Assassin's Heart

by Sarah Ahiers

Val stepped before Les, sword in hand. His fingers tightened around the hilt until his leather gloves creaked.

  Les twisted his head toward me. I stared at him, and grief and terror and loneliness and every dark emotion I was capable of feeling filled my chest until it seemed I would burst from it all.

  Les winked at me.

  Val drove his sword through Les’s chest. He buried it to the cross guard, until the Da Vias restraining Les had to move aside or face the end of Val’s sword.

  Anguish erupted through me. I bit my tongue until it bled to stop the screams welling up from inside. I turned away, but Nik grabbed my skull and forced my head toward the scene, his fingers digging into my scalp.

  Les coughed out a mouthful of blood. It spattered across Val’s face. Val pulled out his sword. Les crumpled to the ground. His head moved once, and then he lay still.

  My fault, my fault, my fault.

  Only Nik’s powerful grip on my arms kept me on my feet. “Very nice,” Nik whispered to me. “Now it’s your turn.”

  A sharp stab to the center of my back sank below my shoulder blades. I gasped as the cold metal slid into my body, shrouding me in agony, until my body arced against it.

  Nik released my arms. I fell to my side on the ground, the cobblestones beneath my face damp from the canal.

  “No!” Val screamed. Rapid footsteps closed the gap between us. I tried to reach the knife in my body, to pull it out, but my fingers scrabbled against my leathers, pain ripping through me with every twitch of muscle. I dropped my arms.

  Val struck Nik, a loud crack bouncing over us. Val’s fist crashed so hard into Nik’s mask that it broke in half at the bridge of his nose. Nik’s mouth gushed blood. He brought his gloved hand to his face and groaned. Blood Spatter took a step toward Val, but Diamond Mask pushed her mask to the top of her head, standing between Val and the others. It was Val’s sister, Claudia, no longer pregnant.

  “Nik had an agreement with Val,” Claudia said. “Nik went against it, and Val was in the right to strike him.”

  Blood Spatter glanced between them, then shrugged and stepped away.

  Nik yanked my pouch of poisons from my hip and walked off.

  Val dropped beside me. I tried to push him away, but my arms bent like reeds in the wind. He wrenched the knife from me, ignoring my cry of pain, and threw it away. A dull ache spread across my body, replacing the sharp pain of the invading knife. Each breath became more difficult until I felt like I was drowning, as if the cold grasp of an angry ghost pulled me beneath the canals.

  “Lea!” Val pulled me into his arms, tears running down his face. I turned to look at Les, lying on the bridge.

  “I’m sorry!” He held me tight. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, I swear it.”

  I wanted to tell him to leave me alone, to flee so I wouldn’t have to look upon him any longer, but I couldn’t find the words. The salty taste of blood coated my lips, and I closed my eyes. I was so tired.

  “I found the entrance,” a voice said from the end of the bridge. The man in the hat.

  “Leave her, Val,” Claudia said. “The sooner we can be done with this, the sooner I can return to Matteo and Allegra.”

  My eyes snapped open at that. Claudia caught me looking at her and grinned. “What?” she asked me. “You thought you were the only Saldana with a secret lover?”

  Matteo. My brother Matteo was alive. Marcello and I were not the last of our Family. And Claudia’s baby . . . Matteo was the father, had been her secret all along. But he was a Da Via now. He’d turned his back on us.

  It was too late, anyway. It didn’t matter.

  “Give me a coin,” Val said to someone.

  “You know Estella doesn’t allow us—”

  “I said give me a gods-damned coin!” he screamed.

  A moment later his ungloved fingers pressed something against my lips. I let him slip the coin into my mouth. He sobbed and leaned over me, pressing his lips against my forehead. He gently lowered me to the ground. Then they were gone, vanishing into the streets that led to Marcello.

  I rolled onto my stomach and agony shredded me, like my heart torn from my chest. I screamed against my closed lips. I needed to keep the coin safe. I had one last thing to do.

