“That isn’t true. This will pass. It always has before.”
“Yes, and leaves me weaker.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s time to move on. I can’t keep hiding from this assassin, sharing a manor with a dead woman’s ghost.” Luke’s head jerked sharply as the question formed on his lips but she shook her head. “A figure of speech, Captain. That’s all.”
Luke sighed, running his hands over his face. “You have turned my men against me. They all swore to resign their posts and accompany you if I did not give them permission.”
She hid a smile. “I’m very sorry, Captain.”
In the end, they all accompanied her. They moved more slowly, watching for threats. Luke stayed by her side but didn’t speak to her. The rest of her guards bantered quietly back and forth, occasionally including her in their teasing, but for the most part she was alone with her thoughts. It was a relief to leave the manor. She hadn’t realized how oppressive it was until they left it.
The wind whipped her hair so she felt like she was riding in her own personal black cloud most of the time. Luckily, her horse didn’t require her to tell it where to go — it just followed the others, which was handy because she couldn’t have seen to lead it anyway.
“The wind has picked up,” Luke noted needlessly.
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” she muttered under her breath.
“The cold season is coming quickly. I wonder if we’ll be back to the castle by the time the snow comes.” Heath had to raise his voice quite a bit to be heard over the bluster. Kazia shared that thought. She missed home, although going back there meant facing the memories instead of running from them.
The first rays of the morning sun were shimmering over the horizon when Luke finally signaled them to stop. “The wind is wearing the horses down. Let’s make camp here. We’ll start again in the afternoon.”
As she slid, gratefully, off her horse, she realized how much these men had had to adjust to fit her life. All of them slept during the day now and were awake at night with her. She was equal parts relieved not to be alone and guilty of messing up their lives so much.
She avoided Luke as much as possible, since they could not, apparently, have a civil conversation any longer. “Do we have to worry about bandits attacking during the day?” she asked Benjamin, who sat next to her, his long legs stretched toward the fire.
“No. If they were stupid enough to attack the royal guard and a giant, mythical beast, they would do it at night. Besides, we’ll have someone watching all day long. Don’t worry, little princess.” He grinned. Since he didn’t seem worried, she decided she was okay with that and curled up in her sleeping roll to sleep through the daylight hours.
It was nearly dusk when she woke to the smell of food, and her stomach immediately growled. “Hungry?” Luke asked, watching her from over the fire. He dropped his gaze when she looked up at him.
“Yes. Where is everyone?”
“Benjamin and Heath are hunting. They’re my best archers. The rest are scouting ahead and behind.”
“Crystali? Nakomi?”
“She took your wolf for a walk. We wanted you to get as much rest as possible.” All this was said without making eye contact. She stretched, trying to work some of the stiffness out of her muscles, even though she knew very well it wasn’t going away. She was folding up her bedroll, kneeling in the dirt and wondering if she would ever get her dress clean, when he stopped next to her, handing her a bowl of something warm and delicious. “Thank you,” she said, delicately avoiding any contact with his fingers, and tried to eat it without scarfing it down like a wolf. To say she was starving would be a massive understatement.
“It will be dark soon. We’ll be ready to go as soon as the others come back.” His voice was as stiff as his posture.
“How long have they been gone?” Hers, too.
“The scouts, a few hours. The hunters, too. Crystali and Nakomi have been gone since just before you woke.” They sat in awkward silence until Nakomi bounded through the forest, shaking the trees as she went by. Crystali followed at a distance, and Kazia wanted to leap for joy at the sight of someone besides Luke to ease the tension. They saddled the horses and were just setting off when Benjamin and Heath came back. Kazia didn’t look at what they were carrying. She didn’t like to kill innocent things. It made her stomach and her heart hurt.
“Let’s move. The scouts are ahead of us now,” Luke said. Kazia wondered how he knew, but she wasn’t going to ask him. She was still furious and more than a little hurt. The horse swayed back and forth like a rocking chair, lulling her into a peaceful half-awareness, which was wonderful except that her brain was running much faster than her horse, and having Luke so near might just be driving her batty. She wanted to hit him with something big. Maybe a tree branch. Or the whole tree. At the same time, she couldn’t stand the thought of him hurt. Stupid, confused heart.
