“We’re okay,” Nerran calls, his voice pinched, “but you might want to hurry it up a bit, Calum.”
His eyes have adjusted enough that he can just make out his mother and Adriel slumped against the back wall. He kneels before Mercy’s father and presses a hand to the man’s brow. His skin is still clammy, but he might be able to survive long enough to make it to Sandori. “Try to stand,” Calum whispers. He pulls them to their feet none too gently, his nerves running too high to care much when Adriel lets out a groan of pain. There’s a sledgehammer battering his skull now—Drake raging in whatever corner of Calum’s mind he’d been shoved into—and the tremors rock him from head to toe, threatening to split his head in two.
Outside, the fight has gone quiet. Through the walls, he can hear the elves in the neighboring barn and stable speaking to one another in groggy, sleep-thick voices. It won’t be long before they send someone outside to investigate the commotion.
Calum leads Dayna and Adriel out of the hen house. Hewlin tosses him a dagger, and he frantically saws through the ropes binding Dayna’s and Adriel’s wrists while Oren and Amir drag the guards’ bodies into the hen house and close the door. He tries not to notice how gaunt Mercy’s parents’ faces are when they turn around and follow him to the back of the hen house, the Strykers trailing behind. “Run to Sandori. Mercy is there.”
“They’ll never make it to the capital on their own,” Nerran responds. “Look at them—they can hardly stand. We should go with them, make sure they reach Sandori safely.”
“If one of us goes, we all go,” Hewlin says, nodding. “Firesse will punish anyone who stays behind.”
The barn door slides open, and they all tense. “Whej?” someone calls. “Mai? Olyver? Whej-a-to?” A few others mutter to one another, their voices ranging from confused to alarmed.
Calum turns to Hewlin, his eyes wide. “Go quickly. If they find me alone out here, they won’t realize you’re involved until Drake tells them. It won’t buy you much time, so make every second count.” He won’t be able to hold Drake much longer. The farther they are when he emerges, the better.
“Who’s Drake?” Oren asks, but Adriel shushes him.
“Thank you,” Dayna sighs. She embraces him, then takes Adriel’s hand and starts a lurching, painful-looking run through the grove behind the farm. The Strykers follow close behind, and they all melt into the shadows within a matter of seconds.
The elves have begun wandering out of the barn and stable. Calum takes a deep breath, bracing himself against the migraine pulsing behind his eyes, and peers around the side of the hen house, being careful to keep out of sight. A group of six elves pulls the door open and several gasp when they see the bodies. One begins to sob. The rest whirl around, searching for the culprit. Calum waits until one starts toward the grove, then steps out into the open, his shoulders hunched as he starts at a brisk walk toward the farmhouse.
“Iv!” one of the Cirisians yells. “Stop!”
He breaks into a sprint. Keep chasing me. Keep chasing me. Don’t look for the others. Creator, I really, really need that good luck. He leaps over the first row of bushes and crashes through the next as quickly as he can. All six elves give chase, shouting and spitting curses as, behind them, more sleepy Cirisians wander out of the barn and stable.
One of the elves tackles him, sending him sprawling face first into the dirt. Inside his skull, Drake is a swirling, raging tempest. Have fun explaining to Firesse how you let this happen, you evil bastard, he snarls as his hold on his body snaps and the ice-water comes flooding back.
37
Calum
“T’irja.”
The word floats to Calum from somewhere in the depths of the black sea, its power an ancient, glittering tether between the darkness and the world he’d left behind. He snaps back to consciousness with a start—somehow returned to his mental prison, to the hell of having to watch his father play him like a marionette.
For a moment, he cannot remember where he is. He doesn’t recognize the dark wooden walls or the colorful quilt under his legs—under Drake’s legs, now that his father again has control of his body. Then Firesse, kneeling on the floor beside him with her eyes closed, mutters something in guttural ancient Cirisian, and the ice-water in his veins surges forth, along with the memories. He’d freed Dayna and Adriel. The Strykers had fled, promising to protect them on their journey to Sandori. He’d blacked out, expecting never to emerge from the darkness again.
