A few feet behind them, Landers Nadra and his wife glare at Ghyslain in equal parts fear and outrage. Maisie holds her brother close, mumbling words of comfort. Even when his sister begins to tug at his shirt, crying, Leon’s eyes don’t stray from the body of his betrothed.
The crowd begins to dissipate when the guards lift Elise’s body and carry her off the platform. On the other side of the fountain, a carriage is waiting to take her to the cemetery for burial in an unmarked grave.
Niamh lets out a tight breath as the square begins to empty around them. “Well, that was—”
Pain explodes in Mercy’s chest.
She gasps and staggers back, every thought flying from her mind when she looks down and sees the arrow impaled in her chest, just above her heart. Before she can so much as shout, another one materializes out of nowhere and punches through her shoulder.
“No! Nononononono!” Niamh screams. She catches Mercy when she stumbles and lowers her gently to the ground. Nynev leaps over them, her bow already in hand, and disappears between the throngs of people running for cover from the unseen archer. “She’s been shot! Someone get help! Find a healer!”
“Mercy!” Tamriel shouts, his voice raw and terrified. She can’t see him, but she can hear him fighting the guards on the platform, trying to reach her. “Mercy!” he screams again.
I’ve . . . I’ve been shot. Through a wave of pain, Mercy dimly registers something warm and sticky and wet spreading across the front of her tunic. Blood—far too much blood. Niamh’s tears drip onto her face as she cries for help.
“I should know what to do! I-I—I don’t know what to do!” When Niamh presses her hands to the wounds, trying to stanch the bleeding, agony floods every fiber of Mercy’s being. A cry of pain wrenches free from her lips. She’d been struck by arrows in the Guild before, but never more than a graze. Clouds of black creep into the edges of her vision. “Mercy, stay with me. Tell me what to do!”
“I-I can’t . . . Keep pressure—” she gasps. She tries to sit up, all her years of Guild training screaming at her to Get up, get up, find the threat, but Niamh grabs her shoulders and forces her back down.
“Don’t you dare move.”
Her eyelids flutter shut.
“Mercy, stay with me,” Niamh pleads. “Open your damn eyes.”
She obeys, although the spots in her vision make it nearly impossible to see. The ground below her is slick and wet, too. One of the arrowheads had gone straight through her. She turns her head toward the main part of the square, trying to catch a glimpse of her attacker.
Chaos runs rampant in Myrellis Plaza. The people who had lingered after the execution are sprinting every which way, shouting to one another, their faces pale with fear. Some are huddled in the doorways of shops. Others duck into narrow alleyways. She can hear guards running and yelling commands, but she can no longer hear Tamriel calling her name.
“Where’s . . . Where’s Tamriel?”
“He was trying to get to you, but the guards forced him and his father into a carriage bound for the castle. You’ll see them soon.”
Nynev appears over her sister’s shoulder. “She’s alive?”
“Yes, but she’s bleeding a lot. Too much.”
“The only healers are in the fields with the sick or in the infirmary. We have to get her back to the castle. I’ll find a carriage.”
A laugh bubbles from Mercy’s lips as the huntress departs. “They did it.”
“Who?”
“The Daughters. They found me at last.”
Over Niamh’s shoulder, she sees the silhouette of someone standing in the third-floor window of a plague-marked house, bow still in hand. Her would-be killer is much too large to be a Daughter. He reaches back to pluck another arrow from his quiver when something silver flashes across his throat.
He staggers, clutching his neck, and crashes through the remains of the broken window. Through the ringing in her ears, Mercy hears the crunch of his body hitting the stone. A stranger—her savior—has taken her attacker’s spot in the window. He stares at her for a long moment, then turns and disappears into the depths of the dark house. In the square below, half of the guards who had been ordered to protect Mercy break down the door of the house and file inside. The rest examine her attacker’s broken body.
“Stay with me,” Niamh pleads.
