by Linde, K. A.
He passed it to Kerrigan, and she held it reverently.
“So… do you think it was a robbery?” she asked, eyes wide.
He stood from where he had been digging through the dirt. “I’m not sure. If it was done quickly in the middle of the night, a robber might have seen the glint of his compass and come after him.”
“But then why wouldn’t they have taken it?”
“Why indeed?”
Kerrigan sighed in frustration. More questions. No answers. “This feels like a dead end.”
“At least you got his compass back.”
She bit her lip. “Yes, thank you for that.”
He nodded but remained silent as she turned away from him and pressed the compass against her chest. Lyam was really gone. He was gone, and she would never know who had killed him. Never know if her hunch was correct because this was a dead end and she had no more moves. And gods, she shouldn’t even be worrying about this right now. She had to figure out what to do about a tribe. She only had three weeks now before this was all over, and then she would have to give up on the life she had always wanted.
She loosed a breath and turned back to Fordham. “Why are you helping me?”
“I already told you,” he said stiffly.
“Yeah, a favor for a favor. But you’ve been nothing but cruel to me since you arrived. I wouldn’t think you’d want to sully yourself with my presence.”
“You helped me despite my behavior toward you,” he said coolly. “Why shouldn’t I help you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t figure you out.”
“Perhaps you should cease trying.”
Kerrigan huffed. “Fine. Do we have time for one more stop?”
“After you,” he offered.
* * *
“Breaking and entering was not on my list of things to do today,” Fordham growled low behind her.
“Mine either,” Kerrigan said as she twisted the handle and heard it open with a satisfying click.
“Remind me again why you’re doing this.”
“Ellerby was supposed to pick me for his tribe. We’d had it worked out for months,” she explained, pushing the door open slightly. Then, she waved him in behind her. “He was there the day of my ceremony, and then right before my turn, he just left.”
“So?”
“So, it’s suspicious. And I want to ask him why.”
“So, you’re breaking into his home?” he asked in dismay.
“Someone should be here. Why didn’t anyone answer?”
“Maybe he’s out?” Fordham suggested reasonably.
Kerrigan rolled her eyes. “Ellerby?” she called into the house from the small foyer.
He lived just off the Row in a sprawling townhouse that she had visited before and adored. She’d thought very fondly about taking up residence within this place at one point.
“Hello, Ellerby. Are you home? It’s me, Kerrigan.”
No one answered. In fact, it was eerily quiet.
“Kerrigan,” Fordham said softly. He pointed to a side table by the front door. A stack of letters sat unopened, tied together with a bow, as if they were all going to have to be sent on elsewhere. “I don’t think anyone is home… at all.”
She frowned. That made no sense. Had Ellerby gone back to Elsiande? He’d talked fondly of his home, but he’d never made it seem like he preferred the stuffy anti-magic south to a life in the city. He only went back on rare occasions. She could count the number of times in the last year on one hand. Without a dragon, travel was perilous. Most people only did it for large events or trade.
“You seem good with clues,” she told Fordham. “Could you…” She waved her hand at the letters.
“You want me to go through his mail?”
“Does that offend your princeling sensibilities?”
He scoffed, “You are a wicked little thing.”
She couldn’t help herself, she smiled.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to look around.” And then Kerrigan tiptoed through Ellerby’s house.
The tiptoeing ended up being pointless. It was truly deserted. Not a soul in sight. It didn’t look like anyone had even been inside to clean or tend to anything, except the mail. There were even dirty plates in the kitchen. Ashes in the fireplaces. The beds were unmade. The dressers had been thrown open, all the clothes were gone, and it looked like someone had left in a serious hurry.
Why in the gods’ name would he have rushed out of town so fast?
Kerrigan crossed her arms and looked around in confusion. Something was wrong here. She could feel it all the way through her body. A tingling sensation, like if she just looked, she would find all the answers. But it didn’t make sense. She had no answers.
In fact, it was even more frustrating than just assuming Ellerby had changed his mind. Because if he had changed his mind, then he’d run out of town in a hurry after he did it.
She was about to walk back down the stairs to see if Fordham had found anything when she heard a faint creak of the wood floor.
“Hello?” she asked uncertainly.
And then a shadow surged out of the darkness, brandishing an all-too-familiar knife.
Kerrigan saw the knife coming toward her, just as it had in her vision, and everything slowed to a crawl. She had thought that it had to do with the tournament, but it had come to this moment.
All of Kerrigan’s carefully honed instincts clicked into place from years of training in the House of Dragons, coupled with the last year in the Dragon Ring. She should have been frightened. Even terrified. Instead, she kicked into high gear, dodging the edge of the knife. The tip of it barely grazed her arm. Still, she hissed and pulled back from the shadow.
She didn’t know who this person was, but they were fast and clearly ruthless. How they’d gotten into Ellerby’s home without her knowing was a mystery. Not to mention, they were cleverly disguised—dressed head to toe in black fighting garb with a black mask obscuring most of their facial features. They were just a nameless, faceless monster.
