He’s flanked by two guards: a woman and a man both wearing heavy chain mail. They post themselves just inside and eye me with caution while the Sorcerer approaches me. I don’t let them intimidate me. With him standing as close to me now as we were in the alley, they don’t matter, anyway. He’s even more handsome than I remembered.
“Sybel has outdone herself,” he says as he circles around me, looking me over.
His tone makes my cheeks go hot. He’s dangerous, I know, but that excites me. All I want is his approval. I want him to admire me. I want to always be close to him. I want to show him that I can do anything for him. Whatever he needs me to do. I watch him come around to face me again, where he stands and looks at me without a word. He’s not wearing his veil here. His face seems older than it did in the street, wiser and more impressive. With his eyes on me, suddenly I feel like a child about to be scolded.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “I won’t fail you again.”
“I believe you,” he says. “You will begin by never speaking unless spoken to.”
I nod my agreement and he smiles at me. I want him to keep smiling. I want to be his favorite. I never want to make him scowl.
“This is Dub,” he says after a long pause. It takes me a moment to realize there’s someone else here. He’s been lurking against the wall all this time. He steps out of the shadows as Quenson introduces him.
He’s in his twenties, maybe, lean and strong, and dressed all in leathers like me, except they’re black. His face is coarse with whiskers, and one eye is covered with a patch. The most remarkable thing about him, though, are all the knives. I can count at least a dozen strapped to his torso, his belt, his arms, and his legs. I wonder how many others he’s concealing.
His one good eye looks me over like Quenson did. Except when he does it, it makes me uncomfortable. I square my shoulders and cross my arms and raise my chin, trying to seem bigger. Tougher. He smirks, but doesn’t say a word.
“Go.” Quenson says.
Before I have time to think, Dub leaps at me, his knives flashing. He swings and I duck and roll away. He throws a blade, and I somersault and narrowly dodge the attack. His knife clatters and skids across the floor. I tumble to grab it and another one of his blades slices my sleeve as it whizzes past. I don’t know why, but this guy is serious. He means to kill me.
With Dub’s knife tight in my grip, I charge him. He’s nearly twice my size but I don’t care. If he wants to kill me, I’m going to make it difficult. He’s ready for my attack though. As I swing to stab him, he sheaths a knife and grabs my arm, twisting it painfully behind my back. He’s strong, but I’m a fighter. I elbow him hard in the ribs and kick him between the legs until he doubles over. That makes him loosen his grip on my arm, so I spin and punch him hard in the face. His nose cracks and he curses.
Quenson’s laughter somewhere to the side of the room is a musical sound that echoes up to the high-domed ceiling and back down again. It reminds me of how much I want to please him. It makes me fight harder.
Dub is furious. I punch his jaw and he growls and grabs my wrist again. With his free hand, he draws another knife from his endless supply. He overpowers me and shoves me against the wall, pressing my hand against the stone. His good eye is dark with madness. He raises the knife. He’s going to drive it through my hand, pin me to the stone with it.
I struggle to break free. I kick and swing and squirm, but he’s too strong. He thrusts the blade forward. I can’t escape him. He’s won. I brace myself for the strike and gasp as his empty fist smashes into my hand.
“Enough,” Quenson says.
Dub growls in frustration and throws my hand down. I open my eyes in disbelief to see the Sorcerer standing several paces away, holding Dub’s knife between his thumb and forefinger with a look of disgust.
“Such rudimentary, primitive things,” Quenson scoffs as Dub retrieves the weapon and shoves it into a sheath at his thigh. He wipes at the blood that trickles from his lip and sneers at me.
“She has proven herself a worthy fighter,” Quenson goes on. “The moment has come. The day of the verdict,” he says darkly, and turns to me. “You and Dub have a common goal now: That of redemption. You see, he has also failed us. More than once.” Quenson’s voice darkens, and Dub looks away from us both. “You shall work together. He will teach you. Fill you in. Not too much,” the Sorcerer raises a finger. “Slowly, slowly. Take your time with the girl. Leave me now. When I see you again, I hope for both of your sakes that you will not have disappointed me again.”
