I let the stalks of grass I’d pulled fall and sat up. “Sorry.”
I was so sick of sitting around, my whole body itching for action. I’d run five kilometres after coming home from the city, but it hadn’t soothed my restless energy. I pulled out my phone and opened the photo I’d taken at the café again, studying the assassin’s face and imagining that straight nose crunching underneath my fist, blood spurting from his mouth.
I’d studied every line of this face until I could have drawn it blindfolded, but Sydney was a city of four million people. The chances of ever finding him again without a lead were slim—and that was even assuming he’d been here for more than a brief visit. He could be anywhere. London. Munich. Some piddly little sheep station in the back of beyond.
Or, more probably, safely back in the Realms.
“Is Rowan joining us?” Willow asked.
“No. He said he’d had enough excitement for one day. He’s just too chicken to face Raven and admit that we lost the guy.”
We’d agreed to meet Raven here at the sith at nine, to tell him what we’d discovered. It was nearly nine, and a sick feeling was rising in my stomach. I hated being the bearer of bad tidings.
I threw the phone down on the grass. Lily leaned over to see the photo.
“Is that him in the background?”
“Yes.”
She picked up the phone and studied it, then shook her head. “He’s not one of the men who came for me.”
The assassins had staged a fake attempt on the princess’s life a couple of weeks back—one of her so-called uncle’s many plots.
“Weren’t they all killed by your guards?” Willow asked. She was leaning back, eyes closed, her half-empty glass dangling from one relaxed hand. I wished I could feel so calm.
“No, only one. The other three escaped. I wish they’d killed them all.”
I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You sound very fierce, princess.”
“It was terrifying. I thought I was dead.” She tossed the phone back to me. “Their whole organisation should be wiped from the face of the Realms.”
I smiled. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since you got here.”
A crunch of pebbles on the path heralded Raven’s arrival. He wore black jeans and a black silk shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, showing well-muscled forearms. His dark eyes surveyed our little group as he dropped into a spare chair.
“Can I surmise from the look on your face that the news isn’t good?”
I sighed and flopped back into the grass, throwing one arm over my face so I didn’t have to see the disappointment on his. “Surmise away. I lost him at the train station.”
There was no sound but the glugging of wine for a moment as he poured himself a glass. When I peeked at him, his head was tipped back, gazing thoughtfully at the leaves overhead. He looked almost as relaxed as Willow.
“Did you learn anything from him that might help?” Lily asked him. “What did you discuss?”
Raven sipped his wine, then closed his eyes with an appreciative sigh. “It was a short conversation. The Vipers have been doing this too long to give anything away. He asked me who I wished to target, and whether I had a preference on the method of dispatch.” His mouth quirked in distaste. “Apparently, it’s extra for something showy.”
“Do people want that?” Willow asked, showing some interest in the conversation at last. “I would have thought if you were hiring an assassin, it was because you wanted a discreet job done.”
“It appears that some people like to make a political statement with their murders.”
Lily nodded. “Making an example.”
“Quite,” said Raven. “It’s good business practice in some circles, I’m sure. But I said I wanted a standard job and left the method to their discretion.”
“Did he give you a price?” I asked, half-intrigued despite my horror. How much would it cost to take out a Lord of the Realms?
“When he heard my target, he said he would have to consult with his superior, though he warned me it wouldn’t be cheap.”
“Who was your target?” Lily asked.
Raven’s eyes met mine for a brief moment, amusement dancing in their dark depths, and I wondered if he would lie. How would Lily take the truth? “Your boyfriend, actually. Merritt.”
Not well, as it turned out.
“What?” She sat bolt upright, a look of outrage on her face. “Is this a joke? How dare you?”
“No joke,” Raven said mildly.
“You can’t order a hit on a member of the royal family.”
Raven swirled the wine in his glass lazily, watching the dark liquid. “As a matter of fact, I can. It’s just going to cost a lot. ‘A huge amount of money’ were his words.”
“I forbid it!”
A gleam of mischief entered Raven’s coal-black eyes. “Must I remind you, princess, that you are in no position to forbid anything? Your father has given my plan the all-clear.”
Her face paled dramatically, which was saying something, considering how fair her skin was anyway. “My father would never countenance the assassination of a member of his own family.”
And yet she was clearly afraid that he would. I almost felt sorry for her, and had to clamp down on a twinge of sympathy at the naked fear in her face.
Raven relented. “Relax. No one’s getting assassinated. But it gives us another chance to track them. He said he would get a message to me with the price and then, if I agreed, we would meet again to hand over the money.”
Lily didn’t look reassured. “But if you give them the money, they’ll do it!”
“I’ll give him fairy gold. When it turns back into leaves, they’ll void the contract.”
“As long as they don’t come looking for you to complain about being duped,” Willow said.
“I’ll take my chances.” He looked at me. “But we’ll need to work out some better means of surveillance.”
I nodded. “This is our last chance. He won’t meet you again after you leave him holding a bag of fairy gold.”
“Can’t you have your birds follow him?” Lily asked, as if the answer should have been self-evident.
