by K. A. Linde
“Ah, still not a broken dog yet?” she teased.
“What do you want?” His tone was savage.
“No humor for me? I know it’s underneath all this.” She gestured to his form. “Surely, you could at least give me a smile.”
He did nothing of the sort. He just snarled at her. More beast than man. Even though she was allowing him into this form. He knew she’d allowed it because he couldn’t manage it without her permission.
“Fine,” Malysa said on a sigh. “I’m sending you to Kell with Wara. She’s Braj and an assassin, but I think it’d be better to send a pack with her as well. There’re some dissenters there. I’d like to clear them out.” She looked at her fingernails. “They’re bothering me.”
He knew that he didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t a request. It was a command.
“Is that all?” he asked.
“Don’t act like you don’t enjoy it,” she said with a smile that was almost endearing. She rose to her feet and strode toward him. She came to his nose but seemed to tower over him. She gripped his chin in her hand. “You’re so much more now, Ahlvie. You’re not an insufferable human with a polluted bloodline. You’re of my creation.”
“I do not enjoy killing people. Whatever your politics,” he spat.
She grinned. “But the beast does. And how different are you two really?”
“Utterly,” he said even though he knew she only wanted to get a rise out of him. “And who enjoys forced servitude?”
She slapped him, and his head snapped to the side. His cheek burned from her hand. So much more forceful than her small frame.
“If you were strong enough, you could break my hold,” she taunted him as she had so many times before. “But you’re not. And you know why?”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t even look at her.
“Because you don’t really want to.”
He did. He wanted to. She had no idea.
“Where does it all end?” he bit out.
“With me ridding this world of all those who claim to be Doma and ruling over all just as I deserve.”
He heard her sink down into the chair once more.
He turned back to her. His gold eyes glowing with fury. “I guess no one ever loved you.”
A flare of anger rose in her dark eyes and then disappeared. “One person did. Benetta loved me, and then she chose humans. She chose them over me. No one will ever make that mistake again.”
34
The Guild
“Are you sure about this?” Cyrene asked Kaliana for the tenth time.
She just nodded with a small smile on her face. “This is where I belong. Here with Thiago and Alessia.”
“Don’t you think you would be safer with us?”
Kaliana laughed. “If leaving showed me anything, it’s that I am much safer here for now. I was born to be a queen. But I think this is the only place I’ve found any sort of happiness. I’d like to hold on to that as long as I can.”
Cyrene wrapped her arms around the woman she now considered a friend. She realized that she would miss Kaliana.
“I will work on the others though,” Kaliana assured her. “Try to get you some more magic users.”
“Thank you,” Cyrene said. Their eyes met when she pulled back. And Cyrene saw the mutual respect mirrored on Kaliana’s face. “Be safe.”
“You too,” Kaliana said, squeezing her hand.
Cyrene stepped back, nodded once at Thiago, and returned to Sarielle. She took off, leaving Fen behind. Dean was waiting in Aonia. He’d wanted to look around some more while she was returning Kaliana. Cyrene was glad to have the moment alone with her dragon.
Cyrene leaned forward against her side and stroked leisurely. “I can’t believe I lost Shadowbreaker.”
You did not lose it. It was stolen from you. And you will get it back.
“Yes,” she easily agreed with Sarielle. She would get it back. “You made quite an entrance.”
It was my pleasure.
Cyrene snorted. “I believe we’ll need quite a bit more of that before this is all over.”
That human man was a fool for disrespecting you so, Sarielle said of Killian. I still think we should go back and teach him a lesson.
“As much as I’d love to, we have more important things to do.”
Hopefully, I’ll get to burn something this time.
Cyrene just laughed. Sarielle was always there with her bravado to lift her spirits. Two wild hearts united.
Sarielle dropped in low to Aonia and found Dean and Halcyon near the portal. Dean helped her down from Sarielle’s back.
“No luck convincing her?” he asked.
She shook her head. “She wants to stay with the baby. We continue on alone.”
“I suspected as much.”
“Find anything that you were looking for?”
He shook his head. “No, I was trying to see if I could figure out what kind of curse Malysa put on the Mirror of Truth.”
“Did you look in it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Once was enough for a lifetime.”
“Do you want to wait another day before we move on? Try to do some more research?”
“We already lost too much time to Killian. We can’t afford it.”
She knew he was right, but she could see his interest plain as day.
“And don’t ask me to stay behind,” he said keenly.
“I learned my lesson,” she said with a grin as she removed the portaling coin from her pocket and worked her magic to change the destination. Then she tossed it to Dean. “Take us to Isola.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You trust me to portal us?”
“I do,” she said simply. “Also, we’re probably going to trip an alarm of some sort. We did last time we went to Kell and were kidnapped by assassins.”
Dean’s eyes rounded. “You never told me that.”
She shrugged. “The Guild runs The Triangle—Kell, Mastira, and Harthrow. They’re sanctioned killers by the governments of the countries. They also have magic. Though even they wouldn’t call it that. It’s a bastardized form of it but effective.”
