Araneae Nation: The Complete Collection

by Hailey Edwards

  Once enveloped in welcoming shadows, I made a loop in the hopes of shaking off curious stares from less forgiving folk. Panic was making me sloppy, and careless assassins got killed. Slowing my breathing, I forced my mind from thoughts of Maisy and focused instead on finding my target. Once he was down, I could go after her. Odds were that he would lead me right to her, which meant facing the maven’s guards and praying they didn’t haul me off for what I’d done.

  I should be safe enough unless the male I’d stabbed raised the alarm, but then he would have difficult questions to answer too. A blade to the balls was about as intimate an injury as they came. The guards would know there was a story there, some connection between us, and that should keep me protected a while longer.

  A round of applause clued me in to the arrival of the ruling family. Heading for higher ground, I stood on the base of a monument to get a better look. Maisy held Lourdes’s hand, her eyes shining, while the paladin’s dark gaze skimmed the crowd. He pulled a guard aside by his collar, and fear painted the male’s face white. Whatever Paladin Rhys saw, he clearly wasn’t happy about it.

  Hope flickered before I dampened the spark.

  Perhaps he had spotted a male standing too close, one looking too hard toward his wife, where I last saw Maisy. If he caught the assassin before I did… No. That was wishful thinking. In this, I was on my own. I had to find him, somehow, and put him down. With that done, I could sort out the rest.

  Striding into the crowd, I worked my way closer to Maisy. When she ascended to the balcony, I gritted my teeth. From where she sat, she was too exposed. The guards to either side of her wouldn’t do any good against a well-aimed arrow or dart. Following the milling crowd, I shuffled beneath the balcony, wasting precious time for one last futile glance. As my gaze passed over dozens of faces, I spotted him. Tall, handsome as his friend, he wore dark colors and a grim smile. He saw me too. He winked.

  My mouth went dry. This was it. I was going to catch that bastard and wring his neck for threatening my girl. I had lost everyone I had ever loved. I would not lose her too.

  Shoving people out of my way, I ran for him, heedless of the spectacle I made.

  His expression lit with amusement. He jerked his chin as if to say come on.

  I accepted his challenge, legs pumping until my calves ached and my lungs were on fire.

  Each time I came within tagging distance, he slid through my fingers. And he laughed.

  That’s what did it. That’s what cut through the terror shrouding my mind.

  He was toying with me. From what I’d seen he was unarmed. That meant he had an accomplice.

  Merciful gods, had there been three of them all along? I had focused on the male he showed me, the most obvious threat, the decoy. I never suspected there might be a third male working in tandem.

  I skidded to a halt just as the first firework lit up the sky. The explosion rumbled under my feet.

  The assassin had stopped too. Either he sensed he was no longer being pursued or…

  A wicked grin split his face.

  I spun toward the balcony, yards away from where I’d started. Red light bathed Maisy’s face. Wonder rounded her mouth as she pointed to the constellations made by the whirling fireworks.

  I absorbed all that in the same instant I spotted a tall figure glide into the royal box.

  “No.” I screamed until I tasted blood.

  A few concerned looks were cast my way, but the air was thick with noise and muffled me. I set off at a run, shouldering onlookers aside, drawing the notice of guards scattered in among the crowd. I was a breath away from climbing the stairs to the box when a brilliant burst of color illuminated the face of the male striding up behind Lourdes. Armand. He bent to his sister’s ear, and what he told her had Rhys grasping her arm, jerking her to her feet. He shoved her behind him, his body acting as her shield. In a huddle, the guards formed a circle around Lourdes and vanished. There must have been a second staircase or other means of escape. The box sat empty now, except for Maisy…and Armand.

  He knelt before her, talking. Her lips compressed flatter with his every word.

  Armand reached for her, but she spun aside and ran toward the stairs, and that’s when he saw me.

  His fingers cinched around Maisy’s arm, dragging her screaming the way Lourdes had gone.