“I’ll do my best,” she says with a tight-lipped smile, but the simple act of speaking causes even more blood to leak out of her wounds. Niamh shouts her name again as her eyes drift shut of their own accord, and the blackness sweeps in and swallows her whole.
20
Mercy
Mercy wakes with a start late at night, the golden light from the chandelier above her bed thrusting daggers of pain through the haze in her mind. Her body feels heavy, the backs of her eyelids coated in sandpaper. Medicine—the healers had drugged her, but not enough. She tries to sit up and groans when the holes in her chest send waves of agony through her.
“Mercy!” Tamriel cries. The corner of her mattress dips when the prince launches himself onto it, taking hold of her shoulders and easing her back onto the downy pillows. “You’re all right. You’re all right. Try to rest, love,” he murmurs soothingly. He leans back and stares at her as if reassuring himself she’s really there, really alive. “I feared you might never wake up. You lost a lot of blood.”
“They’ll have to try harder to kill me next time,” she croaks.
Nynev and Niamh appear beside her bed, their faces pinched with concern. The huntress holds a glass of water to Mercy’s lips and she drinks eagerly, not realizing until then how dry her throat had become.
Niamh shakes her head. “Don’t joke about that.”
“I wasn’t.” She looks down at the thick bandages wrapped from her left shoulder to halfway down her ribcage. Another two inches, and the first arrow would have struck her heart. “Who shot me?”
Tamriel’s face contorts in rage. “Drayce Hamell,” he spits. “The third son of a minor noble family and a member of the royal guard. He’d been stationed in that house to keep an eye on the crowd during the execution.”
“Then why didn’t he shoot me earlier?”
“The bastard must not have had a clear shot until everyone started leaving,” Nynev says, her fingers tightening around the glass. “Whoever killed him did a nasty job of it. Slashed his throat from ear to ear.”
“My father immediately ordered Hamell’s family to be brought in for questioning. They maintain that they had no idea what he was planning, but there is no doubt in my mind that they conspired to murder you. Drayce was the youngest son and never would’ve inherited the family estate. They lost nothing when he died.” A shadow passes through Tamriel’s eyes. “This is only the beginning, I’m afraid. The nobles are hunting you the same way they did Liselle, but this time, they aren’t bothering to hide it. I’ve already posted guards outside your door—men and women I know we can trust, unlike that son of a bitch Hamell—and you’re not to go anywhere without them.”
“Or me,” Nynev adds, her mouth set in a grim line. “Anyone tries to touch you, I’ll fill them with so many arrows they’ll look like a human pincushion.”
Mercy closes her eyes, the pain making it hard to focus on what they’re saying. She wishes again for unconsciousness to drag her under, to wash away the agony and the throbbing all the way down her left side. “Do you know who saved me?”
Tamriel shakes his head. “Akiva and a few others are out looking for him now. I’d like to give him a reward for saving your life.”
Sensing her discomfort, Niamh steps forward and nudges the prince aside. “Open your mouth.”
Mercy obeys, and Niamh drops two small capsules onto her tongue. She swallows them dry before Nynev has a chance to raise the glass of water to her lips. “Thank you.”
“Leave us, please,” Tamriel says to the sisters. When they hesitate, he adds, “If her condition changes, I’ll alert you. For now, you should check on At
las and the others.”
When Mercy forces her eyelids open again, they’re alone. Tamriel snuffs out the candles in the chandelier and stretches out beside her on the bed.
“Come closer,” she mumbles, the drugs making her tongue thick and clumsy.
“I don’t want to hurt you, love.”
“You could never hurt me.”
He inches closer until they’re sharing the same pillow, their noses nearly touching. “Is this better?” he whispers, his warm breath tickling her face.
“Much.”
He smiles, but the gesture is tinged with sadness. “I’m so sorry, Mercy. I’m so, so sorry.” He inhales sharply, and it takes all of Mercy’s concentration to focus on what he’s saying, to not let the medicine drag her under just yet. “I swore that I’d never let anyone hurt you. I promised myself I’d never let another scar mar your skin, but I’ve failed you. I’ve been too distracted, too focused on the plague and the war. I’m so, so sorry, my love.”