With a hateful glare, Dub jerks his head at me and I know I’m meant to follow him. As disappointed as I am to have to leave the Sorcerer’s presence, I don’t dare argue or ask why. I agreed not to speak, and I won’t go back on my word. Even though my heart is still racing from the fight and my thoughts are full of questions, I do as I’m told and I follow Dub from the room.
We walk for a long time, and just when I worry that maybe he’s lost, Dub stops outside the open door to the bedroom where I woke up.
“You have to change,” he says to me. “Back into the clothes you came in.”
“But—” I start, and he’s on me in a flash, pinning my shoulders to the wall.
“You listen to me. This isn’t a game, little girl, nor do I have the patience for you. If I had my way, I would have ended you in there. I don’t need an accomplice, nor do I want one. You will do as you’re told.” His voice deepens. “Go in there and change. Now.” His face is so close to mine that his bloody spit peppers my face when he talks. I press my mouth closed and wrinkle my nose and look right into his one good eye.
“You don’t scare me,” I say with surprisingly more courage than I feel, even as he presses so hard that my shoulders feel like the bones will snap. “I nearly won that fight.”
“That wasn’t a fight, it was a demonstration,” he smirks. “And nearly won is the same as dead in my book. You’re sloppy. A street brawler. I’ve seen it before. Too cocky for your own good. It’ll get you killed.”
“You didn’t kill me,” I say defiantly. He presses closer.
“Only because I was under orders not to,” his good eye flashes with a crazed hunger that makes me look away. I focus on the leather patch. I wonder what’s underneath it.
“You don’t scare me,” I repeat, more for my own benefit than for his.
“I should,” he sneers. “Don’t you know who I am?”
I shake my head.
“Good,” he growls. “That means I do my job well. How many famous assassins have you heard of? Not a single one worth his salt.” He shoves me toward the door. “Now, do as you’re told or Quenson will hear of it.”
“I can’t,” I rub my sore shoulders. “These are my clothes. Sybel changed them with a spell.”
His fist flies faster than I can react. It hits the door jamb next to my head with a such a force that the carved wood splinters and cracks.
“Sorcerers,” he hisses a curse through clenched teeth. “Damn showoffs. Let’s go, then. We’ll find you something on the way. You can’t go back to Cerion wearing that. It doesn’t fit with the plan.”
“What is the plan?” I ask as I trail behind him through the corridors.
“Tib,” he replies, stalking ahead.
“Tib?”
“You lure him, I bag him,” Dub says simply, and his words thrill me. It won’t be easy, but I’m glad he’s the target. Tib’s been on his high horse for long enough. He’s got it coming.
Chapter Two: Promises
Azi
Two Days Earlier
“Twenty-ninth Midsummer?” Rian suggests.
I stroke his hair, deep in thought as he rests his head in my lap and gazes up at me. It’s been two years since we defeated Jacek. Two years since Rian stood beside the golden pool and bent his knee to ask me to be his bride. I try to imagine myself on our wedding day, dressed in finery, standing before the entire kingdom, promising to be his forever. The notion is as abstract as
ever. I feel as though I’m imagining someone else instead. Being a wife always seemed like such a distant prospect and yet here I am, looking into Rian’s hazel eyes, certain that he’s the only one I’ll ever love. He wants to move from imagining to planning. I should want it, too.
A sunbeam dances through the leaves above and splashes across his neatly trimmed beard. He looks far more Mage-like with it. More handsome, if that’s even possible.
“Are you really keeping this?” I ask as I tickle his coarse chin hair with my fingers.
“Are you really changing the subject again?” Rian smirks up at me and covers my hand with his.
“You can’t answer a question with a question,” I tease, smiling through the pang in my heart at the reminder of Flitt’s question game.
Rian laughs and starts to sit up, but I push him down gently, kiss him, and try not to think about Flitt. It’s too perfect here in the forest park outside of the castle walls, where we’ve hidden ourselves since mid-morning in the shadiest grove, on the greenest patch of grass. We don’t get many moments like this anymore, just the two of us, quiet together.
