He shakes his head. “I could never forget about you, but if you really want to leave, you are free to do so. You don’t belong to the Guild anymore. You have a family waiting for you. If I have to choose between watching the nobles destroy you and letting you walk away—knowing you’re alive out there, somewhere, even if I can never see you again—I’ll pick the latter every time.”
She doesn’t respond for a long time. She searches his gaze, the darkness turning her brown eyes into chips of onyx—hard, cold, unfeeling.
Then she shoves him and pushes to her feet, storming down the aisle.
“What?” he sputters, jumping up and jogging after her. “What the hell was that for?”
She whirls around, trembling with anger. “I don’t want you to let me go! Have you gone mad? I want you to stand with me against the nobles! Why does no one in this Creator-forsaken city stand up to them?”
“They’ll kill you, Mercy,” he snaps, his own temper flaring. “Maybe I will have you sent away for your own good. You may be a great fighter, but eventually your defenses are going to slip. I’m not going to watch them torture and slaughter you like they did Liselle. One day, we’ll stand against them, but it won’t be when we’re facing a deadly plague and an army of elves hell-bent on drowning my country in blood.”
“There will always be another enemy, another excuse,” she snarls. “You sound as paranoid as the king.”
Tamriel stills. A cool fury fills him, sweeping over him like the icy waters of the lake in which he’d nearly drowned as a child. His voice comes out evenly, terrifyingly calm when he says, “Take that back.”
“No.”
“I am not my father.”
She lifts her chin. “If you’re so certain they’re going to strike again, we should be rallying the guards to purge the city of the nobles now, not later. They’ve already tried to kill me once. Now I get to show them what a terrible, terrible mistake they’ve made in pissing me off.” She turns on her heel and stomps toward the library doors. “I’m going for a walk. Don’t follow me.”
26
Mercy
She can hear Nynev and the guards running after her as she storms down the stairs. She doesn’t slow as she strides down the long corridors toward the great hall, shoving past guards and servants before they have a chance to jump out of her way, and steps through the front doors of the castle. The sky is still dark, the blue-black clouds hanging low over the city. Strong gusts of wind snag on her hair and clothes.
“Mercy,” Kova says, trailing down the stairs behind her. “Stop.”
“No.” Her dagger is in her hand before she even thinks to reach for it. Guild training. She whirls and lifts the blade, pressing the point into the unprotected flesh of Kova’s underarm. The guard’s eyes widen in fear. Behind her, Bas, Tobias, and Nynev screech to a halt at the top of the stairs. “I meant what I said to Tamriel. I know you were listening. I need to think, and if any of you follow me, I’ll have you bleeding out at my feet before you can even draw your swords.” To emphasize her point, she presses the tip of her dagger a little farther into Kova’s underarm. The girl lets out a yelp when it pricks her. “Even injured, you know I’m good for my word.”
“You’re being rash, Mercy,” Nynev calls, looking about two seconds from drawing knives of her own. “What if someone’s watching you? What if the nobles decide to strike?”
“Let them try.” She lets out a huff, not caring that a trickle of blood now trails down Kova’s side or that her wounds have begun to ache so intensely that waves of pain radiate through her entire left side. All of a sudden, she’s just so damn tired. “I need to be out of the castle for a while. Creator’s ass, just give me some time to clear my head.”
Mercy sheathes her dagger and continues down the stairs, ignoring the huntress completely when she calls, “Twenty-four hours, then I’m dragging your ass back here whether you like it or not.”
The gate creaks when she slips through. The flush of her anger quickly fades, leaving her cold and shivering as she wanders the narrow streets with no particular destination in mind. She should find shelter, she knows—she’d left her cloak behind and the storm could pick up at any moment—but where would she go? Blackbriar would be the obvious choice, but Tamriel and the guards would know to find her there, and she’s in no mood to argue anymore. All she wants right now is space and a warm bed. And pain medication. She shifts her arm in her sling, grimacing. Pain medication would be good, but she won’t find any tonight. All the healers are either in the castle or tending the sick in the infirmary tents.
