Born Assassin Saga Box Set

by Jacqueline Pawl

  “I’m his weakness?” she seethes. “I am? Who the hell do you think you are, Calum? Who knocked him out and carved a gash in his back? Who paid three Daughters to slaughter him? Who helped me cheat the Trial in the first place? I’m the only reason he’s not rotting in a box six feet underground!”

  “If he pulls any more stupid stunts like he did with the Rennox, he will be,” he snaps. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch him risk his life for you again, princess.”

  “I never asked him to save me!” she shouts.

  Calum steps forward, his face stricken at her volume. “Mercy, stop yel—”

  She lunges, slashing out with her sword.

  He knocks her blow aside with the limb of the crossbow, but his foot catches on an exposed root and he falls, the back of his head hitting the hard ground. He groans and lifts his crossbow, his fingers fumbling on the trigger.

  Mercy kicks it aside, tightening her grip on her sword. His neck is exposed. One slice to the throat, that’s all it takes. One slice, and Tamriel will be safe.

  Her side explodes with pain as the butt of Calum’s crossbow connects with her bruised ribcage. Distantly, someone shouts, “Calum? Mercy?”

  Calum scrambles to his feet as Mercy clutches her side, wheezing. He levels the bolt at her face. “Go, Mercy. Run, or I swear to the Creator I will put a bolt through your skull, consequences be damned.”

  “You’re lying,” she hisses through clenched teeth. Her ribs are in agony. It aches to breathe.

  “Try me. When Tamriel and the others get here, I’ll tell them you attacked me. You were trying to escape. I fired a bolt to stop you. I didn’t mean to kill you—it was an accident.”

  “Mercy! Calum!” Tamriel’s voice is getting closer. She can hear him and his guards running toward them.

  “You have five seconds to decide,” Calum says. “Run or die.”

  Liselle, if you’re here, now would be a really good time to intervene.

  “Three seconds.”

  Calum’s finger tightens on the trigger.

  Mercy takes a deep breath, her ribs screaming in pain, then turns and bolts.

  Branches whip Mercy’s face and arms as she runs, carving tiny, stinging lashes into her skin. She narrowly avoids twisting an ankle on the uneven ground several times. Inside her boots, the soles of her battered feet become slick with blood from the cuts which haven’t yet healed.

  Everything blurs into flashes of color around her: emerald green leaves, dark tree trunks, pink and red and yellow flowers, rich, earthy soil. Mercy crashes blindly through the underbrush, her lungs burning, her throat coated in the saltwater air.

  Her foot catches on a jagged stone at the crest of a hill and she is flung forward by her momentum. She tumbles down, thorns and brambles scratching at her clothes and hair, until she lands in a heap in a shallow stream, startling a small animal out of a nearby bush. She spits a mixture of dirt and blood into the water—she had bitten her tongue sometime during her fall—as she stands and frowns at her soaked clothes.

  “Creator’s ass,” she groans, picking a leaf out of her hair. She wipes the dirt from her cheeks and hands, then takes inventory of her injuries. She’s battered and bruised, but no worse for wear.

  A pitiful, self-deprecating laugh bursts forth before she can stop it. She claps a hand to her mouth to stifle the giggles. How pathetic is she—a disgraced Daughter of the Guild, exiled from her home, counting the days until Lylia and Faye catch up to her. Fat droplets of water fall from the hem of her shirt and plop into the stream. She can’t help feeling the exact same way she had when she was eight and had run away from the Guild: helpless, hopeless, and utterly alone.

  As she wades toward the bank, something swaying in the distance catches her eye. It’s too large to be vines or the hanging roots of a mangrove tree, and it—

  Oh, Creator.

  It’s a man.

  The body hangs from the lowest branch of a mangrove tree by its ankles, its face purple and splotchy and swollen with blood. The wind changes direction, bringing with it the stench of rotting flesh, strong enough to make her stomach roil. The corpse’s mouth hangs open and flies buzz around its bugged-out eyes and waxy skin.

  Mercy doesn’t need to venture closer to know who this man was:

  He was a Beltharan soldier.

