Being too noble for any outward displays of anger, he let it stew just beneath the surface. Zander was both hurt and angry that I lied to him yet again, or really never stopped.
I felt bad about it and it pained me to do so, but there was no other way. If I’d told him the truth of my nature, the Order, Faerie and his lineage outright he would have immediately dismissed me as insane. I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of convincing him there was a thread of truth in my claims and to return to the realm of Faerie with me. As we stood now, he believed me but only agreed to return to Faerie to avoid the vision of our predetermined fates. He refused to talk about Belial or the Order or the Roths’ link to the Asteroth bloodline.
---
As we crossed over Arythimia’s border, its high society streets sat undisturbed and as taciturn as ever. Even the air around us stilled.
The elegant residences that lined row after row of cobblestone streets rose haughtily above us. My mind briefly wandered to Samael. I tried in vain to push away its thoughts of him. The last time I saw him Zander and I were leaving Arythmia for Garreth to rescue his sister from Krishna’s vile clutches. He’d pulled me aside in an uncharacteristic display of emotion and fatherly-like concern. I shifted uncomfortably in my saddle at the memory of it.
The last word I would ever use to describe the Master of the Assassin’s Guild that took me in off the streets when I posed as a mortal in Emilia’s place was fatherly. Ironically I had once thought of him as sort of being akin to a surrogate one. He rescued me from a group of attackers, welcomed me into his home and provided me a warm bed and an abundance of food. He even offered what he assumed to be an orphaned common girl starving and living on the streets of Arythmia’s low society a way to fend for and protect herself. Despite my training to become one of his assassins, he actually did treat me much like a father would a daughter for the first two years that I lived with him. He doted on me and saw to my every whim.
The seams of our constructed reality ripped when I supposedly became of age two years later and he gave me my first assignment. It was then that the harsh reality that Samael only saw me as a means to further line his pockets slapped me in the face. I had never killed before in Faerie or in the mortal realm. I witnessed so much death up close and personal at the hands of Belial that the mere thought of having to do so made me physically ill.
I accepted Samael’s offer for room and board in exchange to train as one of his assassins, but I never expected to remain with him long enough to be made to uphold my end of the bargain.
When I first encountered Samael the inner voice I allowed to guide my decisions ever since entering the mortal realm told me that through Samael I would get close to the last living male in the Roth line. It did not however tell me how long it would take. So I remained with him biding my time and waiting on the guiding voice to speak to me again. It stayed silent and I stayed with Samael waiting for further direction. I thought it would come before I had to actually make good on the bargain I struck with him. It did not.
The prospect of becoming a killer terrified me. Belial was the monster of all monsters and I did not want to be like him. If I killed once I would kill twice and the more I did the easier it would become until life held as little meaning for me as it did for Belial.
I foolishly believed that Samael thought of me as a daughter as I had come to think of him as a surrogate father. He could never take the place of my real one, the man I loved with all of my being that Belial stole away from me, but he made a good runner-up.
When I went to him with my reservations about fulfilling my first assignment I knew he would do what he normally did when I was upset or anxious about something. Smooth the hair atop my head and tell me everything would be okay. Not to worry about it and he would take care of things. He proved me wrong. He looked at me in cold detachment and told me he had invested enough time and money into me. My time had come to start repaying him. I could either complete my assignment or find myself on the street like he initially found me.
I needed Samael. The success of my mission in the mortal realm depended on my continued association with him. So I sucked up my reservations along with my feelings of trepidation and apprehension and completed the assignment. It ended up being everything that I feared it would.
The first kill proved brutal, the second was hard, the third not too bad, and the fourth too easy. By the time I got to the fifth I reveled in the heady rush of my blade slicing through flesh and muscle and tendon.
Samael didn’t care about me. He confirmed me a fool to ever liken him to a father figure. A father wouldn’t turn his child into a monster. The only thing that Samael cared for was money and how much of it his assassins brought him.
I almost cried in relief the day I read Zander’s name scrawled across the thick white paper within the envelope Krishna handed me. It was the first time in four mortal years that the guiding voice spoke inside of my head. It is time, it told me.
---
Zander and I made it to the wall that closed off Arythmia’s high society from its low society before being intercepted. A trio of men I recognized as belonging to Samael’s employ surrounded us.
“Samael wishes a word with you Skyler,” one of them spoke.
“Samael can shove it,” I snapped at him.
A ghost of a smile played about his lips. “Your feistiness always did amuse me. I hoped you would resist. Dragging you to him shall be all the more fun.”
“Touch her and you die,” Zander drew his sword from the sheath at his side.
“Put the blade away Your Highness. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself,” Samael’s man mocked him.
Zander’s eyes flashed with an uncustomary darkness that I was momentarily taken aback by.
“The only one who will end up hurt is you.”
Samael’s man drew his own blade along with the other two who were with him.
I sighed and drew mine as well.
“Clearly, we are doing this the hard way,” I said to the trio whose lives were about to become short-lived.