But, impossibly, here he is.
Firesse opens one eye and peers at Drake, lounging atop the bed in his small farmhouse bedroom. “He’s back?”
He nods. A cruel, mocking laugh echoes through Calum’s mind, still aching from the effort it had taken to overpower his father long enough to set Dayna and Adriel free. I can’t let you slip away just yet, Drake purrs. We have unfinished business.
She pulled me back? Calum asks, unable to contain his curiosity. With magic?
Apparently, pulling one out of wherever it is you go when you fade is not terribly different from summoning a spirit from the Beyond. Our Firesse was happy to oblige my request to bring you back, with a few added safeguards, of course, should you get any ideas.
He jerks against the shackles binding him to his mental prison. They’re stronger, and the ice-water in his veins is so frigid he wouldn’t be surprised if ice crystals had formed below his skin. He won’t make it out again no matter how hard he struggles; Drake will not make the mistake of underestimating his strength a second time. He’d played the only hand he’d been dealt, and now he’s nothing more than a witness to whatever destruction Firesse and the elves are going to rain down upon the capital tomorrow.
Firesse staggers to her feet and squeezes Drake’s shoulder once. “Sleep now. We’ll march for Sandori in three—three hours,” she says through a yawn.
“You stay—I’ll go out with the search parties.”
Dayna and Adriel are still out there, Calum realizes with a rush of relief. The Cirisians haven’t found them yet.
Drake begins to rise, but she dismisses him with a wave. “You’ll be on the front lines tomorrow. You need all the rest you can get.” She leaves the room without waiting for a response.
As Drake stretches out on the mattress and closes his eyes, Calum casts his thoughts to Mercy and Tamriel, probably sleeping soundly in their beds in the castle at this very moment, unaware that the army marching toward their doorstep is so close. If everything goes according to Firesse’s plans, the elves will breach the castle by tomorrow night. He will be in the same room as his cousin for the first time in weeks, but as long as Drake has a hold on him, Tamriel will be as far out of his reach as if Calum were still back in the Islands. I’ve done everything I can to help you, he thinks. I know it wasn’t enough, but the rest is up to you.
Three and a half hours later, they gather their belongings and march toward Sandori. Firesse, the Daughters, and the commanders ride the few horses they’d ridden from Fishers’ Cross, and the Strykers’ wagon, driven by one of the Daughters, clatters along behind them. The remainder of the forces trail behind them in clusters of four or five, all quiet and solemn in the face of the impending attack. How many will perish? How many will return to the families they had left in the Islands?
Kaius and the other commanders are wearing the silver armor they’d pilfered from the Beltharan troops, the metal shining brightly enough to blind under the early-morning sun, and the Cirisians are clad in an amalgam of plate mail and their own leather armor. Overhead, the sky is a pale, cloudless blue, and a warm breeze sweeps across the plain from the west, sending the long grasses dancing around them. The day is much too beautiful for the horrors they’ll unleash in a few short hours.
By the Creator, Calum hopes Dayna and Adriel make it to the capital on time.
For the first few hours of the ride, time seems to stretch out into an eternity. The elves gradually begin to grumble and complain as their skin grows slick with sweat beneath their
armor and their sore feet blister inside their worn boots. Thankfully, they catch no sign of Mercy’s parents or the Strykers. Relief washes over Calum, but it is quickly replaced with dread when Sandori appears on the horizon.
The city is nothing more than a smudge of darkness in the distance; the only discernable features are the tall spires of the Church and Myrellis Castle, the latter sitting high on its hill before the lake.
The sight causes shame to rise within him. He’d give anything to undo the mistakes he has made, but no amount of wishing and praying will erase the terrible crimes he has committed. He dug his own grave the moment he and Elise forged that damned Guild contract, and now it’s time to lie in it.
Firesse lifts a hand to halt their march. She turns to Drake, anticipation and a hint of madness sparkling in her eyes, and says with a wicked grin, “Let’s pay a visit to the king, shall we?”