“Tamriel?”
“Hm?”
“When I get out of this bed, you and I are going to kick their asses.”
His deep chuckle rushes over her, and she smiles. “Gladly.”
Agony jolts through Mercy’s chest. She awakens with a hiss, biting her lip to keep from crying out. The pain medication must have worn off long ago; she feels as if she’s been trampled by a horse.
A dozen horses.
All at once.
She’s lying on her back, staring up at the blue and gold swirls of paint across the vaulted ceiling. Through one eye, she can see the bright summer sun beyond the open window, already high over the city. It must be almost noon, but no one has come to wake her or Tamriel. The prince is curled against her side, his face tucked in the space between her neck and her shoulder, his breathing slow and even. He’s still wearing the clothes he’d worn to Elise’s execution. Briefly, she considers asking him to call for a healer, but he looks so peaceful she can’t bring herself to wake him. Instead, she simply watches him. Even in sleep, there’s something about him that entrances her. It’s not merely his beauty—his high cheekbones, his perfect, straight nose, his soft lips—although that certainly doesn’t hurt. It’s that he had chosen her—chosen an Assassin, of all people—to love; to cherish; to protect. She marvels at her luck . . . then lets out a quiet chuckle. How strange, she thinks, to be arrested, hunted by assassins, struck by an arrow, and still count myself lucky to know him.
But she does.
By the Creator, she does.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the shadow beside her wardrobe shift. She stiffens as a lithe figure silently approaches her bed—the man who had saved her life. She’s certain of it. Between the hood of his cloak and the scarf wrapped around his face, all she can see are his brown eyes, framed by dark lashes. He lifts a finger to his lips, his gaze flitting to Tamriel.
Don’t wake him.
Mercy nods.
He presses a folded piece of paper into her hand, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a vial of clear liquid. “Trust me?” he whispers in a gruff voice.
She nods again. She has no idea how he sneaked into the castle without alerting the guards, but he’d saved her life.
He breaks the vial’s wax seal and tips the contents into her mouth. A sweet tonic dribbles down the back of her throat. He tucks the vial back into his pocket and stalks across the room. When he reaches the door, he tugs off his hood and scarf and slips a white slave sash across his shoulders.
“Who are you?” she whispers.
He stiffens. Without turning back, he murmurs, “When you wake up again, you may not remember me. That’s strong stuff.” The door of her bedroom creaks softly as he disappears into the hallway.
Within minutes, the medication begins to work its magic. It’s so unlike whatever the healers had given her; their medicine had made her body heavy, cumbersome, her mind slow. This one turns her leaden limbs to feathers. It reminds her of the hundreds of times she’d swum in the Alynthi River as a child. She’d loved to float on her back and stare up at the fat white clouds, imagining the foreign cities she’d one day travel and the adventures she would experience.
Gone is the headache pounding behind her eyes. Gone is the agony which has been her constant companion since the execution, and the relief is so sudden and strong that Mercy—heartless, ruthless Mercy—begins to cry tears of happiness.
“What’s wrong?” Tamriel jerks upright, immediately alert. His hair sticks up on one side, the lines of the pillowcase imprinted in his cheek.
“Nothing,” she giggles, the potency of the drug making her mind spin in the best possible way. “Absolutely nothing at all.”
Three days later, Mercy is still confined to bedrest—a fact which simultaneously delights Tamriel and infuriates her. I should be helping with the cure, she’d argued, but Tamriel had shot her down immediately. You can’t fight, he’d said, nodding to her sling, and we have no idea when the nobles will strike again. He has said that often over the past few days: When, not if the nobles will strike. You’re safest here, where the guards can watch over you. Leave the work of the cure to the healers.
She’d been readying an argument, but when she’d seen the desperate plea in his eyes, she’d relented. When I saw those arrows hit you, he’d confessed, his voice wobbling, I thought I’d lost you forever, and it nearly destroyed me. So, please, indulge me and rest for a few more days.