“Why exactly do we want their help again?”
“Because we need everyone we can get against Malysa.”
He nodded and moved toward the portal. What she didn’t say was that she had no idea if she could trust anyone in Kell. She wanted to believe that she could, but she’d been betrayed on that mountainside in the Drop Pass. They’d beaten the Guild but only barely, and Avoca had been in a coma for months after that. Cyrene wasn’t sure just the pair of them would be enough if it came to a fistfight. Which was why she was hoping to get in and out before that ever happened.
But then Dean opened the portal, and the familiar ruins of Isola appeared before them. She didn’t have time to think about all the what-ifs. She trusted her gut. It had gotten her this far.
She reached for her magic and followed Dean into another world. Sarielle and Halcyon moved through the portal behind them. Everyone was silent. Waiting for the moment when the wards would be tripped and told the Guild that strangers were in their midst…on their sacred grounds.
Cyrene gestured to Dean with two fingers to the exit. They crept to the door and ducked their heads out the front. Two guards were striding toward them, powerful and unrelenting. Cyrene jerked back and raised her eyebrows. Dean just grinned and winked.
Then the two Guild members walked into the ruined portal room.
Cyrene lashed out, swirling air around their faces to keep them from yelling out and sucking the life out of them both. Dean moved forward like lightning, jabbing the first Guild member in the throat. The woman dropped, and Dean barely caught her before she could make a noise. While he discarded her, Cyrene watched the other Guild member’s eyes roll to the back of his head as she took enough air to make him pass out but not kill him.
Dean tied both of their hands and feet and dumped them out of view. Cyrene frowned. She wondered if that w
ould be enough for Guild members who were trained fighters and used to having to escape difficult situations.
Cyrene knew that they’d had the element of surprise or else the fight would have been much worse. She narrowed her eyes and leaned into the magic of her diamond. She needed a way to keep them knocked out until they got out of here. She didn’t want to just walk away and have them raise another alarm.
A solution appeared to her. She didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it before. It wasn’t something she had ever done before. But it was similar. She hoped it worked.
She delved into her magic, drawing up from her reserves. It worried her how much she had to pull up. She’d found the bottom of her magic before, and the last thing she wanted was to get there right when she was about to face the Guild. Luckily, the reserves were fine. For now.
Then she used the four elements together. Weaving them into a pattern she had only seen done in Fen with her friends and all the Ancient Ones linked. And now, she was doing it herself.
She placed the invisible bubble around the pair of unconscious Guild members. She modified it to fit their bodies. She didn’t want to be able to let anyone in or out of that space for at least a few hours. Not indefinitely. That was as good as killing them. And the added effort of putting a time constraint on it pulled deeper from her powers. This wasn’t something she could do all the time. But it was necessary right now.
She took a deep breath and then let the small dome snap into place. Her head felt dizzy when it was finished, and she stumbled a step forward. Dean was there in an instant, holding her up.
His eyes were wide. “What did you just do?”
She shook her head. “I…I created a shield. Trapping them inside.”
“How the hell did you know how to do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve done something similar before.” She looked up at him as color returned to her cheeks, and she regained her balance. “I just knew.”
He probed the encasing. “Effective. Though that was a lot of magic, Cyrene.”
“I’ll be okay.”
He nodded, but his face was severe. “Eat something before we go.”
“Let’s just get out of here. I’ll eat when we’re safe.”
He looked uncertain.
“I still have plenty of magic. We can make it just fine.”
“All right. Let’s go find out who is missing their scouts.”
They left Sarielle and Halcyon behind, wanting to make sure the way was clear before flying out of Isola. Since the ancient Leif city was sacred ground for the Guild, it was almost guaranteed that someone would be up here. It was where Cyrene had first met the Commander. Her feelings about him were all tangled up. He’d kidnapped her, then let her and her friends escape, and then betrayed her. He was an enigma. And yet, she needed his help. His rogue band of Guild were worth a hundred foot soldiers. Even if they didn’t understand magic like she did.
They continued forward, moving through the ruins with ease, surprised that she hadn’t seen anyone else. In fact, that made her nervous. They were assassins after all. They were not supposed to be seen in the light of day. But she didn’t feel like she was being followed.
And suddenly, her senses went on high alert. She dragged Dean to a stop. He looked at her with curious eyes.
She gestured to the right.
“How many?” he whispered.
She concentrated, extending her powers to sense the strength of Doma users. The Guild might believe that they weren’t using magic, but she could feel it in them regardless. Her net widened and widened, and she counted as she went. Her eyes widening in turn.
“Fifty,” she breathed. “Maybe more.”
Dean cursed and shook his head. “Can we take fifty?”
She grimaced. “I don’t want to find out.”
“Let’s just take a peek and see why there are so many together. Then we can get the dragons and go,” Dean suggested.