  I crawled to Les, every movement agony, every second my vision growing darker. The sounds of the night faded until all I knew was the image of Les lying before me on the cold street. When I reached him, I brought my fingers to my mouth and pulled out the coin. It was stamped with the Da Via crest. I didn’t need it.

  I slipped it past Les’s unmoving lips, his breath silenced. He was still beautiful, even in death. I would’ve wished something different for him. But Marcello had been right. I was a Saldana, and we brought destruction to those we loved.

  The pain diminished. A final mercy in a life seemingly devoid of them.

  I closed my eyes and waited for my breaths to stop.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  thirty-four

  PALE LIGHT SPILLED ACROSS MY FACE. I GROANED AND covered my eyes. It was too early. I wanted to sleep.

  The light continued its push until I sighed and rolled over, peeling my eyes open.

  I could see nothing except watery gray light. I blinked a few times, waiting for my eyes to adjust, to focus on something.

  I pushed myself up. My nerves burned against my skin, in my muscles, my organs, my bones. I cried out and froze, trying to keep the pain at bay. After a moment the fire eased to a strong ache. Still painful, but manageable.

  I turned my head slowly, searching for furniture, landmarks, a hint to discover where I was. But there was only the endless pale light and what seemed to be fog rolling in and out of the edge of the nothingness.

  I struggled to stand, barely keeping my balance against the pain that blazed through my body. I glanced at my feet, trying to keep them stable. My legs were bare. I was naked. Scratches and bruises covered my body, the largest bruise flowing across my chest like a menacing ink blot and rolling down my left side to a violent mass of swollen and wounded flesh.

  Something warm dripped down my spine. I reached behind me and my fingertips returned red with blood.

  The knife. The knife that had pierced my body. That had killed me.

  I was dead.

  I looked around again. Nothing. No one. I was alone.

  I swallowed. “Is anyone there?” My voice emerged hoarse and rough, like I hadn’t spoken in years.

  The fog shivered and spiraled and then blew away, as if a wind carried it, though I felt nothing. No one answered me.

  Behind the fog stood a forest of trees, each one white and bare and stretching toward the sky. I looked closer. A forest, yes, but they weren’t trees.

  Giant bones were stuck in the ground and reached upward, swaying with the hidden wind. No mortal thing had ever possessed bones so large.

  I took one tentative step toward the forest, bracing for the expected pain. Then another. I continued in this slow and agonizing manner, but I never drew closer.

  I wrapped my arms around my stomach to lessen the pain.

  “Am I dead?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

  “Yes.” The voice was soft and quiet and seemed to emanate from the trees before me.

  “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am, Daughter.” The trees swayed.

  And I found I indeed knew who the voice belonged to. “Can I see you?”

  A pause, a hesitation. “I have driven mortals mad.”

  “I’m dead,” I answered. “I’m not afraid.”

  Vibration in the trees, like a laugh. “I have watched you your whole life. So many think they do not fear death, but when their time comes, they beg it away. But not you. There was no fear with you.”

  “Will you show yourself?”

  “So be it.”

  From the folds of the b
one forest a figure stepped before me, tall as the oaks on the dead plains. My gaze brushed across her limbs, her body, unable to take anything in, unable to linger, to make sense of what I was seeing.

  I met her eyes and found a blank face with no features, made of nothing but smooth bone, empty, flat, barren. I’d never known something could be both terribly monstrous and terribly beautiful.

  As I gazed upon the face of a god, of Safraella, my mind sank toward a dark vortex. The sound of a thousand storms, a thousand hounds baying in the night surrounded me, consumed me. I began to unravel, bits of me floating away until there, before me, was the memory of Les, his lips pressed against mine, whispering kalla Lea.

  Everything snapped back into place. The bone trees swayed.

  “Where are we?” I asked, watching the trees.

  “A forest. A graveyard. A passage. This place is many things.”

  “A graveyard for what? Who do those bones belong to?”

  Safraella shifted, her arms stretching out at her sides, as long as some of the bone trees. “My enemies.”