  I was halfway onto the platform when something hit me in the shoulder. I reached up and pulled out a dart. Glancing below me, I spotted the second assassin. He tossed his blowpipe then tipped his head.

  The poison worked fast, I’ll give him that. Already I couldn’t feel my lips, my face.

  I tightened my grip on the rail and hauled myself up higher, closer to Maisy.

  Armand shouted, shoving Maisy behind him. Too late. She’d seen me.

  She stomped his instep and ran for me, her arms outstretched.

  Numb. So numb, I drifted in a daze that promised me the sweetest slumber. No more shame, no pain, no fear. No more hurt. I was free. My hand slid. Maybe I let go. I’m not sure. But I was falling.

  Armand scooped Maisy off her feet. Her nails sank in his arms. Her heels hammered his shins. Horror twisted her expression when she realized what was happening. One arm shot out toward me, her graceful fingers curling for mine. Hot tears sprang to my eyes when I read her frantic lips. Momma.

  Armand’s jaw came unhinged, and for some reason, I found that amusing.

  I laughed all the way into oblivion.

  Soft voices woke me. Two males, I thought, warring with growls over my head. Seeing as how I wasn’t in the habit of inviting strange males into my bedroom to fight over me, I blinked up at them.

  “This…” my speech slurred, “…is not my room.”

  “No,” the male to my left said. “This is my laboratory.” He pressed the heel of his palm against my forehead, using his thumb to hold open my eye. “You’re sure this striation wasn’t there before?”

  “Her eyes were hazel when she arrived.” Armand bent over me. “They’re much greener now.”

  “It’s dangerous, but there is an herb that can discolor the iris temporarily. It will cause blindness if used over a long period of time.” He shook his head. “The girl’s eyes are showing signs of use also?”

  “Her eyes were blue.” Armand’s gaze never left mine. “They’re lavender now.”

  “Lavender,” the first male murmured. “Like yours.”

  “Don’t give me that look, Henri,” he snarled. “Maisy is not my child. It’s not possible.”

  Henri cast Armand a hard look. “Nicolette came here to kill our sister. We have a sworn statement from her accomplice. I should have let her die.”

  “You don’t mean—” Armand started.

  Henri’s glare slid onto me. “The poison in your system was the same as what killed our parents. You’re fortunate I made a study of that particular strain, or you would have died on this table within the hour.” He rolled his shoulders. “Though I suppose I ought to thank you for testing my antivenin.”

  Armand scrubbed a hand down his face. “Lourdes said—”

  “Lourdes has felt guilty for a decade,” Henri reasoned. “She would sooner cut off her own hand than strike against this female until her curiosity is sated. She bore your hatred once. She can’t endure it again. Not over—”

  “—don’t speak her name,” Armand warned him. “She is dead. Dead. Her blood is on my hands as much as it ever was on Lourdes’s.”

  Henri raised his hands and gave his brother space.

  Grasping my shoulders, Armand searched my face. “Who are you?”

  “Nicolette.”

  “Liar.” He punched the wall behind my head. “Why are you here?”

  “Took a nasty fall.” If my aches were any indication.

  “I know why you are in the laboratory. I carried you in here myself.” His chest heaved. “Why are you in Erania? Did you come to kill my sister?”

  I wet my lips. “Yes.”

  “And the gi
rl?” Armand shook me. “How are her eyes that color?”

  Pain ricocheted through me, forcing a whimper past my lips.

  “How are any of our eyes their color?” I snapped.

  He shook me harder. “She is not my daughter.”

  “No she bloody well isn’t,” I snarled at him. “She’s mine.”

  “Look at this.” Henri lifted a lock of my hair. “The roots. They’re blonde.”

  I had taken care to dye my hair before arriving. There was no way my roots were showing yet.

  Cold sweat broke over my skin. “How long have I been here?”

  “Two weeks.” Henri ran his fingers through my hair, studying me.

  It was too much. All this was too much. My thin thread of composure broke.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “With my sister—” Armand sneered, “—the one you failed to murder.”