“My birds were ready to follow him last time, but they can’t go underground—not without attracting a great deal of attention. If he meets us in the city, he could easily escape through the rail system again. It will depend on the place and time of the meeting. Ravens generally aren’t active at night, and most likely, he’ll pick evening or night for a rendezvous.”
“We need more people,” I fretted. “I could give them all a copy of his photo, so he doesn’t have such an easy time escaping.”
“We don’t have more people,” Raven said. “We can’t involve anyone else in this. The king is expecting me to handle this discreetly. And who knows what he’ll look like this time? That was a Glamour.”
“Damn.” So my photo was useless. I chewed at my lower lip, thinking.
“Shame Allegra’s too busy with her own affairs,” Willow said. “That cloak of shadows of hers would come in handy.”
I sat up straighter, staring at Raven in sudden hope. “You gave that to her! Can’t you make one for me?” Allegra’s cloak of shadows only worked for her, otherwise I would have borrowed it in a heartbeat. But if Raven had made one, couldn’t he make another?
But he was shaking his head. “No. Those things are rarer than hen’s teeth. There isn’t another in the whole Realm of Night.”
“Then can’t you make it accept me somehow?” Allegra had tried to lend it to me once before, but every time I draped the midnight feathers around my neck, the cloak slithered straight to the floor, refusing to stay put. Only when Allegra put it around her own shoulders did it clasp itself and cling tight, turning her invisible.
“I’m afraid that’s a negative, too.”
“Something else, then? Surely there’s something suitably sneaky in Night’s box of tricks? You people spend half your lives sneaking around in
the dark.”
“Way to vilify a whole Realm, Sage,” Willow said. “You make it sound as though they’re the assassins.”
Raven just smiled. “It’s true that shadow-weaving has given us a bad reputation. A skilled shadow-weaver can bend the darkness around themselves, but it’s almost impossible to cloak someone else. And the same goes for light-weaving, although Day magic isn’t going to help you at night anyway. What you need is an invisibility potion.”
I snorted. Such things were notoriously screwy, liable to fail at the exact moment you needed them most. “Thanks, but I’m looking for serious suggestions.”
“I am serious. A truly skilled Earthcrafter could make you something that would work, as long as you remained in contact with the earth.”
“There’s the rub, isn’t it? How much earth contact do you reckon I’d get in the Queen Victoria Building?”
“We don’t yet know the location of the meeting.”
“You said it yourself—the Vipers have been doing this for a long time. They’re not going to be stupid enough to pick a location that gives us any advantages.” Still, I eyed the princess. Maybe it was worth having something ready, just in case. If she was half the Earthcrafter her father was … “Can you make a potion like that?”
“My training has tended more toward statecraft than parlour tricks,” she said stiffly.
“Raven just said it wasn’t a trick, it was a real possibility.” But of course Lily wouldn’t want to get her hands dirty helping us. She was good for nothing except whining. I felt the loss of Allegra intensely. Maybe my friend could spare a little time to don her cloak of shadows again for a good cause.
“What about Yriell?” Willow said suddenly.
Hmmm. The king’s sister was the most skilled Earthcrafter I knew, even more powerful in her way than the king himself. If anyone could turn a so-called parlour trick into something useful, it would be her.
I heaved myself off the ground, brushing loose bits of grass off my jeans. “Good idea.”
Raven raised a lazy eyebrow. “You’re going straight away?”
“Why not? No time like the present.”
“I haven’t finished my wine.”
“That’s okay. I don’t need an escort.”
“Nevertheless.” He tipped his head back and sculled what was left in his glass. “This is my evil plan, and I’m not having you cocking it up without me.”
“It’s just a visit. Yriell and I are friends.”
Raven stood up. “Yriell isn’t always as welcoming as she might be.”
He was right. Last time the Hawk had called on her for help, she hadn’t been in the mood for visitors and had used a localised earthquake to remove him from her front porch.
“So I’ll take a bottle of vodka,” I said. “She likes that.”
“Then you’ll need someone to carry it for you.” He smiled, pleased to have a bargaining chip.
“I do have saddlebags, you know.”
“I’m sure you have every modern convenience. But the king has entrusted this duty to me, and I take my duties very seriously.”
“Since when?” I muttered. Raven was no Hawk, selfless in his devotion to duty.
He smiled winningly. “Since they involved escorting beautiful women around the countryside.”
I gave up and went to get the spare helmet and jacket, and to change into my own leathers.
He took the helmet, but when I offered him the jacket, he refused.
“That shirt’s not going to protect you if you fall off,” I pointed out, zipping my own jacket. I liked all my skin right where it was, thank you very much.
His eyes glinted with laughter. “Are you intending to dump me on the road?”
“Of course not, but—”
“Then I’ll put my faith in your no doubt expert riding and leave the jacket behind.”
“Suit yourself. It’s no skin off my nose.” A grin tugged at the corner of my mouth. That really was quite a handy phrase. “Just off your elbows, and hands, and arms …”
8
A tingle of threshold magic washed over me like tiny insect feet on my skin as we exited the sith, leaving our own little bubble of the fae world behind.