She nodded and lightly stepped forward, using her energy to mask any sound they might make through the brush. Now that she could sense their abilities, it made it much easier to skirt their patrols. She had a lock on their powers. She was an enemy they couldn’t have predicted.
And as she drew closer, the intensity of their powers nearly took her breath away. It was insane that they had hamstringed themselves so thoroughly because they were some of the most powerful magical users she had come across in Emporia. Honing their craft had heightened their powers even if they didn’t use them properly. But there was one in particular that radiated energy. Whoever it was, they were clearly the most powerful person here, save herself and Dean.
She bit her lip as she continued to navigate the maze of ruins, angling toward the largest still-erect building in Isola. She sure hoped that it wasn’t the Honorary with that sort of power. The woman was the leader of the Guild and as evil as Malysa. Or at least…nearly as evil. She did not want to go up against the person with that particular brand of magic.
Then they were upon the building. Cyrene could sense patrols at both entrances and at least two guards patrolling in a circle around the building. Not good odds.
“Maybe we should go back,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “We need to find out what they’re doing. It can’t be good for us if they’ve gathered like this.”
She knew he was right. But it made her uneasy.
They waited for the patrol to pass by their location and then hurried into the shadows of the ruined building. Cyrene cast a wide net around their position to let her know when the next patrol came within distance.
Then she peered in through what must have once been a window.
And found the Commander on his knees before the Honorary.
It was not the Honorary blazing bright with power.
But the Commander.
A knife was angled toward the Commander’s throat. The Honorary tipping his chin up so that she could see into those churning gray eyes that Cyrene had admired so.
“You are accused of working against Guild law. How do you plead?”
The Commander smiled. “I work against you. Not Guild law.”
Cocky, arrogant son of a—
He had a knife at his throat and laughed at her. It was just like him. But, with that much magic, he had the advantage. But did he know that he was so much more powerful than everyone else? Cyrene didn’t see how he could know.
The Honorary cut into him deeper. “You dare accuse me while you kneel at my feet?”
“I don’t fear you,” he said boldly. “You have dishonored everything we have worked toward. Everything we have built. My death would just mean one more slight against us. Against the code and our honor and the law you act as if you hold up.”
“Silence,” the Honorary shouted.
The rest of the crowd bristled. As if the Commander’s words hit home.
“You are a lying, manipulative bastard,” the Honorary spat at him. “You defile our order. And still believe that you can discuss honor. You have no honor.”
He grinned. “I am a lying, manipulative bastard. That is what you made me, Joselie.”
The Honorary’s eyes rounded to the size of saucers. Then she reared back and punched him in the face. His lip split, and blood trickled down his chin.
“How dare you!” she spat. But her hand was trembling.
Joselie must have been her true name. Names were valuable among the Guild. It held power. And he had just taken it from her.
The rest of the watching Guild whispered at her name. No longer the Honorary in their mind. But Joselie. Just a woman. Just like any other assassin.
The Commander spat blood onto the floor. “Names are currency. Perhaps you shouldn’t have given me yours in that night of passion so many years ago.”
Joselie narrowed her eyes and then readied herself to strike. To land that final blow.
But a man to her left halted her movement. “He does not belong to us,” he said. “We must wait for the one.”
Joselie punched the Commander one more time and then stepped back to speak with the other man. The slight was clear. You’re not even worth me paying attention to. But the Commander was the winner of that round.
Cyrene’s ward tripped. She grasped Dean’s arm and hauled him away from the building.
“Back to the portal,” she whispered.
He nodded and followed her through the maze until they found Sarielle and Halcyon, pacing irritably as they waited for their return.
“We need to get out of here,” Dean said. “That woman is insane.”
“She is. She tried to kill me when I was last here.” Then she sighed heavily. “But we can’t leave just yet.”
“Why not?”
“Let me explain everything. And then unfortunately, we have to stage a rescue.”
35
The Rescue
I like this plan, Sarielle said from the skies.
Cyrene snorted. “Of course you do. It’s because it’s a stupid plan.”
Those are the best ones, soul sister. Halcyon and Dean will do their parts. Just…be believable.
“That’s half my job,” she muttered down the line. “Just wait for my cue.”
Always.
Cyrene took a deep breath and then stepped around the next patrol and to the entrance of the ruined building. There were two Guild members there, but they were no longer alert. They were talking about who knew what and laughing. So much for the best assassins in the world. She figured that no one was stupid enough to attack fifty Guild members when they were all together.
No one but her.
“Excuse me,” she said with a bright smile.
She’d changed into her prettiest red gown and had Dean braid her hair back out of her face. He had grown up with eleven sisters. He was actually better at braiding than she was. All in all, she knew that she looked good…and like the last person who would make trouble.
The two guards snapped to attention. “Where did you come from?”
“What are you doing here?” the second asked.
“Sorry,” she said, pointing behind her. “I think I got lost. Could either of you help me?”