  A few feet from his swaying body, his sword stands upright in the soil, one of Cassius Bacha’s spiky, four-leafed flowers impaled on the middle of the blade.

  It’s a miracle Mercy finds her way back to the outpost. Despite tracking her clumsy path of crushed flowers and footprints trampled into the grass, it takes her twice as long to return than it had to reach the stream. She jumps at every sound of wildlife in the distance. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she curses herself as she runs. There’s no doubt who had killed the soldier and forced the others to relocate so suddenly—the Cirisians. Any nearby elves could have heard her crashing carelessly through the underbrush, followed her trail back to the outpost, and attacked the unwitting humans waiting there.

  Again, the prince is in danger.

  Again, because of her.

  She lets out a sigh of relief when she sees the first white tent in the distance. Even the wind seems to have picked up on her anxiety—it whips her clothes and hair around her as she creeps silently into the outpost.

  When she passes the small copse of trees where she and Calum had fought, she picks up the sword she had dropped and grabs another from the overturned crates, taking one in each hand in case Calum finds her before Tamriel or the guards do. They’re not as sharp or strong as her daggers, but they’ll do. Simply being armed is enough to temper her nerves, but not by much.

  She hears the distant sound of voices and tenses for a moment, then recognizes Akiva’s slight Rivosi accent. The prince must be nearby.

  They’re alive—for now.

  All conversation stops when Mercy steps into the clearing, making no attempt to hide her weapons. Calum tenses, surprise and guilt flashing across his face before he remembers to hide it. Tamriel merely lowers the papers he had been reading and frowns at her.

  “You shouldn’t have gone off scouting on your own,” he says. “It’s not safe. Calum hadn’t been able to follow your trail.”

  “What?” Mercy gapes at Calum. Of course he had lied about her whereabouts, and of course Tamriel had believed him. She should have expected it. She wishes she could go to Tamriel, shake him and shout Calum! Calum is the one who wants you dead, not me!

  But she doesn’t. She can’t.

  Not yet—not until he’s safe in Sandori.

  She tears her eyes from Calum’s smirk and turns to Tamriel. She takes a deep breath. “We need to leave immediately.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I found Cassius’s flower.”

  To his credit, Tamriel doesn’t balk when he sees the corpse.

  He doesn’t flinch, or gag, or cry out in disgust like the guards do. He frowns, his face turning green from the stench, as he works with the others to cut the man down from the tree. Mercy paces beside the stream, nervously glancing between the forest and the darkening sky overhead. Surely the Cirisians have scouts on the island, if not a camp. They could be lurking anywhere, waiting for night to fall so they can attack.

  Behind her, the body makes a soft whump as it hits the ground.

  “Carefully,” Tamriel says. “Handle him carefully.”

  The guards grunt in response, too busy fighting their gag reflexes to reply. Maceo and Silas carry the body up the embankment, where Akiva, Clyde, and Calum have begun digging a shallow grave with shovels they found at the outpost.

  Mercy watches Tamriel as he trails after Maceo and Silas, his shoulders slumped. Even after searching the soldier’s pockets, they hadn’t had the slightest clue who he was. Neither Calum nor the guards had been able to identify the body, whose hanging had caused his face to swell and distort beyond recognition. Whoever had killed him had stripped him of everything he had
owned—documents, coins, identification—which is good, Mercy thinks. Terrible, but good in its own way; Tamriel doesn’t need another dead man’s name to take back to Sandori. He has far too many already.

  Tamriel crouches beside the stream, burying his face in his hands. Mercy pulls the dead soldier’s sword from the earth, staring down at the spiky plant impaled on the blade with a thoughtful crease between her brows. As she moves to Tamriel’s side, she slides the plant off and weighs it in her palm.

  “We were wrong,” she says. “It’s not a flower, it’s a fruit. See?” She grips one of the spikes near where the sword had pierced and peels it back, offering the prince a glimpse of the dark red fruit inside before the thick flesh snaps back into place. “The skin is waxy and tough, which is good because we’ll be able to carry them on the road without them bruising.”