From the outside, none of the beauty of Willow’s sith was visible. No gardens, fountains, or airy pavilions set in meadows of nodding wildflowers—just a small red-brick house with an overgrown front yard. It was shabby and uninviting, and Willow had chosen it as the place to anchor the entry to her sith for precisely that reason. No one would expect the heir of Spring to live here. And no one would find anything but the dilapidated house if they entered without an invitation.
Outside, the one working streetlight glinted off the shining metal of my motorbike, waiting where I’d left it at the kerb. It was always kind of a relief to see it still there, since this wasn’t the nicest neighbourhood. I would have preferred to bring it inside the sith with us, but Willow said it had too much iron in it and flatly refused to consider it. She’d put a minor Aversion on it instead, to encourage humans to overlook it, same as she had on her car. I patted the gleaming chassis as I threw my leg over.
The bike roared to life as Raven settled himself behind me, placing his hands firmly on my hips. It felt weird to have his heat snugged up to my back as we sped through the cool night streets. I didn’t often take passengers, but when I did, it was usually Willow. Somehow, knowing that it was a man’s body pressed against me, a man’s hands holding me so close … it felt different, and it took me a few kilometres to shake off the oddness and relax into the ride.
I loved this bike. It was a Yamaha SR400 in classic black. Cornered like a dream, and a nice smooth ride. Sure, it was no Harley, but the salary of a part-time receptionist at a real estate agency didn’t stretch to Harleys. One day. In the meantime, this bike was my dearest possession.
I could happily have ridden all night, but we only had to go across town, and in less than an hour, we were crossing Audley Weir in the National Park, the bike’s headlight sweeping across trees and water. There were no other lights here; even the visitors’ centre was dark at this time of night. We passed it and a lone toilet block crouched by the riverside, and I parked under a big old gum at one end of the carpark.
It was very quiet once I’d turned the bike off. I took off my helmet and ran a hand through my short hair, letting the night breeze cool my scalp. Raven looked around with interest as he took off his own helmet.
“Hard to believe we’re in the middle of a major city,” he said, taking in the dark river and the brooding trees. A few house lights shone through the dark from the slope above the river opposite us, but they were the only sign of human habitation. No streetlights, no traffic noise, just nature and an empty expanse of dirt next to a river.
We found the walking track and headed off into the night. The bush was still, but not quiet. It was never completely quiet. There were rustlings as small animals passed unseen in the darkness, and the shrill, repetitive song of a night bird somewhere deep among the trees. Close to the river, a frog croaked, and I felt my shoulders relaxing. This was almost like being back home in Spring. I’d spent many a night roaming through the forests on Lord Thistle’s estate, exploring every quiet shadowed pool and poking into every burrow or hidey hole I could find in search of the creatures that called them home.
The trees filtered the moonlight, creating a soft dappled effect that silvered the white trunks of the gums and cast deep shadows over the leaf litter beneath them. The path we followed was reasonably clear and well maintained, so we kept up a good pace in the low light. Fae night vision certainly didn’t hurt—at least my father’s genes had come through for me there.
I felt the first shudder of unease as we approached the lightning-blasted trunk that marked the turn-off point to Yriell’s house. Her wards were powerful; even before I stepped off the path, I felt a huge reluctance to go any further. Without willing it, my steps slowed.
“Need a hand?” Raven’s voice w
as very close, making me jump.
“Not at all.” Of course he had no trouble resisting the Aversion, with his pure noble blood. It was really only meant to turn humans away.
Resenting the ease with which he moved, I forced myself to stride towards the thicket that loomed ahead, blocking our way. It bristled with thorns, seemingly impassable, but I’d been here often enough to know better. I shouldn’t have balked. All I had to do was make myself walk straight at them and those thorns would disappear.
Only the fact that I’d managed it unscathed so many times before kept my feet moving when all they wanted to do was turn and take me in the other direction, as fast as possible. Truly, Yriell’s Aversion skills were unparalleled.
The thorns dissolved around me, and I let out a sigh of relief as the pressure did, too. Now, I could walk unhindered towards the small cottage that sat in the centre of its little clearing before us. A thin drift of smoke, barely visible against the night sky, curled from the chimney. Yriell always seemed to have a fire going, whatever the weather. There were lights on inside, but the blinds were drawn.
I paused halfway up the path that led to her front steps. Now that we were here, memories of the Hawk’s last reception intruded more strongly than they had when I was safely back in the sith. Yriell didn’t like being bothered with the affairs of the kingdom. She had made that abundantly clear on more than one occasion. It was the whole reason she lived out here, under a fake name and using a Glamour to make herself look like an old woman and not the fae in her prime that she was.
I hefted the vodka bottle in my hand consideringly. On the other hand, she also liked to drink. I was hoping that the one would cancel the other out.
“What’s wrong? Lost your nerve?”
“Never. I was just thinking that, since you’re the self-proclaimed leader of this little expedition, you really ought to go first.”
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