She won’t go crawling back to Cassia and her brothers, either. They’re no better than Tamriel—slinking around in the shadows, trying to keep out of the nobles’ attention, telling her that she should be grateful the courtiers haven’t managed to kill her yet. No—that’s not right. They had warned her about the nobles, but they’ll do nothing to stop them.
So.
She’s on her own.
Again.
She finds herself drawn toward Myrellis Plaza. She ducks under colorful awnings—still dripping from the rain—and dodges the large puddles on the sidewalk until she arrives in the middle of the square, near the fountain where she’d almost died a week ago. The statue standing on top, one of Tamriel’s ancestors, frowns down at her, his glower made all the more fearsome by the fat, angry storm clouds hanging overhead. Behind her is the well where she’d stood the morning after Tamriel had kissed her for the first time. She’d wandered for so long, lost in her thoughts and her guilt, that she’d hardly managed to remain upright when she’d finally staggered back to Blackbriar just after dawn.
She looks up at the plague-marked house where Drayce had hidden, half expecting to see him standing in the third-floor window, another arrow trained on her heart. After Elise’s execution, someone had placed a padlock on the door. It’s a flimsy thing, meant to keep out the few people desperate enough to risk breaking into a plague-marked house, and the lock gives way with a sharp snap! after a few shoves on the door with her good shoulder. She stumbles inside, off-balance, then shuts it behind her and clambers up the stairs to the third-floor bedroom. There’s a small pool of dried blood on the floor by the window, which no one had bothered to board up. A cool, storm-scented breeze sweeps in, whistling around the shards of broken glass hanging from the window frame.
Mercy peers out the window, scanning the nearby rooftops, buildings, and alleys for eyes. Nynev and the guards had followed her—she’s certain of it—but they won’t dare to approach her until her twenty-four hours are up. She’d seen on their faces that they’d known her threat was sincere.
She sprawls out on the bed and tosses her sling on the floor, gingerly feeling along her stitches to ensure her wounds have not become infected. Aside from the bit of blood which had leaked out during her sparring match that morning, they’re fine. Two more scars to add to her collection.
She runs her fingers over her dagger’s smooth leather grip. She may not be an Assassin of the Guild any longer, but that life will always be a part of her. That girl—that cruel, vengeful, merciless killer—will never leave her.
The nobles think I’m such a danger to their precious city? That I’m going to ruin their lives one pathetic, back-stabbing courtier at a time? A smile tugs at her lips and she closes her eyes as, outside, the storm begins to rage anew.
It would be a pity to disappoint them.
Footsteps tapping up the stairs wake Mercy from a fitful sleep a few hours later. She jumps to her feet, instantly alert, and presses her back to the wall beside the door, waiting for the intruder to appear. Her grip on her dagger tightens as she listens to the person step onto the landing, huffing slightly after three flights of stairs.
“Bareea?”
“Cassia?” She hadn’t expected to hear her sister’s voice again so soon—not after their argument earlier that day. She backs away from the door and sheathes her dagger. “What are you doing here?”
“Nynev sen
t a note telling us what happened.” Her sister nudges the door open and pulls a letter bearing Nynev’s familiar scrawl from her pocket, the ink slightly smudged from her rain-soaked clothes. “She thought I might be able to talk some sense into you.”
“I’m not leaving the capital.”
“I know.” Cassia grabs her hand and leads her to the bed, the sheets rumpled from her thrashing. Her sleep had been plagued by nightmares of nobles chasing her through the darkened halls of the castle, some armed with knives and swords, others holding chains with which to string her body across the gates, right next to her sister’s corpse. She shudders at the memory. Her friends’ paranoia is getting to her.