Mercy has not been left alone for one minute since Elise’s execution. Nynev sits at her bedside constantly, sometimes telling stories of her childhood in Ospia or her family’s journey to Cirisor, sometimes saying nothing for hours at a time. True to her word, Niamh does not leave until Tamriel returns late at night from his various meetings and duties, and she reappears first thing every dawn.
During her few breaks from the infirmary, Niamh visits Mercy and fills her in on their progress. Atlas is still sick, but the rash and boils on his arm have begun to clear up a bit. They’d tested multiple recipes on Atlas and the other guards, and the starvay blossoms are working. That common, useless weed may very well be the thing to save them all from the plague. All they need now is to figure out the optimal quantities of each ingredient.
“Atlas asks after his sister constantly,” Niamh had admitted after she’d given Mercy the good news. “None of us have had the heart to tell him the truth.”
Even Ghyslain—Ghyslain—had come to visit her, offering his sympathy and wishes for a speedy recovery. Despite the awkwardness of their short conversation, the king is not the visitor Mercy is most surprised to see.
It’s Lethandris.
The knock at her bedroom door comes in the middle of lunch, startling Mercy and Nynev out of their silence. The huntress rises and cautiously opens the door, then waves the priestess inside.
“Mercy!” Lethandris gasps. She gapes at the sling binding Mercy’s arm to her chest. The holes in her chest have been stitched shut, but the arrowheads did enough damage to her muscle and bone that her left arm is still useless—and will remain so for a long time to come. “I heard from the other priestesses that you’d been hurt, but I had no idea it was this serious. By the Creator, you could have died!”
“Luckily for me, Drayce Hamell was not a great marksman.”
“How do you feel?”
“I’ve been better.”
“I should have visited you sooner, but I didn’t want to come without the information you requested.” She drops into the chair Nynev had vacated and pulls a few leather-bound books from her bag, the covers worn and faded with age. “The High Priestess will kill me if she finds out I’ve taken these from the vaults, but you need to see what I’ve found.” The top book’s spine crackles as she opens it.
“What language is that?” Mercy asks when she catches a glimpse of one of the weathered, yellow pages. The cramped script is unlike anything she has ever seen.
Nynev frowns, peering over the priestess’s shoulder. “It looks like an anc
ient form of Cirisian. I can’t read it, though. How old is this book?”
“Three hundred years, give or take a few decades.”
“And you understand it?”
“. . . Some of it,” the priestess admits. “I used commonly repeated words and phrases to translate as many of the passages as I could. Most of them are nothing more than legends about the Old Gods, but this one caught my attention.” She points to the middle of the page. “The details are fuzzy, but it discusses the Aitherialnik, the thread which tethered all of the Aitheriali—the Old Gods—to one another. If an Aitherial exhausted too much of his magic, he could draw on the others’ strength to bolster his own. I think . . . I think he could even borrow another’s power.”
“So if that’s true . . .” Nynev begins, a note of panic slipping into her voice, “Firesse not only has claim to Myrbellanar’s power over the realms of the living and the dead, but perhaps all the Old Gods’ powers, as well?”
“How is any of this possible?” Mercy asks, dread settling in the pit of her stomach.
“Blood magic.”
“You must be joking.”
“I wish I were. You know the legend that a piece of Myrbellanar’s soul lives in every elf. If Firesse managed to strengthen that connection by murdering human soldiers as Calum claimed, she’ll only grow more powerful the bloodier her war becomes.”
Nynev leans back, rubbing her temples. “Shit.”
“I could be wrong,” Lethandris adds. “Frankly, I have no clue how all this works. The Aitherialnik could be nothing more than myth.”
“After seeing what Firesse did to Calum at Ialathan, I don’t want to wager my life on that possibility,” Mercy responds dryly.
“You should show this to Niamh,” Nynev says. “She’s the one who is fated to cure the plague. Maybe she’ll think of some way to turn this to our advantage. She’s working in the infirmary now.”
Born Assassin Saga Box Set Page 89