She had been willing to give up everything for him — and he wouldn’t even risk his career. Being captain was the most important thing in his family, and it always would be. She just needed to keep repeating that over and over in her head — remember your place in his priorities — it’s near the bottom. The only problem was that she had a million questions she wanted to ask — the most important being, did you ever love me? Or was I just fun to pass the time with? But asking him that would mean he would answer her, and she was pretty sure the answer would hurt.
Oh, but she had loved him. She had always loved him. The biggest problem was that she had never stopped loving him, even when she had made her life in the corner of the castle as far away from him as possible. In the last three years, since he’d told her to leave, she’d only seen him a handful of times, and spoken to him rarely. And she’d been okay with that. It hadn’t hurt, much, to pretend to be merely acquaintances. To pretend to herself that they were what he thought them to be.
“Princess Kazia.” Someone nudged her and her eyes snapped open.
“What!” she gasped.
“You were falling off your horse. Do you need to stop?” Benjamin asked. Heath rode on her other side, one arm out like he could catch her single handedly if she fell.
Well, that was embarrassing. “No, I’m fine. How long have I been out?”
“A few hours, as far as I can tell.” Benjamin smirked, and in the darkness she could see Heath was also grinning. She squinted, but in the thick trees it was hard to tell how far dawn was. Luke pulled up, falling back to ride beside her, simultaneously pushing Heath to the rear. “What’s wrong?”
“Princess Kazia fell asleep.”
His eyes snapped to her face and she stifled a groan. “I’m fine.”
“We’ll stop here for the morning,” he called.
“Honestly, Captain, I’m fine.”
He didn’t look at her, and the rest of them stopped their horses and busied themselves making a temporary camp. Benjamin helped Kazia down, and she wandered away from him, trying to stretch her legs, Nakomi by her side. She didn’t realize she was out of ear shot of the others until Luke was suddenly at her elbow. “You used to be such a smart girl, Kazia. What happened?” he growled, leading her back toward the fire. She jerked her arm away.
“I walked twenty feet away, Captain. And I have a wolf the size of a horse with me. I think I’m okay,” she snarled back at him.
“Okay, out with it.”
She frowned, her tirade cut frustratingly short. “What?”
“Yell. Tell me how much you hate me. Tell me I broke your heart. We have to work together, Kazia, so you need to get over this.”
She jerked her chin in, wishing for a little light so he could see how hard she was glaring at him right then. “I need to get over this? Are you kidding me?”
He ran his hand through his short-cropped hair. “I handled it badly. I’m sorry. What do you need, closure?”
“What do I — what?” She dropped her hands to her hips, letting Nakomi edge between them. Otherwise, she was pretty
sure she would hit him. “What I need is to get to Abeta so I can marry Prince Randolf and be crowned queen and put this all behind me.”
“And you really think marrying him is going to solve your problems? You’ve never even met him!”
“Don’t you yell at me, Captain,” she screeched, and with a monumental effort, lowered her voice as well. “He is kind. If I have to spend the rest of my life with someone, there are many things worse than kind,” she hissed at him.
He paced back and forth on the other side of Nakomi. “Kazia…” He trailed off and she crossed her arms over her chest, waiting, trying not to look for blunt objects to attack him with. “We were friends. Just a few days ago, we were friends. Why can’t we go back to that?” he finally said, turning toward her.
“Fine. We’re friends. Let’s move out before the sun comes up.” She went to brush past him but he stopped her.
“Kazia, wait.” His hand on her arm shook, and she looked up at him in shock, but this far away from the fire it was too dark to see any expression on his face. “I thought I was doing the right thing — that night I told you we shouldn’t talk anymore.”
“Yes, Captain. You’ve mentioned. Heaven help us if your career had been at all jeopardized,” she snapped.
