23. Sicario Hood
CHAPTER 23
Sicario Hood
ALIA
A nna writhed in the bed. I dabbed her brow with a cool cloth. I’d already given her Ledum three times that day. It had helped tremendously those first few weeks, but today she’d only became worse. She was wheezing. Her lungs were shutting down.
My heart hollowed out in my chest when the first shiver wracked her. Her eyes were rolling in her head and her fingers began to shake. She moaned in pain. Everything was breaking to pieces.
An episode was coming.
And I didn’t have a mage stone to stop it.
She needed to relax so her body could heal from being constantly on edge, so it could rebuild detoxification passageways. She needed to refuel her energy. I couldn’t exactly explain that one besides it couldn’t happen until she felt safe. And she needed to know her loved ones were safe and cared for. Wait.
Rey had visited and taken their kids to go play with his friend’s children. Mom told me that’s why they weren’t here.
Anna hadn’t been able to sleep or relax ever since. I’d sent Jacob to watch them. Maybe…
“Anna, I sent Jacob to watch over your kiddos. They’re safe. Relax, sis, and remember the waterfall. Do you hear its gentle roar as it falls into the blue pond beneath? Do you see the dragon queen yet? I see her. She’s splendid in all her beauty, white as a lily and shimmering with the mists alighting on her scales.”
When I finished, I glanced down to find her still, her eyebrows remained furrowed but her mouth relaxed and her breathing evened. Relief sent a cool balm into my soul. She needed rest and peace, and her body was finally getting it.
My neck muscles spasmed from being wound so tight with worry.
The episode had passed.
But next time, if I didn’t have a mage stone…
I couldn’t afford one seeing as I hadn’t been paid for the months I chased after Hood and had brought in no other pelts. Hood would bring everything I needed, but I only had a few weeks to accomplish that mission. I’d paid a few Reds to run some errands for me, and I knew where Hood would be.
Yet could I truly kill Fen? Someone Shen cared deeply for. Could I kill Shen’s brother to save my sister and my place in this tribe?
I could change everything. As matriarch, I could save so many lives.
Maybe he would understand?
I shook my head.
No. He wouldn’t. Shen would find another way instead of killing.
But as Anna shivered and whimpered in pain, I knew what I had to do.
The arena was teeming with individuals who had come to cheer on their perspective teams. It was a monthly match between the best and the worst of the upcoming human mages.
Prince Gerald was a mighty big supporter of this so-called sport. He never missed a match, not even the one after his son died when most would stay home in mourning.
The matches begin with the least powerful and end with the most powerful. Which was why I was dressed in a freakin’ dress and huddled around a bunch of people who could slit my throat at any moment, watching both those around me and the people surrounding Gerald, who was already half-drunk on spirit rum.
He planted a sloppy kiss on a woman with long, black hair, wearing a short skirt. She giggled, but as soon as he turned away, she discretely wiped off the slobber. I gagged on her behalf.
Down beneath the screaming of the crowd was the sizzle of lightning as two wielders went at it in the center of the bowl-like sand arena. This was the last match. Thank Source. I was about to die if one more person touched me. Or I suppose it wouldn’t be me who died if I accidentally stabbed someone. Would hate that for them.
When Gerald and his posse gathered their things to leave the arena, I was more than happy to be slinking around inside of shadows as the people thinned. Then I didn’t have everyone touching me.
Gerald and his guards were taking their normal route to their typical ale house, the Ale’s Maiden. Idiots. Didn’t they know varied routes makes it harder for assassins to track you?
I followed Gerald down, watching above and around the idiots when a need slammed into me. Then it was gone. It was familiar. The person craved freedom. It couldn’t be.
Fen was Hood. I’d once thought it could’ve been Shen, but I saw Fen. He was the black werewolf with the heart on his haunches.
I blew on my dart and Gerald jerked, causing an arrow sent from two stories above the alley to go wide and crash into a pile of crates. Gerald’s hired mercenaries quickly picked him up and darted down the alleyway.
No more arrows were shot, which was confusing. Why would Hood not try to finish him even if he hit a mercenary? What’s one more soul added to his tally?
A glint of light reflected off a golden eye before it looked away. He was right above me.
Ice flooded my veins as my heart tried to bruise my ribs.
I jumped, scrambling up a trellis which creaked and groaned to reach a window on the second story. Four feet from me was a balcony made of rusting iron. I gathered myself and leapt, barely grabbing the bottom of the balcony. My body jolted as the rusted iron dug into my hands. I pulled myself up and used a rotting wooden ladder to make my way to the roof.