“You’re heavy on the distraction tactics today, Azi,” he murmurs between kisses. I sigh. He’s right. I can’t avoid the subject forever, and I don’t mean to.
“The twenty-ninth?” I ask, trying to place the date. I go back to stroking his auburn hair. It, too, is growing long. In the past months he’s really begun to embrace the Mage style. Soon he’ll be able to tie it back like Uncle does. I’m still getting used to it. It makes him look much older. But that could be a result of the weight on his shoulders lately, too. Rian has been through much more than most Mages in their Twentieth Circle.
It’s been two years of quiet since the worst of it. Two years on edge. Even now when I think of Jacek’s last words I get chills.
It has only begun. The wheels are in motion. The Order lurks, waiting to strike. You feared me? You have no idea. Bask in your cursed victory. May it forever blind you to the truth.
The image of his blackened, crumbling form is etched in my mind. Jacek was the Dreamwalker, a Sorcerer in the Dreaming who terrorized us and tried to turn us all against each other. He haunts my memories daily. Worse than him is the memory of Rian’s cold, limp hand in mine as the battle was nearly lost against him.
“Do you remember that date?” Rian’s question jerks me back to the present. He meets my eyes and pulls me down to kiss him again. Soon we’re rolling around playfully in the soft grass, breathless. The cool ground beneath me and his loving arms around me push away the dark memories until they’re nothing but wisps.
“Of course,” I fib and giggle as we tumble to a stop. He props himself on his elbows and brushes his thumb across my cheek. His long auburn forelocks tickle my neck as his smiling gaze meets mine.
“Look,” he says. His eyes sparkle golden, green, and orange. Inviting and warm, they pull me in until I feel the rush of my Mentalism, which allows me to tumble through his gaze into his thoughts and memories.
In the training square of the hall of our guild, His Majesty’s Elite, I see a slightly younger version of myself. I’m surprised by how much I’ve changed since then. I look tired and worried, but there’s also a gleam of hope in my eyes. That, and determination. I wonder if I’ve lost that now, after everything that’s happened.
It’s strange to see myself from Rian’s perspective. Looking through his eyes into this memory, I can feel his emotions strongly: Love and nerves that tie his insides up. I feel his thoughts linger on the younger Azi’s long blond braid.
Back in the forest park, I laugh and pull myself out of his mind.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I ask.
“What?” Rian winks and runs his fingers through my newer, short-cropped haircut.
“You said you liked it,” I say a little self-consciously. It was a hasty decision to chop off the braid. After a long, hot day of training I was sick of dealing with it.
“I do,” he says, but I’m not convinced. “Now hush, and stop distracting. Look.”
I tumble back into his eyes and into the memory, back to the Elite’s training pitch where Rian and I stand face to face among the various weapons littered on the dirt floor around us. It had been a grueling day of research trying to figure out the workings of the curse that had befallen me and my father after Da’s encounter with the Guardians at the eastern border of Kythshire. The awful curse prevented both me and Da from wielding any weapon, and left Da in the grips of madness.
We seemed so young then, Rian and I, so oblivious to the obvious attraction between us. I can see it now, when I look into the memory, plain as day.
Rian takes my hands and poses them a certain way, and I feel his own hands go warm and tingly when he touches me. He casts a spell and a slash of ice appears in my younger self’s grip. An ice sword to replace my own. Rian’s magical creation somehow circumvented the restrictions of the curse.
I watch it play out from his perspective: My excitement at this new discovery and the knowledge that I won’t be completely useless under the curse, my concern for his use of magic he’s not yet ready for, our kiss. Our first kiss. I feel it the same way he does, a flutter of excitement and a rush of warmth so deep and pure that I never want to pull away. I want to be there forever with him in that moment.
It’s perfect and beautiful, until Flitt bursts in and interrupts us.
