Tamriel interrupts, glancing sharply at Mercy.
“Wait, what did Cassius say?” Mercy asks. “He told you something before we left?”
“No, nothing. It’s not important.”
Ghyslain gasps, the blood draining from his face. His gaze is locked on the coffins. “Please don’t tell me that’s . . . Where is Master Oliver?” He glances between Mercy, Tamriel, and Akiva, his eyes wide and terrified. “Where are the rest of the guards?”
“They died protecting me.” Tamriel reaches over and takes Mercy’s hand. “Protecting us.”
“And Calum?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I have no idea if he’s alive. He took an arrow for me in Xilor days ago and was dragged away by a Cirisian elf. It’s a long story.”
“He took an arrow for you?” Ghyslain runs his hands through his unkempt hair. He paces along the carriageway, the gravel crunching under his shoes. “I never should have let you go. I should have realized only pain and death would come of this. Creator, none of this should have ever happened.”
Born Assassin Saga Box Set Page 74