  “That’s good,” Tamriel responds. “Any clue how we’re supposed to use it for the cure? Did Pilar say anything? Are there any more nearby—a tree or bush, maybe?”

  “No, I haven’t seen any. The soldier probably ventured somewhere he wasn’t supposed to and was placed here as a warning to the others. If the elves are protecting this fruit, it means Pilar and Liselle were right about it being valuable.” She pauses. They haven’t spoken about Liselle since the night they had argued in the woods. She hasn’t seen so much as a glimpse of her sister in days, and it’s starting to worry her.

  “As for its use in curing the plague,” she says, shaking off her concerns, “Pilar didn’t give specifics, as you probably guessed. There are a few ways fruit can be used for healing: it could be eaten, boiled into a tea, the peel or meat ground into an ointment, mixed into a poultice, dried for pills, or you could use the seeds . . .” she trails off, shrugging. “There are a lot of possible treatments. It’s also possible some parts of the plant are toxic, so you’ll have to have it studied before you administer it to the public.”

  “Could you create the cure?”

  She blinks. “What?”

  “You worked with Alyss in the infirmary while Pilar and the others were there. You saw what treatments she tried. Could you figure out how to make the cure?”

  “I . . . suppose I could,” she says hesitantly, “but I’d need time. I only assisted in the infirmary in the Guild, I’m not a real healer—”

  “Maybe we’ll find someone here who can teach us more about the plant. It’s nearly a week-long ride back to Sandori, so you’ll have a head start on all the healers in the capital. We’ll ride during the day and you can work on it in camp at night.” Tamriel jumps to his feet and grabs Mercy’s free hand. His voice drops to a hoarse whisper. “Please, Mercy, I’m just trying to come up with a way for you to stay.”

  Mercy’s heart stops beating for a moment. “Stay?” she echoes, dangerous hope blooming in her chest. “Tamriel, what are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been thinking, and it’s just . . . After listening to your stories of the Guild, how can I possibly hold your childhood against you? Don’t misunderstand me, you have yet to regain my trust, but you’re not just another Assassin. When I watched you get thrown from your horse the other day, I thought you had been hit by one of the spears. I was certain you were dead, and just thinking of that—of the possibility of that. . . By the Creator, Mercy, it nearly killed me.” His grip tightens on her hand. His lips spread into a small smile. “I was wrong to tell you to leave Sandori, Mercy. If you prove to me that I can trust you, you won’t have to run. I’ll protect you from the Guild, just like you protected me.”

  To her surprise, Tamriel lifts her hand and presses a soft kiss to her palm. When he pulls away, he runs a light finger over the calluses across her fingers, permanent reminders of her life in the Guild and the chasm it has carved between them.

  She gapes at him, her heart pounding. “I thought you hated me,” she whispers in disbelief. “You should hate me.”

  “I tried.” He straightens and grins at her. “But I failed.”

  12

  Calum

  Calum frowns down at the dark soil by his feet, a large, flat stone the only marker of the freshly-dug grave. The scent of the soldier’s rotting flesh still hangs in the air. When he looks at the guards beside him, he sees the same mix of grief, anger, and disgust on their faces as he feels. No one should have had to die like that—especially not a member of the royal guard, one of his men.

  Calum had already known how dangerous the Cirisian Islands are—he had seen it on the papers in Master Oliver’s office, had read reports of entire troops slaughtered by Feyndaran or Cirisian forces—but it hadn’t felt real until Mercy had led them to the stream beside which the soldier had hung for Creator knows how long. He’s not stupid enough to think the Cirisians are not a threat, nor is he too proud to admit that the thought of them watching him, hunting the prince and his men, does not make him want to tuck tail and run straight back to Sandori.

  He feels powerless, like when he was a child living in the castle, listening to the king’s grief-stricken wails echo through the stone halls. Tamriel had fared worse. The little prince had often awoken in the middle of the night and, too frightened to sleep, had tiptoed to Calum’s room and crept under the covers with him. Calum—two years older and just as much in need of comforting—had opened his arms and held his cousin’s shaking body to his chest, pretending not to notice when his sleep-shirt became wet with Tam’s tears.