Samael would be pissed at me for leaving him with three less men who lined his pockets but he would have to get over it. The one who spoke looked at Zander with death in his eyes and I would not abide any harm coming to him.
“No we are not.”
I spotted Samael stepping out of the shadows from the corner of my eye a split second before he spoke.
“What do you want?” I snarled at him through clenched teeth.
He raised his hands to gesture he meant us no threat. “Only to talk dear Skyler.”
I kept my blade leveled. “We don’t have time. At the moment there are more pressing matters we need to attend.”
“I think you will want to hear this…Ysabeau sends a message.”
The odd way the name rolled off his tongue made it clear the fae girl was foreign to him, which begged the question how he knew about her and how she had gotten a message to him from Faerie. Ysabeau’s magic was more powerful than I thought.
“I’m listening.”
Samael looked at each of his men. “You are dismissed.”
They immediately obeyed his command fading silently into the night.
Once they were gone, the green of Samael’s eyes faded until nothing remained but the pure uninterrupted white of Ysabeau’s. He opened his mouth and his voice spoke her words.
“You cannot return the way you came Skyler. Belial has eyes that will see you and men that will capture you. You must find a different entrance. Once you do stick to the plan we initially laid.”
“How are you doing that?” I asked Samael who was not actually Samael at the moment.
“Your magic allows you to physically cross into the mortal realm. Mine allows me to see into it and telepathically link to certain individuals like I can with fae in Faerie.”
“Can you also speak to them?” I asked seeking an answer to a nagging question.
“In a fashion. I can speak through their subcon
scious,” she said confirming what I long suspected.
The guiding voice within me sounded suspiciously like Ysabeau inside my head. It was the reason I so readily trusted it as real and allowed it to guide my actions.
“Are you responsible for the visions Zander and I keep having as well?” Now that I knew Ysabeau could telepathically link to individuals in the mortal realm it would make sense.
“No Skyler I am not and I cannot help you or explain them. Like I told you before you left Faerie, it is a path you have to find for yourself. It is both separate from and entwined with the task you left with.”
I would have questioned her more but the green of Samael’s eyes started to seep back into the white.
“Wait Ysabeau!” I called out.
“Be quick Skyler. The mortal is weakening from my linking. I’m sorry. I needed to warn you and there was no other way. Consent is needed to be able to establish a link.”
“Where else can I create a portal?”
Ysabeau never answered. By the time I finished my question the green of Samael’s eyes had fully returned and with it rivulets of blood that poured from their sockets. He collapsed onto the cobblestone.
My sword clattered to the ground as I jumped from my horse and rushed to his side. Samael was a ruthless, greedy bastard who had used me for his own selfish gain and would do so again without hesitation. I intensely disliked him most of the time, but somewhere deep down inside I could never shake the paternal-like attachment that I developed towards him during the first years I lived with him.
“It’s okay Skyler,” he weakly raised a hand to wave me away as if him dying was no big deal. “She came to me in my dreams. Said you were in danger and asked if I cared enough about you to help. The answer didn’t change even after I knew I’d be forfeiting my life. I know you think I’m a bastard and you are correct. I’ve done despicable things. I am not sorry for them and if given the chance I would do nothing different. I toughened you up. You wouldn’t have survived in the world otherwise. I won’t apologize for it. There are two kinds of people in this world-- those who are prey and those who are not. You were prey when I first found you in that alley. You aren’t anymore. You will survive in this world or any other one now.”
Samael’s voice grew weaker by the minute. I tried to shush him, tell him to conserve his strength, but he refused to listen.
“I am dying regardless. I need to say this before I go,” he told me. “I had a daughter. You remind me of her. You both have the same fiery but sensitive spirit. I think you are what she would have been like had she lived past her sixth birthday. Her mother was taken from me in childbirth. Then an illness that could have been cured had I the money to pay for the herbs took her from me. The Assassin’s Guild was never about the amount of money I accumulated. It was about ensuring nothing would ever be taken from me again. You became the daughter I lost and I had to protect you. Even if it meant making you hate me to toughen you up. I sacrificed to protect you then just as I chose to sacrifice to protect you now. I don’t know what you have gotten yourself into this time, but don’t let my sacrifice be in vain. Stay safe Skyler. I will no longer be around to watch out for you. You are on your own.”
“She’s not on her own,” a low voice said from beside me. “She has me and on my life I will never let anything happen to her.”
Samael’s face relaxed into a relieved expression at Zander’s words. His grip on my hand loosened. His eyes closed and I knew they would not reopen.
“We can’t leave him here,” I cried into Zander’s chest as his arms closed around me.
“We won’t. Just tell me what you want me to do and I will. I meant what I said. You are not alone. You have me now, forever and always.”
His words should have comforted me but they did not. I could not shake the bitter feeling that I’d heard them before and they’d proved false.
Chapter 10
I couldn’t leave Samael’s body in the streets of Arythmia. Sure, someone would eventually find him and report it to the nearest High Noble who would send an undertaker to fetch the body for burning, but I couldn’t bring myself to allow him to be collected and incinerated like discarded trash. Zander helped me hoist him onto one of the two horses we traveled with and we carried him back to his residence.