  My laughter was too high, too sharp. “I didn’t come for Lourdes.”

  The brothers shared a look. “Pascale,” they said in unison.

  Henri rubbed his chin. “It would explain the Theridiidae venom in her system, though not how it got there.” He walked a slow circle around the room, I could tell by how his voice traveled. “Do you think she meant to kill herself? No. There’s the girl to consider. Sympathy? That seems a better bet.”

  “She stabbed herself in the shoulder blade with a dart?” Armand sounded skeptical.

  Henri frowned. “We don’t know for certain that was the entry point.”

  “The skin was necrotic by the time we carried her down to the lab,” Armand reminded him.

  “True.” Henri conceded the point.

  “Can I see my daughter?”

  Both males narrowed their gazes on me.

  “Not until we get some answers.” Armand looked to his brother. “Give us a few minutes.”

  Henri folded his arms. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

  “I don’t care.” Armand’s gaze sliced through me. “I want answers, and I’m going to get them.”

  “Ten minutes.” Henri pointed a warning finger. “Then I’m fetching Lourdes and Rhys.”

  At the paladin’s name, I shuddered. If he thought I was here for his wife…

  “Focus.” Armand shook me a third time.

  My eyes crossed. “I can’t when you’re rattling my brain.”

  “Tell me who you are. I want to hear you say it.”

  “I don’t owe you anything.” Stubborn tears stung my eyes and spilled hotly onto my cheeks. I wiped them dry with the back of my shaking hand. All those years I wasted hating him, missing him, waking in the night to an empty bed and emptier life, aching for his touch, his kisses and his warmth. “It doesn’t matter who I am.”

  “It matters,” he assured me. “If not to you, then it does to the little girl pleading with my sister to spare your life.”

  “Let me go.” I struggled, but it hurt too much to last long or to accomplish much.

  “Answer me.” His fingers tensed, no doubt preparing to shake me again.

  I dared him with my smile. “Check behind my ear.”

  “What did you say?” His grip loosened.

  I took great pains to enunciate for him. “Check. Behind. My. Ear.”

  He didn’t have to ask which one. He released my shoulders, cupping my face in one hand while he turned it to the left. He folded down the tip of my right ear, and his breath hitched. He ran a thumb over the ridge there, feeling the scar he had given me when we were children, the one that I’d turned into his brand. It was an old Salticidae custom few remembered. The delicate layering of scarred tissue made a tattoo from old wounds. My marks were faded, but the slight tremble in his fingers said he understood.

  He pulled back, staring into my face, really looking at me, and he cursed.

  “Astrid.” The name hung between us.

  “Astrid died a long time ago.” That poor girl had been laid to rest as necessity demanded.

  “I gave her that scar when we were twelve.” He stared at the marking. “I wanted to impress her, so I stole Lourdes’s bow and an arrow, but it was strung too tight. When I aimed at her toy bear, I…”

  “Missed the mark by a few feet.” I helped him remember. “The arrow hit the ceiling right over my head and ricocheted. It almost sliced my ear off on its way down. Our fathers were furious.”

  “When the wound healed…” he finished the story, “…the scar was shaped like an A.”

  Males. So delusional. “Only if you stood on your head and closed your right eye.”

  That story, our story, was the reason why I had painfully branded the actual letter behind my ear after the first time we made love. What a thrill it had been, wearing his mark where no one could see.

  His voice was thick. “It can’t be.”

  “I assure you,” I said with regret, “it is.”

  He was nodding, as though he agreed with me, but he kept a hand to that ear, to that scar. His breaths came faster. “Her parents told me she died.”

  “As far as they’re concerned, I did.”

  “They said…” He swallowed hard. “But here you are.”

  I spread my hands. “Here I am.”

  He sank onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Here’s the short version.” I scooted away while I had the chance. “I fell in love with the second heir to the Araneidae clan. I broke the law of my mother’s people by sharing his bed before we were married. When his sister caught us and turned us in to his parents, they made their positions known. I wasn’t good enough for him. I wasn’t what his clan needed. I was a youthful mistake. I was also no longer welcome in their clan home.”