  He looks away from the grave and fidgets with the patch clenched in his fist, the emblem of the Myrellis family crest he’d torn from the soldier’s sleeve before Maceo and Silas had placed the body into the earth. The colors are bright, the golden threads still shining and new. Whoever this soldier was, he had been young; his uniform was still in near-perfect condition. Calum doubts the man had been in the guard for more than a year or two.

  Beside him, Akiva and the other guards whisper to each other and cast glances around them, narrowing their eyes at the shadows which hang under the drooping limbs of the mangroves and fat banana-tree leaves. Despite having patrolled the area twice and finding no evidence of the fabled elves, they’re all on edge. They jump at every sound of wildlife moving in the underbrush and every birdsong trilled from the branches over their heads.

  Calum slips the patch into his pocket and orders his men to conduct one more patrol of the area. While he doubts that they will find anything, the guards’ hands are inching a little too close to their swords for his comfort. Patrolling is something for them to do until Tamriel orders their group to move again.

  As he wanders back toward the stream, stepping over twisted, gnarled roots and patches of vibrant wildflowers, he wishes for the hundredth time that Master Oliver were here. He’d give anything to see the man’s black eyes peering out from under his dark, heavy brows. His presence had been one of the few comforting constants in his and Tamriel’s childhoods. Without him, the burden of responsibility falls on Calum and Tamriel, and they haven’t any experience with leading an expedition of this importance. He frowns at his feet, the bubbling of the stream growing louder as he draws closer to the bank.

  He pushes aside a low-hanging branch, then freezes when he sees Mercy and Tamriel standing face-to-face on the bank, their joined hands clasped between them. As Calum watches, his cousin presses a kiss to her palm. He can’t make out what the prince says, but Mercy stiffens and remains silent, biting her lip, until Tamriel glances up at her. After a pause, Mercy hesitantly nods, and a smile spreads across Tamriel’s face.

  Calum watches as the cautious guard over Mercy’s face slips. It’s only for a moment—a ray of sunshine breaking through a cloudy sky—but it’s there. The way she looks at Tamriel . . .

  Well.

  It’s the same way Tamriel looks at her:

  Reverently. Lovingly.

  It kills Calum to watch Mercy drop the strange spiky plant in the dirt and fold herself into Tamriel’s arms, pressing her face to his chest and closing her eyes as if she never wants to leave his embrace.

&n
bsp; I should do something, he thinks frantically. I should—

  A curved blade snakes around Calum’s neck.

  “Na t’barjen,” someone hisses in his ear, and the blood pumping through his veins turns ice-cold. The words are nonsensical to him, but he recognizes the language anyway—it’s the one he’s hoped all his life he’d never have the misfortune to hear:

  Cirisian.

  A hand clamps over his mouth. “Na t’barjen,” the person says again, quietly but insistently, and Calum nods slowly, painfully aware of the dagger an inch from his throat. “Y na t’varro ao sonne.”

  His crossbow is strapped to his back, but the elf holding him hostage would kill him before he could do so much as reach for it. As if sensing his thoughts, the elf removes the dagger from his throat long enough to slit the crossbow’s leather strap and toss it aside. It thumps softly on the dirt a few feet away, followed by the dagger which had been sheathed on Calum’s hip.

  He watches in terrified silence as six armed Cirisians swarm the bank, surrounding Mercy and Tamriel in seconds. They jump apart, each immediately falling into a defensive position. Tamriel pulls out his sword and Mercy scoops the dead soldier’s up from the ground, fixing the elves with a murderous glare. As the elves close in around them, they shift so they’re back-to-back, weapons raised.

  “Calum!” Tamriel shouts, his voice edged with panic. “Akiva! Maceo! Silas! Clyde! Where are you?”

  No one answers his call, and Calum’s fear turns to fury. I’ll kill every last Cirisian myself if they hurt my men.

  “T’marcha,” the elf behind him hisses. When Calum doesn’t immediately respond, the elf digs the edge of his dagger into Calum’s neck deep enough for him to feel the steel blade bite his skin. The hand moves from his mouth to the middle of his back, shoving him out of the forest and onto the bank.