38
Tamriel
Shortly after lunch, Tamriel finds Mercy standing alone outside the door to his old chambers, her eyes trained on the wrought iron handle as if gathering her courage to enter. Neither of them has set foot inside since they left for the Islands over a month ago. The memory of his guards’ bodies lying there, gushing dark blood over the stone floors, had been too fresh when they had returned, and they’d each fallen into the routine of avoiding his former chambers when walking through the halls. For whatever reason, he’d been drawn to it today. Apparently, she had, too. Perhaps the threat of the plague and Firesse’s impending attack had sent them here, to the place where so much had changed so suddenly.
Mercy reaches for the handle but pauses before her fingers make contact. “I thought Liselle might speak to me if I go inside,” she says, again surprising him with her ability to sense him before he even makes a sound. “I haven’t heard her voice since we left the Islands, and I thought that since she first appeared to us here, it might be easier to reestablish a connection to wherever she is. The In-Between. The Beyond.” She turns around then, fear and grief in her eyes, and frowns. “But I’m afraid that I’ll go inside and she won’t be there—that Firesse succeeded in banishing her to the Beyond. It’s foolish, I know. She could have spoken to me hundreds of times since we returned from the Islands. There’s nothing special about this room. I just—I just thought I had more time to get to know her. I don’t want to find out I was wrong.”
The sorrow in her voice breaks his heart. After so many years of being alone, she had gained a sister only to have her ripped out of her life as abruptly as she had entered it. In a way, it’s like Liselle has died a second time. He tries to imagine what it would be like to see his mother’s ghost, to speak with her and laugh with her, and to lose her all over again—but he knows imagining it pales in comparison to the reality of it.
“Well, I’m glad I found you,” he says, being careful to hide his own sadness. Liselle had only appeared to him a few times, but she had saved their lives time and time again. She had been kind to Mercy and protected her, and for that, he will always be grateful to her. He smiles at Mercy and holds out a hand. “I think we could use some closure, and I’m hoping you can be brave for both of us.”
She rolls her eyes, clearly seeing through his teasing, and slips her hand into his own. Then she reaches forward, turns the handle, and lets the door swing open.
The room is empty, of course. The guards’ bodies were moved long ago, the blood soaked up and the floor mopped, the ruined furniture and ornate rug replaced with new décor. The bedsheets were changed. The wardrobe doors stand open, every rack and drawer empty since the day the servants had taken his clothes down to the room he’d chosen in the guest wing. As his gaze sweeps over it all, the muscles he hadn’t realized he’d been tensing gradually relax. It both is and is not his room. The furnishings are new, nearly identical to the ones he’d had before, but the memories of the deaths he’d witnessed and the death he’d come seconds from meeting here have tainted everything.
Mercy releases his hand and takes a few steps into the room, until she’s standing in the exact place her sister had first appeared to them. “Liselle?” She turns in a slow circle, then tries again. “Liselle, are you here? Can you hear me?”
No answer.
Her shoulders slump and she sinks onto the edge of the bed. “I should have known better than to hope.”
“Right now, all we can do is hope that all of this ugliness will soon be behind us.”
When they had cleaned the room, the servants had left a tray bearing a bottle of wine and a few glasses on the desk for his return. He walks toward it, removes the cork, and pours them each a glass. Mercy’s fingers curl around the stem when he hands it to her. He sits on the bed beside her.
“Liselle was a great woman,” he continues softly, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I wish you’d had more time to get to know her, and I wish I could tell you that you’ll see her again, but I don’t know if that will happen. What I do know is that you have three siblings here who will do anything for you. They’re not going anywhere, and neither am I. We won’t forget those we’ve lost, but we’ll make new memories.” He nudges her shoulder with his until she meets his gaze. When they do, her eyes, so similar to her father’s—brown woven through with stripes of gold—are overflowing with emotion: fear, sadness, grief, pain, and a tiny flicker of hope. “We’ll make happy memories, my love.”