Immediately I pull back to the Forest Park. Back to myself again. I wasn’t expecting her there. The image of the bright little fae in my mind is too much to bear. My heart aches for her, and with that ache comes the rush of guilt and worry that has been plaguing me for weeks now.
I roll away from Rian and sit up with my knees tucked to my chest. As the rush from Mentalism drains away, the emptiness which takes its place is deeper than normal. Wielding magic is a powerful experience. It fills you up with euphoria. The down side is when I stop, I feel miserable, exhausted, and empty. It isn’t just the magic that leaves me feeling drained, though. The memory of Flitt and her recent absence sends tears spilling down my cheeks. Rian wraps his arms around me and I feel a little better, but I can’t help the tears. I miss her so much.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, rocking me. “I forgot about that part. I forgot she had been there.”
“Distractions,” I try to laugh, but my throat is too thick with tears. Flitt’s silence happened slowly over the course of months. First a day would go between visits, then a week, then several weeks. It’s been two months, three weeks, and four days since she’s been to see me. Rian and I have even gone to her grotto to seek her out whenever we could steal a moment in between hearings, but she’s never there.
“She’s always interrupting our moments,” he jokes weakly. It does little to cheer me. I reach for the pouch that never leaves my chest and touch the diamond that tethers her to me.
“What if she’s angry with me?” I ask him. “What if I said something to insult her, or slighted her somehow? You know how she is. They can certainly hold a grudge. You know her temper. Or Rian, what if something’s happened to her?”
“Azi,” his breath is warm on my skin as he brushes his lips across my cheek. “If something happened, I’m sure you’d know it. You’d be able to feel it. I’m sure she’s safe. It’s just…they’re on a different schedule than we are, that’s all. They have a completely abstract concept of time. She probably thinks it’s only been hours.”
“The last time she came,” I say as I wipe the tears from my cheeks, “I was so dismissive. I had been called up to the palace, remember?”
“She can’t be angry with you for that,” Rian says. “She understands the importance of the trial.”
“I suppose,” I say. I take in a shaky breath and tuck my head into the crook of his arm. “I just wish it was over.”
“Everyone does,” Rian says as he looks off to the east, where the palace towers stretch up over the treetops. “It has certainly dragged on longer than any of us e
xpected.”
I press myself closer to him as my thoughts turn to darker matters. Prince Eron’s trials have been going on for nearly two years now. Everyone knows that the end of them will most certainly mean the prince’s death. Wishing for such a thing to happen faster always makes me feel guilty, but the memories of his crimes haunt my waking hours. At night while I dream, they play over and over in my mind.
So much more has come to light through the trials. The prince’s conspiracies stretched deep through the kingdom and beyond. His hunger for his father’s throne and his ruthlessness to gain it have been a shock to everyone.
It doesn’t help to have to attend the daily Waking ceremony that frees the prince from his sleep to allow him to watch his trial. It doesn’t help to have to sit before much of the Kingdom and recount my side of it time and time again with the prince’s eyes on me, cold and distant, knowing that if there’s any justice, my testimony will eventually lead to his death.
And the king. I can’t begin to understand His Majesty’s suffering, but somehow he doesn’t see that all he’s doing by ordering appeal after appeal is prolonging the inevitable. His son has committed crimes against the throne. He will never be fit to rule Cerion. Traitors and murderers are to be put to death, and that’s exactly what Eron is.
The prolonged trial has settled over our usually cheerful, peaceful kingdom like a lingering storm. The certainty of Prince Eron’s sentence circles within it; a darkness waiting to strike. Midsummer passed this year with no festival, no squire trials in the arena. No celebrations of any kind have been held. There is no place for joy during these times. We are a kingdom in mourning for an heir who’s not yet dead.
“Mum says she can’t remember a year without Cerion Day,” I trace the gold trim of Rian’s vest with my fingertips.
“My mum sang at the first one,” he says. His chest rises and falls beneath my hand as he sighs. “This year would have been the thirtieth anniversary.”
Call of Brindelier (Keepers of the Wellsprings Book 3) Page 2