  Checking to make sure I held his attention, I continued. “When my parents were escorted to the edge of Erania and asked politely never to return, they had only one choice. Since Father’s clan had turned us out, our family sought refuge with Mother’s clan. Though I had broken their law, the Salticidae are a forgiving people—within reason—and they allowed me to live on a parcel of land outside their village. I might still live there today if I hadn’t become violently ill a month after our arrival.” His dawning realization tightened my throat. I cleared it. “Forgiveness only extends so far. A sullied female was one thing, but a sullied female and her bastard daughter…”

  His jaw clenched at that. Good. I hoped it hurt him twice as much to hear as it did for me to say.

  He shoved from the bed. “You should have told me.”

  “Told you how?” I sized him up. “My parents gave me to the Maratus. They gave us away.”

  The Maratus were, as far as the Salticidae were concerned, lepers. They were little more than a band of outcast Salticidae, those who had broken The One Law or shamed themselves in other ways.

  Other clans used more colorful names for us. Thieves. Whores. Liars. Murderers.

  I preferred to think of us as survivalists.

  He paled. “You announced yourselves as Ctenidae.”

  “In case you haven’t realized, I lied.”

  He shoved from the bed and paced. “You really are a Maratus.”

  “They are my people. They are all we have in this world. They took me in. They took care of me and taught me how to care for Maisy. They provided for us until I could be trained and put to use.” I watched him absorb that. “The Maratus have One Law too. Faith bound one to each other. We break all ties with family if we have any left and cleave only to our clansmen, those who understand what it’s like to make one mistake that costs you everything and to have to pay for that every single day.”

  “Your new family taught you hatred,” he said softly.

  “No.” I told him the truth. “You did that.”

  “I did what I thought was right,” he yelled. “I had to send you away. I had no choice.”

  “Neither did I.” Those had all been taken from me.

  He spun on his heel, snarling, “You came to kill my sister.”

  I leaned f
orward. “Who told you that?”

  “Are you denying it?”

  “No.” I was caught well and good. The truth was refreshing for a change. “I’m curious.”

  He glared at me. “One of our guests came forward with the information.”

  I snorted. “And you believed him, of course.”

  “After what you did to that guard? What you did to me?” He shook his head. “Of course I did.”

  Thinking back to Henri’s remark about an accomplice, I surmised, “He neglected to mention which sister, I take it?”

  “He led us to believe Lourdes was the target.”

  “When did he come to you?” It would help me frame out those final moments.

  “He stopped me just inside the city. He told me his friend had overheard a plot to assassinate the maven. When the friend confronted the would-be assassin, she stabbed him in…a delicate place. The male who stopped me was well-dressed, well-spoken, and though I didn’t know him I had no reason to disbelieve his story given the fact my head still rang from my own interlude with the assassin.” He seemed at a loss. “At least with Lourdes, I can understand. She’s the maven and accepted those risks. Pascale is…” He stopped before saying more. His steps slowed. “Colleen is behind this, isn’t she?”

  He sank into a chair near the door and put his head in his hands.

  Because it no longer mattered, I armed him with that knowledge. “She is.”

  “That stupid, stupid girl,” he muttered. “She might be the death of us all.”

  He must have meant Pascale. Colleen was well past the blush of maidenhood.

  “Maven Colleen won’t stop until Pascale is dead, or she is.” Her bevy of assassins proved that.

  “How much did she offer you?” He lifted his head. “How much is Pascale’s life worth to her?”

  “Enough gold I could start over.” I grimaced. “She offered me a small fortune.”

  “Pascale is my sister.” He shook his head. “You could have killed her so easily?”

  “Her life was not the only one in the balance. I would have killed her, you, anyone.”

  “Colleen threatened Maisy.” The way he said it told me he was working through the problem.

  “Why else would I have risked bringing her here, of all the godsforsaken places?”