Her lips part into a small smile at the endearment. She kisses him, then raises her glass in a toast. “To closure.”
“And to our future.” They each take a drink. Then, before Mercy lowers the glass from her lips, he asks, “So when do you want to get married?”
Her eyes widen and she chokes on her wine. “Who said anything about getting married? I love you, Tamriel, but we haven’t even known each other for two months.”
“I did. Remember the day I took you and Leon down to my mother’s tomb? I asked you to marry me, and you said yes.” His smile turns smug. He’d been planning to ask her for a while, and what better time is there than when a plague is sweeping the country and an army hell-bent on his destruction is marching toward his home? “We’d known each other a lot less than two months when you agreed.”
“I didn’t think it was binding, considering I was planning to kill you at the time.” She rolls her eyes and strides to the double doors which lead to the balcony. A warm breeze sends the curtains dancing when she pushes the doors open. “Not to mention,” she says over her shoulder as she steps outside, “you asked Lady Marieve to marry you, not me.”
He feigns confusion as he follows her to the railing of the balcony, trying to pretend his heart isn’t pounding with nerves. “I haven’t proposed to you yet?”
“Not that I can recall, no.”
“Well, that simply cannot do.” She watches in stunned silence as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a silver ring. A deep blue sapphire sits in the center of the slender band, surrounded by a dozen shimmering diamonds. She bites her lip and grins like a fool when he drops down to one knee. “Mercy—my love, my savior—will you marry me? Will you do me the honor of one day becoming my queen?”
She sucks in a breath. “You aren’t worried about the nobles?”
“I’ll always worry about the nobles, but I’m not going to bow to them any longer. They can accept you as their future queen, or they can forfeit their titles and leave.” Together—he’d vowed they’d stand against the nobles together, and this is the final step, the line even his father would never have dared cross. He’d unintentionally and irrevocably given his heart to her over those few weeks before they’d left for the Islands, and now he’s offering her his most prized possession—his kingdom, the land and the people he’d do anything to protect.
Mercy beams. “Then I accept. Yes, Tamriel, I’ll marry you.”
He jumps to his feet with a laugh and sweeps her into his arms, turning them around and around and around again. The moment he sets her on the ground, she grabs his face and kisses him.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmurs in awe.
“Like it was made for you, princess.”
She squeezes his hand. “You know, I used to hate it when Calum called me that. Now I don’t mind it at all. In fact, I think I like it.”
When she looks down to admire the ring again, Tamriel says, “It was my mother’s. With my father’s blessing, I went down to her tomb the day we returned from the Islands, and I’ve been carrying it ever since. I think she would be glad to know you’ll be wearing it now.” His smile slips, just a fraction. “I wish she were here to meet you.”
She cups his cheek with a hand, and he leans into the touch, drawing strength from it. “If she was anything like her son,” she whispers, “I would have loved her. It would have been my honor to know her.”
They stand there for nearly an hour, reliving memories of those they’d lost, reveling in their joy and the possibilities for their future. When Tamriel follows Mercy out of his former chambers, he’s so caught up in his own bliss that he doesn’t think his feet touch the ground once as they make their way through the halls. That is, until they reach the bottom of the stairs and see the guards and slaves running back and forth, nearly bumping into one another in their haste. The guards are clad in varying amounts of armor—some in the simple tunics and pants, others in full suits of armor—and the elves shout to one another over the pounding of boots on the floor. Tamriel stops midstride, his throat tightening. The flurry of activity can only mean one thing. Not today. He exchanges a look of concern with Mercy, who has already reflexively reached for her daggers. He’d thought—he’d prayed—they had more time.
Seren Pierce stops before them, his face pinched with worry. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Your Highness,” he says between puffs of breath. “The Cirisians—they’ll be here soon. The Creator has seen fit to bless us with a warning. They’re waiting downstairs, in the infirmary. We’ve sent for Healer Niamh, but I don’t know if she’ll make it in time.”
Born Assassin Saga Box Set Page 105