“What do you want?” Kerrigan spat at the person.
But they didn’t respond. They just moved in quick, like a viper, and struck. Kerrigan pulled up her magic in time, trying to block their approach, but the person sliced right through her shield, as if it were made of butter.
Kerrigan faltered at that, letting her guard down for one painful second. And then the person was in her space, thrusting the dagger toward her. Kerrigan tried to twist out of the way of the weapon, but she was too slow and the knife plunged through her shoulder.
She cried out in shock and pain. While she’d averted a killing blow, searing pain still coursed through her body, and she saw double as the agony wrecked her, disabling her reflexes. The assassin became a blur. She could hardly concentrate on them. She’d been beaten to within an inch of her life. She should have been able to process through a little stab through the shoulder, but somehow, she just couldn’t. She had blocked out the memory of that pain so thoroughly that this blindsided her.
Then, to her horror, the person did something worse.
They wrenched the knife out of her shoulder.
She saw black. Thought she was going to pass out. Gods, she couldn’t just collapse. This was what she had trained for.
“Who… are you?” Kerrigan croaked as she watched her own death loom before her eyes.
“No one,” the throaty, female voice said before bringing the blade back down to end it all.
24
The Assassin
A wave of dark power flooded the bedroom, and both Kerrigan and her assailant were blasted off their feet. Kerrigan collided with Ellerby’s bed. Her head hit the metal post with a resounding clang. She groaned and tried to focus on what was happening in front of her. The assassin had landed in front of the balcony doors, her blade flung wide. With the light from the fading sun, Kerrigan could see that the girl was younger than she had appeared in shadow. And to Kerrigan�
��s surprise, the girl was already getting to her feet, leaning down in a crouch, and glaring at who had just attacked her.
“I’ve come to finish what I started,” the girl hissed at them. “You will not stop me.”
“Won’t I?” a sinister voice growled back.
It took Kerrigan’s addled brain a second to realize what had happened. That Fordham stood in the doorway, wreathed in a full black cloak of darkness, the same incredible shadow that had made his grand entrance in the arena. Kerrigan blinked, momentarily mesmerized by it. She didn’t know if it was just her mind playing tricks on her. She hadn’t thought of that darkness since that day, certainly hadn’t thought of how he could use it against his enemies.
Scales.
“Finish what you started?” Kerrigan croaked.
“The boy was in my way,” the girl hissed, tugging her dark hood over her face.
Kerrigan’s heart broke into a million pieces. This was Lyam’s killer. She had been right. It hadn’t been some accidental murder. The assassin had been for her, and Lyam had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Fordham lashed out with a rope of flame this time, a tendril of red that slashed around the girl’s leg and dragged her back to the ground. Beneath the mask, her eyes widened in alarm and a flash of pain. But she didn’t even cry out. As if fire was no match for her. She easily maneuvered away, and as soon as she was free, she wrenched open the balcony doors and slipped outside.
Fordham flung himself after her. But in the span of a few heartbeats, the girl had already scaled the far wall and disappeared out the back.
He came back inside, cursing vividly. “Who the hell was that?”
“Lyam’s killer,” Kerrigan croaked as she tried to get to her feet.
Then, the memory of all her pain came crashing back down around her and she fell back in a heap on the floor once more.
“Gods, you’re injured,” he said, crouching before her.
“She stabbed me… in the shoulder,” Kerrigan said, pulling back her cloak to reveal the wound beyond.
Fordham inspected it, thoroughly and efficiently with little compassion. She winced through the entire thing.
“How’d you do that?”
“What?”
“That black smoke… it’s what you used to get into the tournament.”
“Family secret,” he said through gritted teeth. “You need to see a healer. This is beyond basic battlefield healing.”
“Battlefield healing?” she asked, her vision swimming again.
“Never mind.” Fordham stood and rummaged through the closet, pulling out an old bedsheet. He tore it precisely into strips. Then, he carefully wrapped her shoulder to try to stanch the bleeding and secured a makeshift sling for her arm. “There. Can you stand?”
“Um…”
Fordham put his arm around her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. Kerrigan groaned at the pain, even with the bandages and sling.
“My… head hit the bedpost.”
He ran his hand through the mass of curly hair until Kerrigan yelped in pain. “Yeah, you have a knot. Let’s get you back to the mountain.”
“No,” she said right away.
“No?”
“The Wastes.”
He looked at her skeptically. “The mountain has healers. You need to be seen immediately. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“I know. The Wastes have healers, and they’re closer. Also”—she moved uneasily toward the balcony doors, where she bent down and retrieved the discarded knife—“I have a friend I want to ask about this.”
* * *
“This isn’t a good idea,” Fordham growled low as they approached the entrance to the crime lord’s lair.
“Probably not,” Kerrigan conceded.
But she didn’t have another choice. By the time they reached the Wastes, she could barely walk. She never would have been able to reach the mountain in time. Unfortunately, she’d have to put her health in Dozan Rook’s hands once more.
“Remind me why I decided to help you again.”