“No, for you.” Suddenly he didn’t sound like the formidable Captain of the Royal Guard. He sounded young and frightened. “I thought I was doing the right thing for you. I knew… I knew how you felt. I didn’t want you to give up the throne, not for me — if something had happened to Brodi.”
Her jaw dropped as her heart froze in her chest. She forgot to breathe. “You… what?”
He tipped his head back, staring at the canopy of trees above them as if heaven might drop down and save him. “I was worried about my career, yes. But Brodi told me you had asked your father what would happen if you married a commoner. I knew what you were thinking and I couldn’t ask that of you.”
“It was my decision to make, Luke,” she said stiffly, pulling her arm from his grasp.
“I wasn’t worth it, Kazia. I’m still not worth it.”
“Also my decision.”
She started to walk past him but he darted around in front of her. “If it’s your decision, then give me time.”
She shook her head, once, her eyebrows clashing together. “What? Time for what?”
“Don’t marry Randolf, Kazia. Not yet, not until you’re sure it’s the right decision.”
“It’s the smart decision. And nothing has changed. Everything that you decided wouldn’t work then? It’s still a problem now. It would risk your career and my claim to the crown.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I know. I just… I can’t watch you marry him. Not if you think you should be with me.”
Her heart stopped again and she sucked in a breath. “Why? Why are you doing this now? After all these years, you decide you want me when we’re a few hours from my fiancé’s kingdom?” So close. She was so close to tears she could feel them burning the back of her throat, and she had to call on her assassin strength to keep them at bay. I will not cry.
“I’ve never been this close to losing you completely, Kazia.” His voice cracked and he grabbed her hand again, tugging her closer. “I never stopped loving you. I didn’t stop watching for you whenever I was close enough to the castle that I might see you. I knew you were betrothed and I thought I was okay with it, but I’m not. Especially not now when I finally, finally got you back in my life.”
Kazia resisted the urge to pull her hair out. Everything she had waited all these years for him to say, and he said it now, when she had no choice but to marry Randolf. “Luke, maybe before — before Brodi was…killed,” she choked on the word, “there might have been a chance for us. I wasn’t going to be queen. I wouldn’t inherit the crown. But now, this decision is bigger than us. The kingdom is on my shoulders.” Even her hidden strength failed her now, and the tears she’d been fighting won. She was grateful for the darkness that hid them.
But he reached a gentle finger up and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Just give me time, Kazia. That’s all I ask.” He leaned toward her, and she was powerless to stop him. She could never tell him no. But the screams were a different matter.
CHAPTER NINE
SHE SPUN, RACING WITH NAKOMI toward the fire, Luke in front of them. The makeshift camp was overrun with bandits — lots of them. Kazia shrieked as Benjamin fought with one right in front of her, lopping the man’s hand off with a sweeping arc of his sword. The hand flew past her face and landed in the dirt behind her and she screamed again.
“Kazia get behind me!” Luke leaped in front of her, sword already drawn. Kazia cowered behind Nakomi, who stood between her and Luke and everything else in the world. Kazia’s desperate eyes searched for Crystali, just spying her across the camp, protected by three of Kazia’s guards. Safe, for the moment. Luke swung his heavy broadsword like it was a toy, moving so gracefully it looked like a grotesque dance as blood spurted from the wounds he caused. But there were too many and he couldn’t keep them all away from her. Two men got by him while he fought three others, and Nakomi reared up, a growl erupting from her throat as foam splattered the men in front of her. One screamed — his shriek rivaling Kazia’s — before stumbling backward, but the other pressed on, his eyes on Kazia. “Look at what a pretty little thing we have here, hiding behind her overgrown puppy.” He leered at her, scars crisscrossing his face. The years had not been kind, clearly, and yet he had survived them — which meant he was dangerous. She whimpered and backed away.
“Kazia!” Luke yelled, but he couldn’t get to her; none of her guards could. It was like it was planned. Her eyes snapped to the man’s face. “Who — who sent you?”
He blinked in surprise, but she had caught him. He wasn’t a bandit — none of them were bandits. Like Benjamin had said, they would have to be insane to attack the Royal Guard and Nakomi. Someone had sent them to kill her.