  Gods. This was their graveyard. The trees were the bones of gods.

  I swallowed. “If I’m dead, why does everything hurt so much?”

  “And whoever told you, little mortal, that death would not hurt?”

  I nodded, trying to ignore the pain the gesture cost me. “Am I to be reborn then? Have you come to grant me a new life?”

  She leaned closer. “Is that what you want, little clipper?”

  It would be so easy, to be reborn as someone else, to forget everything that had happened in this life. To forget I was ever Lea. But it seemed like giving up. Like losing my Family again. “I only thought . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It came so suddenly. The end. It seems unfinished.”

  “You are all unfinished,” she said. “Like embers in the wind. You burn brightly in your own time, and then you are snuffed out. It is your way.”

  I looked down at my feet. The blood from my back dripped down my calves and painted my ankles red.

  Safraella straightened to her full height and displayed her hand before her. She held a gold coin between two fingers. I couldn’t see the stamp on it, the Family crest. “You are due a resurrection, Daughter. But it does not have to be a new life.”

  My breath stilled in my chest, and I pushed aside the realization that I was actually breathing. “You could bring me back? As Lea? As myself?”

  She inclined her head.

  “Why? Why me? Why not my Family?”

  “You have long been a favorite of mine, Oleander Saldana. Faithful to me even in the darkest corners of your life. There are others who have . . . drifted from my radiance. They forget their place. I would like you to be my reminder to them. A reminder of what it means to forget that I am a god and do not take kindly to those who no longer value my gifts.” Her voice echoed among the trees like the final note of a bass drum.

  “The Da Vias? Or are there others, too?” Like my uncle, who had refused to let me wear my mask in his home. She didn’t respond. “Is that why, when the angry ghosts came for me, you protected me?”

  “The ghosts are wayward children. Only those in my favor have the ability to send them on their path.”

  “And if I can’t be the reminder the Da Vias need? If they refuse to hear your word?”

  “You will return them to me there, or you will return them to me here.” She gestured to the bone forest.

  Kill them. The Da Vias. Because murder was always the answer.

  Unless . . . unless I didn’t return.

  I could choose the peace that came with a new life, or all the death and blood that awaited me as Lea.

  And Les. Needles pricked my chest when I thought of him lying dead on the bridge. If I went back, I would face the Da Vias, alone. How could I be Lea without him?

  Safraella watched me. I could sense her thoughts twisting like the earlier fog.

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  “Little mortal. Very few of you ever get a chance at a true choice. You would give it away so easily?”

  I closed my eyes. “No.” I shook my head. “I know what I have to do. I have to go back, be Lea still. Kill the Da Vias. But what about Marcello? They’ll have taken him.”

  “What is that saying you’re all so fond of? Family over family?” The bone trees rattled behind her.

  My thoughts raced. Matteo was a Da Via now. He was gone from my life just as if he had died in the fire. Marcello was no longer Family, but he was blood, was family. And I didn’t want to be the last of my line. If the Da Vias killed him, they won all over again.

  I would save Marcello. And I would kill the Da Vias. Only . . .

  “How can I do it by myself?” I tasted salt against my lips. I’d been crying.

  Safraella leaned toward me, her tall body folding in on itself until her giant bone face hovered before mine. She pressed the coin against my palm. For an instant I saw the Da Via crest on it. “And whoever said you had to be alone? I will grant you one member of your Family, if you ask it of me.”

  “A resurrection? Of my choosing?”

  Everything had been my fault. Everyone was dead because of me. But if they were in my place, who would they choose?

  I thought of Rafeo, my beautiful brother, cold in the tunnel, the best of us. I thought of little Emile, full of untapped life. Of my distant mother, who spoke of her pride in me in secret letters, and of my father, who tried to buy us peace, to keep us safe. How could I choose? How could I weigh and measure love so casually?

  I thought of Les, dead on the bridge, offering to help me for no other reason than because I was someone who needed help. A boy who had been raised by my uncle, my family.