“I have no idea. This was your idea.”
He rolled his eyes. “I am never doing a favor for anyone ever again. Certainly not a halfling.”
The words have none of his venom though. They were almost friendly. Or maybe he was just trying to keep her mad so she wouldn’t pass out.
Kerrigan rolled her eyes. “Just get me inside, princeling. I can do the rest.”
He shot her a distrustful look. “Why was there an assassin after you anyway?”
“If I’d known, do you think I would have let them stab me?”
“Let them stab you? That’s an eloquent way of putting the scene when I walked in and saved your ass.”
“I would have been fine.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you always this overconfident?”
“Yes, she is,” a voice said, appearing at the entrance to the Wastes. A dark and broody crime lord, wearing the black and red of his establishment and a frown of displeasure.
“Dozan,” she croaked.
His eyes trailed down her body, where she clung to Fordham for support, then to the prince of the House of Shadows. She could tell he was not pleased, but he could shove it for all she cared. Word must have traveled fast for him to be here at the entrance when she turned up.
“What have you done with my fighting champion?” he asked Fordham.
Fordham’s eyebrows rose at that. “Fighting champion?”
“I’ll tell you all about it after I don’t have a hole in my shoulder,” she grumbled. “Dozan, this is Fordham. Fordham, this is Dozan. He runs the place and is a kind, magnanimous figure, who is going to get me a healer for this gods-damned shoulder.”
Dozan quirked a half-smile at the introduction. He was far from kind or magnanimous. He was ruthless, irritable, and unyielding, and he hated being bossed around. He always had. Even five years ago, when he’d first brought her back to the Wastes to find her a healer after… after everything. Her heart twisted at that. She still didn’t know why he hadn’t left her for dead that first time. He got power out of the equation, but she’d offered nothing when she lay mangled and bloody on the ground.
Dozan raised an eyebrow at Fordham. “You can leave Red here, and we’ll take care of her.”
To Kerrigan’s surprise, Fordham’s grip on her tightened. “I think I’ll take her to the healer myself.” His voice held bite and possessiveness. Even his posture straightened.
She knew Dozan well enough that if he kept this up, a fight would break out, and she really didn’t have the time. This was about that absurd authority that men had to push against to see who was the alpha among them. If she wasn’t injured and half-falling over, she would hit them both up the side of the head.
“Stab wound, remember?” she said through gritted teeth. “Can we not do this right now?”
Dozan set his jaw. The look he gave her said that someone was going to pay for this later. But she was as stubborn as he was and didn’t care about the cost.
“Follow me,” he said tightly.
Then, the crowd parted for him in the Wastes and they moved past a bar full of regulars, girls in scandalously clad dresses who winked at Fordham as they passed, and past the stairs that led to level after level of debauchery far below. And at the center, on the very bottom floor, was the Dragon Ring. Even this high up, she could hear the cheers of the crowd, their thirst for blood. It made her skin tingle with want.
They didn’t head down. No, they headed up to Dozan’s quarters. The only area that actually existed up. No one was higher than Dozan Rook.
Kerrigan stumbled over the first few stairs. Her feet kept getting stuck under her. Blood loss? She didn’t know, but she felt sluggish and clumsy.
Fordham reached for her, and she held up her hand unsteadily. “I can walk.”
He sighed as if it were a great inconvenience and then hoisted her into his arms despite her protests. It hadn’t been that long ago that Dozan wa
s the one carrying her through the Wastes after her fight with Basem. It felt like an eternity ago.
No one seemed to care about her protests to walk. Dozan opened a door and gestured for Fordham to put her inside. It was stark with nothing but a small pallet and a wash tin nearby. Fordham laid her down onto the bed, which was surprisingly comfortable. Her head lolled back. She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until everything finally stopped and she didn’t have to try anymore. She could just lie here and breathe. Maybe sleep.
There was a muffled argument that ensued while she tried to get her bearings, and she only caught pieces of it.
“I won’t leave her alone with you.”
“You don’t have much choice.”
“I can take her back to the mountain.”
“If you were going to do that, then you wouldn’t have even come here.”
“She wanted to come here, not me.”
“Then trust her judgment.”
“Hers… not yours.”
“Only at your own peril.” There was a soft pause. “And apparently, hers tonight.”
“Just get her a healer.”
And then, the strange conversation drifted off. Kerrigan felt like she was floating off and away. Everything went very fuzzy around the edges. What felt like minutes or maybe hours later, another man appeared in the room. He wore the red vest and black slacks of one of Dozan’s men, but he didn’t look like one of Dozan’s. He looked serene and calm. Clearly Fae, but he must not have been part of a tribe to be working for Dozan now.
“What are you?” she whispered, reaching up with her uninjured arm toward him.
“My name is Amond,” he said. “Now, lie back and stay still.”
Kerrigan did what he’d told her and waited for the slow work on the healing to take effect. Then, Amond pulled a glowing blue light out of thin air, and Kerrigan’s eyes widened in shock.
“What are you doing?” She jolted up at the sight.