“Please — you don’t have to do this!” she cried, holding her hand out.
“No, I don’t have to, but I’m going to enjoy it.”
She screeched, unintelligibly, as he lunged forward. Nakomi barked, a great, roaring bark that echoed through the camp, and leaped at the man. She caught his arm in her mouth and jerked her head. The man screamed as his arm broke and then ripped, landing near Kazia with his sword still clutched in his hand. She shrieked and flinched away. But the second man, the one who had run from Nakomi, attacked from behind, slashing his dagger down, driving it into Nakomi’s flank. The great wolf howled in pain, and turned on him, but he had his sword out, swinging it at Nakomi, as three others joined him, driving her back toward the other assassins. She snarled, snapping at their swords, breaking two clean in half before the third got her in the neck, and still she fought. She would fight to the very end, Kazia knew. But she couldn’t let that happen. She dove for the man’s fallen sword and leaped to Nakomi’s defense. The man slashed his sword down at Nakomi’s muzzle just as Kazia brought hers up. They hit with a clang that made her arm ache but she was so angry she barely noticed. She spun, swinging the sword hard. The man parried but Nakomi lunged and he couldn’t fight both of them. Kazia let Nakomi take care of him as she whirled on the man closest to her.
“Kazia get out of here!” Luke screamed, but she ignored him. Parry, parry thrust, parry parry thrust, move your feet, little one. She could hear Brodi in her head, drilling her over and over. She darted between two bandits, leaping over one dead body, and watched as they killed each other for her. Nakomi lunged past her, snarling, and she whirled in time to see the giant wolf attack another man she hadn’t seen coming. Pay attention, princess. They aren’t going to wait for you to say ready. She sucked in a breath, throwing her sword up to block an incoming attack, ducking as he swung a dagger with his other hand. The rest of the camp ceased to exist, and she focused on this one attack, this one defense, listening to her brother’s voice in her head. She was nicked a couple of times but she didn�
��t feel it. Now, little one. She drew her hand back and thrust the sword, wincing as it slid into the man’s belly, then she jerked it out with a sickening squelch. He fell to the ground and she watched as his body rattled, but another came and she leaped out of the way. He tripped over his dying comrade and she attacked from behind. He fell and lay still as another man hurdled his body, coming straight for her. She reached up, wrenching the knives out of her braids, and threw them at once, hitting him in each eye. He, too, fell under her onslaught and lay screaming, clawing at the blades until he suddenly moved no more. She stormed over, jerking her knives free. They were too good to be stained by his filthy blood.
“Kazia! Kazia, are you alright?” Luke was diving over the bodies on the ground, and her eyes finally focused. Many, many bodies.
“Any of ours?” she whispered.
“No, none of ours.” His hands on either side of her face, he searched for injuries, moving from the top of her head down. “You’ve been hit! I’m so sorry, Kazia. I failed you. I’m so sorry,” he was whispering over and over, but her eyes took in the blood soaking her dress, flowing in rivulets down her arm, and she knew as soon as the assassin retreated backward into her head, she would feel the pain. But for now, there was nothing. She couldn’t hear anymore, either, and she slowly dropped her sword to the ground. “Nakomi’s hurt,” she mumbled. Ah, yes, now she felt her strength settling back where it waited until she needed it. The pain returned. The energy buzzing through her veins faded and she moaned. This was always the worst part — when the assassin left her and she was just the weak, sickly princess again.
“She’s in shock. Wrap her wounds, get me a blanket!” Luke was yelling orders, but it was fuzzy.
“Where’s Nakomi?” Her wolf nudged Kazia’s hand with her big head. “Oh, there you are. Luke, she’s hurt.”
“I know, Kazia. I know, little princess. We’ll fix her. She’ll be fine. Just stay here. Stay with me.” She frowned at him, wondering where, exactly, he thought she was going to go. Especially lying down. It took her several seconds to figure out how she had ended up on the ground, because the last she remembered, she had been standing.
Shattered Assassin Page 8