  It was my fault too, what had happened to Les. Rafeo had died because he was a Saldana. Les had died because I’d kissed him on the roof.

  “I choose Les.”

  “Did I not say a Family resurrection?”

  I swallowed but stood my ground. “He is my Family now.”

  Safraella had no mouth. No eyes. But I could sense her smile.

  She leaned closer. She placed her face against my forehead, and the brightest pain of all rushed through my body. I closed my eyes and screamed and screamed until I could hear nothing but the anguish that burned through my flesh.

  Cold water dripped onto my eyelids. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the liquid away. Rain, a slow, cold drizzle, coated the cobblestones, making them slick and shiny in the darkness. I lay on the bridge. The bridge where I’d died.

  Safraella had resurrected me. A true resurrection, not just a rebirth like she granted everyone else.

  I sat up, my hand rising to rub the water from my face, but my hand met a mask. I pulled it off and turned it around. It was a bone mask, perfectly flawless in its construction. Instead of a pattern, the whole left side was black. I ran my fingers over the color. It wasn’t dyed like a normal mask. The color seemed to be part of the bone.

  I slid the mask to the top of my head, and something burned in my mouth. I choked, spitting it into my hands. A gold coin. But I’d given Val’s coin to Les.

  I flipped it over. It was stamped with the Da Via crest. It grew warm in my hands.

  I twisted until I spotted Les where I’d left him. His leathers were sopping wet, his hair plastered against his pale skin. At least the rain had washed the street clean of our blood.

  The coin pulsed in my hands, still generating heat. I pushed Les onto his back and found a hole in his chest from Val’s sword. I pushed the hot coin into his mouth.

  I sat back, watching his chest for breath, wiping away the water that dripped down my face. It had to work. It had to.

  Please . . .

  Les coughed, inhaling deeply. His spine arched against the cobblestones, his mouth wide with terror.

  When he’d breathed all the air he could, he rolled over frantically, scampering toward the edge of the bridge. Rainwater coursed down his cheeks, and he
scanned around him like a panicked animal.

  “Les,” I said quietly. “Alessio.”

  His eyes snapped to me, and the fear in them drained away.

  “I saw . . .” He swallowed loudly. “I saw . . .”

  “I know.” I crawled to him, taking his hands in mine. The hole in his chest had vanished, and if I looked in a mirror, I expected my face would be free of bruises. Les breathed heavily, and then sobbed, fresh tears pouring down his cheeks.

  “Gods, Lea . . . ,” he choked out. He pressed his head to my chest and I pulled him close, holding him tightly until his shaking stilled.

  The rain lessened, then stopped. All the while, Les and I sat on the bridge and stared at each other, lost in our own thoughts. We had to rise, to see what waited for us in Marcello’s home, to once again plot against the Da Vias, but at this moment I felt no rush. Maybe looking upon Safraella’s face had driven me mad.

  “She told me something,” Les said, his voice low and quiet. “Told me to do something . . .”

  He paused, struggling with whether he wanted to tell me or not.

  “She told me to do something too,” I said.

  “I’m not sure if I can—”

  “It’s all right,” I interrupted. “It’s fine.”

  He nodded and took a deep breath. “She said She gave you a gift. A resurrection. Anyone you wanted.”

  I nodded.

  “Why did you pick me?” Anguish filled his eyes.

  I took his hand, squeezing it. “My Family . . . my Family is gone. They are my past. But you are my future. I couldn’t turn my back on you.”

  “You gave up everything for me?”

  I leaned my forehead against his. “It isn’t worth anything without you. You make me feel alive when I’ve felt nothing for so long. When I thought I was done feeling.”

  He rubbed his face. “No one’s ever come back for me before.”

  My heart twisted at his words. “I will never abandon you.”

  He pushed his fingers through my hair to my neck, pulling me closer. Kissing him then was better than any kiss in my life. Even though we were soaked and his lips tasted of blood, I would’ve spent the rest of my life kissing him there.