“After you left,” her sister begins, fidgeting with one end of the scarf wrapped around her head, “Ino, Matthias, and I agreed you need to know what our lives were like after Liselle’s death. It’s a long story, and a painful one, but you need to understand what standing against the nobles means, how cruel they can be to people like us.” She takes a steadying breath and continues, “The only good thing which came of our kidnapping was that we were bought from the slaver together. Our master had a share in one of the mines in Ospia, and we were to live with him on his estate—me as a housemaid, servant, and plaything for his young daughter, and Ino and Matthias as workers in the factories he owned for smelting ore.
“Honestly, I don’t know how we made it through that first year of slavery. We were still children, still aching after being torn away from our parents, from our home, from losing our eldest sister. Liselle had been . . . she’d been my everything. Until those last few months of her life, when we’d begged her to leave court life behind and accept her place as Elisora’s slave, she could do no wrong in my eyes. I’d wanted to be just like her when I grew up. When I saw what those bastards did to her, I died inside. Ino and Matthias were no better off.
“One night, when I was seventeen and Leopold—our master’s son—almost twenty, he and some of his school friends got obnoxiously drunk while our master and his wife were on holiday in Rivosa. They liked toying with the female slaves, so they—they called me in and held me down on the table while they took turns kissing and . . . touching me. They said they wanted to see what about elven women had captivated the king so completely.” She shudders, her voice breaking when she says, “Ino heard me crying. He beat the boys bloody for what they did to me and broke Leopold’s arm in the process. After they ran away, Ino promised he’d find a way to free us. The next day, after the humans had sobered up and Leopold’s arm had been set, they’d taken turns . . . they’d taken turns beating him with a switch while they forced me to watch.”
Bile rises in Mercy’s throat. “How did you escape?”
“That took another year. I was washing the dishes after supper when I heard the door to the kitchen swing open behind me. I assumed it was Ino or Matthias and kept working—they’d done their best to make sure one of them was always in the house when Leo was home from school—but I didn’t learn until later that they’d gone back to the smelting factory to retrieve something for our master.
“When I finally turned around, Leo was standing there, watching me. He . . . He grabbed me and pushed me against the wall, kissing me over and over and over.” She closes her eyes and sucks in a shuddering breath, her face waxy and bloodless.
“Stop.” Mercy grabs Cassia’s hand and squeezes, trying to keep her sister from getting lost in the terrible memories. “You don’t have to tell me the rest. I’ll just assume that rutting bastard got what he deserved for doing that to you. Slowly.”
She lets out a shaky laugh. “Not quite. When he tried to force himself on me, I panicked and bit his lip so hard my teeth cut right through. He hit me. Before I knew what was happening, he had a knife in one hand and my hair caught in the other. He pushed me facedown onto the table and did this—” She hesitates, then unwraps the scarf on her head. Her hair has been shorn so short Mercy can hardly tell it’s black, and below it, one of her ears is a mangled mess of flesh. “He told me that I was worth less than shit, and that I wasn’t even worthy of being a knife-eared savage. He was going to cut off my ears. He had only managed part of one when Ino and Matthias returned and heard me screaming. Matthias ran straight for us, and when Leopold turned the knife on him, Ino grabbed an iron skillet off the stove and swung. He nearly shattered the boy’s skull. We left him lying in a pool of his own blood and ran before our master could call the guards. We had no money, no weapons except for Leo’s knife and that damned skillet, and no clothes except what was on our backs. We vowed that night that we’d take our own lives before we ever let anyone enslave us again.”
Anger rushes over Mercy like a tide. “He didn’t die slowly enough,” she says through clenched teeth. “Or painfully enough.”
“He didn’t die at all. We left for Blackhills that night, but I heard a rumor a few months later that he’d dropped out of school. He’d gone soft in the head, people said, and he suffered from terrible migraines which left him sickly and shaking for days on end.” Her knuckles turn white as she bunches the silk scarf in her fists. “Sometimes it’s enough to know that he’s suffering, that he’s no longer the man who attacked me and that he’ll spend the rest of his life paying for what he did. Other times . . . I spend entire days imagining what it would be like to wander through the gardens of that beautiful estate again, to stride through those halls as a free woman, and how satisfying it would be to see the look on Leo’s face when I kill him in his sickbed. Some days, it’s all I can do to not pack up my few belongings and march back there.”