Just in time to see a black-cloaked individual pause on the far side of the roof. Goats were lounging in the corner, chewing their cud as if they saw cloaked assassins on the daily.
The dry grass crunched beneath my feet. The person turned, their cloak snapping in the wind. There was a hint of a golden eye before he jumped. “Stop!” I yelled, racing forward.
I didn’t have time to think about it. I was two stories up and Hood had just jumped across to another roof. He wasn’t getting away this time. I needed another mage stone. I needed to be heir. I needed to avenge my grandpa. I needed to restore my family’s honor.
I had to bring back his pelt.
There was no other choice.
I pushed myself as I ran, my legs burning on the last step. I used the ledge to push myself off and then I was airborne. Weightlessness made it feel like I was flying for a split second, then the ground tugged at me. I flailed my arms and legs, but I knew I wouldn’t make it.
I stretched as far as I could, but my fingers missed the edge by mere inches. I saw my death. Felt my own prickling need for someone to be with me, to help me—the first need of my own I had ever felt.
No one would come.
Mom and Dad wouldn’t know what happened to me for a very long time. They may never know, as bodies that turned up in the streets were put in a massive, unmarked graveyard.
Fingers wrapped around my wrist with a bruising grip. I slammed against the wall even as I met glowing golden eyes above me within a face wreathed in shadow.
He pulled me up as if I weighed nothing and deposited me on the roof in a tangle of arms and legs. His movements were jerky and abrupt. He turned to go, making it five steps before I pulled out my blowgun and aimed it.
“Stop!”
He paused.
I slowly stood, my body aching and battered, but nothing broken. I walked around him to stare at the man of my nightmares. He seemed smaller. In my dreams, he was a giant, snarling, untamable beast with red-flecked teeth and glistening red eyes.
But before me now? He was just a man. Not a nightmare. I could beat a man.
“Tonight, you die,” I said.
Was it my imagination, or did his shoulders dip at my words?
I blew on my dart, and he didn’t move. It struck his arm, just above his bracer, and he stumbled. Then he straightened. That dart had enough wolfsbane to kill a smaller werewolf. He should’ve been out.
A yell pulled from my aching chest as I attacked. I punched him in the stomach, and he grunted, exhaling as if pained. Something about that made me pause for a split second—a second he could’ve taken advantage of. I knew better than to give such a killer an opening, but he didn’t grab my throat as I thought he would. No, he stood there, watching me, even as I recovered enough to land a strike against his kidney and then his solar plexus. On those, he didn’t move.
It was as if he were frozen in time, even as I kicked his jaw with enough force to bring him to his knees.
I slapped him. “Fight back!” I screamed into his face. The rage was wearing off. The adrenaline was fading. And behind it was a question.
Why didn’t he fight? Even Fen would fight me.
And why didn’t I attack with my daggers?
The answer to that question was one I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I already knew the answer.
He pulled his cowl down and spat blood from his mouth. I put a blade to his throat. “Fight me,” I yelled as he slowly turned, meeting my eyes with his golden gaze.
“Never,” he whispered.
I stumbled back as if struck, tripping over my own feet and landing on my butt.
“ Shen?” I gasped. No. He was not Hood. I saw Fen . I knew Fen was?—
His face fell, pain in every ridge and divot. He pulled his hood further back, exposing the dark hair I had longed to run my fingers through to see if it was as silky as it looked. He glanced up at me with eyes vulnerable but unyielding, lips pursed, and crooked nose highlighted by the silvery moonlight. His eyes turned from gold to the darkness swirled with gold as if they were stars in an abyss.
He rose cautiously as if I were a spooked filly. He kneeled before me and grabbed the blade I’d dropped in my shock, putting it in my palm. Without breaking my gaze, he drew my hand and the blade to his neck, tilting his head in submission and baring his artery for the kill. When the icy blade touched his neck, he closed his eyes.
I dropped the blade as if it’d burned me.
His eyes snapped open, a question in them. Why didn’t I kill him? I didn’t know. But I just knew that I couldn’t.
We stared at each other for many long moments as my brain went back through our time together. From our first meeting, where he nearly killed me and I stabbed him to our last, where he held me and showed such pain over the mark on my wrist and let me hold him while he mourned the one he’d lost.
Tears wouldn’t come. Shock was settling too deeply.
He bared his neck in submission once more before he rose and walked away. I sat there with numbness coating my frozen heart.
Shen was Sicario Hood.
Shen had killed my grandpa right in front of me.
Shen was the one I would have to kill in order to save my sister and become Matriarch of the Reds.