His steward collapsed when he answered the door. Roland had served Samael for decades. I tried to convince him to take the rest of the night off but he refused.
“There is too much that needs to be done. Samael left strict instructions with me about the preparations that needed to be made in the event of his demise,” he said.
In no mood to argue with him, I stopped insisting he retire to him room. In the end, I was grateful for his presence. He did everything that I did not have a clue how to go about doing. Samael employed a private undertaker that he called upon when one of his Assassin’s met their end. Roland contacted him and made arrangements for him to collect Samael and cremate his remains. The undertaker came and retrieved the body and returned a porcelain urn with his ashes to us a few short hours later. Roland also got word to the other people who would need to be alerted of the Assassin Guild Master’s demise. I wished he would have waited on that part. I tried to leave before Samael’s inner circle of the men he trusted most within the guild arrived but Roland would not hear of it. He rather adamantly insisted that I remain even going as far as pulling the guilt card and telling me Samael’s wishes in the event of his death were for me to be around for the meeting that was to come. I should have been able to say to hell with Samael and his wishes. He never cared about mine or me, but I couldn’t. The sacrifice he made for me in the end proved that at least some part of him did.
A knock sounded at the front door and I knew it was time. The cavalry that I so did not want to deal with right then had arrived. I stood from my spot behind Samael’s desk in the study he used to receive visitors. Zander stood with me.
“Of course you didn’t waste any time taking up position at Samael’s desk. Move. You don’t belong there,” one of the men I hated most in this world spat at me as he entered the room.
Zahir was Samael’s second in command who had never agreed with Samael taking me in and grooming me into one of them. He exhibited all of the charming qualities of a chauvinistic, sexist pig. Samael bequeathed him the duty of overseeing my training and each day he made every attempt to literally beat me into the ground while reminding me over and over again of three things--women were only good for lying on their backs, a girl had no business being an assassin, and I could never cut it as one. I enjoyed proving him wrong day in and day out. As a fae my strength and reflexes were superior to any human male. The fact that I bested him during every one of our training sessions only made him loathe me more. There was no love lost on my end either. I hated him just as much. Samael was the only reason one of us had yet to try and kill the other.
I had no desire to move into Samael’s position as Guild Master but I would never pass up an opportunity to goad Zahir. “I think I’ll stay exactly where I am,” I responded folding my arms over my chest.
He walked over to the desk and placed his hands on its surface pressing down on it with his weight. “Move. Now. I won’t say it again,” he threatened.
Zander moved closer to my side. “I suggest you take a step back.” He kept his voice even but a struggle for control played out within the depths of his eyes.
Zahir spared Zander a glance before quickly dismissing him as a non-threat.
His mistake. I’d seen Zander fight. He was every bit as lethal as I was.
Zahir’s mouth twitched at the corners. “It is just like a woman to require a man to fight her battles.”
“Everyone in this room knows Skyler can take you with one hand tied behind her back. Hell probably both.” Kade’s laugh echoed off of the walls of the enclosed space as he entered the room.
I loathed Zahir with every fiber of my being but I was looking forward to seeing my ex-sometimes-sort-of-boyfriend
again even less than I was him. Kade and I hadn’t parted on good terms the last time I saw him. I still had a score to settle with him, which is why he should not have been surprised when a blade flew across the room and lodged itself just below his collarbone. It wouldn’t kill him but it would hurt like a bitch.
“What the hell Skyler? Have you lost your damn mind?” He winced as he yanked the blade from his flesh.
“Quit whining and be lucky it’s just a surface wound. I owe you much more after you outed Zander and I in Kline sending a band of homicidal thieves after us. I should have aimed a few inches lower and to the right for your heart,” I hissed at him.
“You’re right. I deserved that.” He had enough of a conscious to look mildly apologetic. “It was a jerk. But to be fair, my irritation at your chosen company was the impetus of it.” The look he gave Zander contained equal parts of jealousy and resentment. “But in my defense I knew you could take them. I only meant to irritate you as much as I was at the time.”
“She almost had the life chocked out of her,” Zander berated him from his position beside me.
“No one asked you, Prince,” Kade glowered at him.
“Enough!” Zahir intervened. “I did not come hear to listen to your childish bickering. I came to claim that which is rightfully mine.”
Roland cleared his throat as he entered the room with a thick, beige envelope. He opened it and unfolded the matching paper that rested within.
“Actually, it is Samael’s explicit wish and command that Skyler become the new Master of the Guild. He bequeaths all of his assets, monetary and otherwise, to her.”
Roland handed Zahir the paper with Samael’s handwriting and personal seal as proof.
Zahir flung the paper to the ground. “I don’t give a shit what a piece of paper says. I served as Samael’s second for years. I bled for, killed for, damn near lost my life to be his predecessor. She will not rob me of that.”
Chaos Page 5