“Once the plague is cured, I’ll go with you,” Mercy promises. The vow feels feeble in light of the horrors her sister has just recounted, but she means it with every fiber of her being. “If you’ll have me.”
“Liselle would have said the same thing, but no, I won’t kill him.”
She jerks back, blinking in surprise. “Why the hell not?”
“He’s too sickly to leave his house, he cannot use a chamber pot without aid, and he’ll never be more than a husk of the person he was before. He’ll spend the rest of his miserable existence wallowing in his own filth. His head will feel like it’s splitting open from the force of the migraines Ino gave him, and even though he likely does not remember why they ail him, I remember. The Creator remembers and will give him a fitting punishment in the Beyond. I have too much hatred in my heart to cut his suffering in this world short.” Cassia lifts her chin, her eyes hard and her soft-spoken words underscored by a quiet, lethal strength. She’d seen her beloved sister tortured and strung up on the castle gates. She had been the victim of unspeakable violence. She had quietly endured living in the same house as that monster for an entire year before she and her brothers had escaped their gilded prison. The torture and torment she’d suffered would have broken anyone, yet somehow—somehow—here she remains: calm, solemn, irreparably damaged, and all the more beautiful because of it.
Mercy scoots forward and surprises them both by pulling her sister into a hug with her uninjured arm. Cassia lets out a shaky sigh of relief and buries her face in Mercy’s neck, clutching her as tightly as she dares around the arrow wounds. “No matter what you say,” Mercy murmurs, “the offer will always stand, should you change your mind.”
“If I ever do, you’ll be the first person I tell.”
“You’d better.” She pulls back, smiling. “What good is all my Guild training if I cannot use what I’ve learned to wipe evil bastards like Leopold off the face of the earth?”
“What good, indeed? I’ll admit, I’m surprised you didn’t end up in an all-out brawl with Guildford this morning.”
“Who?”
“Guildford Hastings Hayes, Jr.,” Cassia says, smirking at the ridiculousness of the name. “That kid who spit at you outside the college. His father is some well-to-do portrait artist in the Rivosi courts, and because of that, he feels entitled to piss on everyone unlucky enough to cross his path.”
“Then I’m glad I
got the spit and not the piss. These are new shoes.”
Cassia grins. “And exquisite ones, at that. Life in the castle has been good to you.” She nudges the toe of Mercy’s boot with her own. “Speaking of which, when are you going back to Tamriel?”
“When I no longer have the irresistible urge to punch him in the face.” She flops back onto the bed, wincing at the sliver of pain which shoots down her left arm, and says to the ceiling, “I love him, but Ghyslain’s court is infested with liars and traitors and murderers, and neither of them will do anything about it. He’d rather ship me off to some far-off corner of the world than stand up to the nobles.” She rolls onto her side and frowns at her sister. “I suppose now you’ll tell me you agree with him.”
She shakes her head. “That’s what the boys and I were discussing when Nynev’s letter arrived. As much as we want to keep you from harm, your life is your own. If you choose to brave the dangers of the court to stay with your prince, we will support you in any way we can.”
“Really?” Mercy breathes, scarcely believing what she’s hearing. “You’re going to stay?”
“You were right about Liselle—about her murderers. We may never find everyone who plotted to kill her, but we sure as hell won’t let them hurt you again. At this very moment, Ino and Matthias are out there with your guards, watching the street for signs of danger.” Cassia points to the broken window and smiles sadly. “If I believed in fate, I’d think Liselle has been watching over us all these years, waiting for the right moment to guide us to you.”
You’ll never know how accurate that statement is, Mercy thinks. She wanders down to the kitchen and returns a moment later with a bottle of cheap wine and two chipped ceramic mugs. Cassia smirks as Mercy sets them down on the mattress and begins to pour.
“Stop grinning. I couldn’t find any wine glasses.”
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