Chapter Thirty
Valeris
I made my way back to my rooms, thinking about Analleia after studying her on the way back.
She had followed me down to the town festivities.
I had told Analleia I knew she was following me, but I hadn’t even known she was there until shortly before I confronted her in the alley, even before Howland noticed.
I doubted Howland would have let her get that far without interrogating her first. When I had pinned her to the wall with the dagger, I had seen her bright blue eyes and realized who she was.
She’d surprised me. My fist clenched, remembering the way she had leaned forward to whisper against my lips.
Are you going to kiss me or kill me?
I recoiled now at the way I had jerked away from her.
Her utter bewilderment that I would go down to the lower city had made me want to laugh.
I had learned things about her. There was more to her than met the eye.
I had almost felt a connection with her as we danced, twisting in and out of each other’s arms, the closeness too intimate, her eyes locked on mine.
But that was one night in the village. The fact she was as cunning as I and able to hide it proved I could never trust her.
I needed to use her to help me win the crown and then send her from Paravellia, never to see her again.
Yet, I couldn’t shake the familiarity I had with her. As if I’d known her in another life. As if we were long-lost friends. Everything was familiar about her and yet nothing at the same time. It was unnerving feeling like you knew someone but never being able to identify where you knew them from.
It irritated me far more than I would have liked to admit.
Analleia had disappeared into the inn, oblivious to the fact the dagger she’d dropped was now tucked beneath my jacket.
I had felt something hit my boot as we were dancing, looked down to see a flash of silver on the cobblestones.
Her skirt was the only place it could have come from.
I’d leaned down, pretending to mess with the laces on my boots as I picked it up.
I might have given it back to her, as carrying a dagger was a standard safety measure—until I saw the markings on the hilt.
It was no simple weapon meant for protection.
When we’d been dancing, it had felt like we were two different people from a different time, but the knife quickly reminded me I couldn’t trust her no matter how much I’d been tempted to feel like I could.
Alone in my rooms, I took out the dagger. Remarkable didn’t come close to describing it. Even our bladesmith didn’t possess this kind of skill and workmanship. The symbol etched into the hilt looked to hold a significant meaning.
I pulled out a piece of parchment, copying down the dagger stroke for stroke, making sure it looked identical to the real one. Once finished, I rolled up the parchment and placed it in my breast pocket, wrapping the real dagger in a cloth and stashing it beneath my mattress for safekeeping.
I slipped into the soldiers’ barracks where I located Vera, my most resourceful and trusted soldier, pulling her out into the night.
“I need you to do something for me,” I said.
Sleep hung in her eyes, but she nodded.
I brought out the drawing, unrolling it for her to see. “I need you to find out whatever you can about this dagger. What kingdom it’s from, whose house it’s from, who made it, what the symbol signifies.”
She studied the drawing, eyes roving over the strokes and design. She met my eyes. “It will take a while. This doesn’t look like anything we make here. I might have to cross borders to figure out anything substantial—unless I get lucky.”
I gripped her shoulder. “Then I’ll pray you get lucky. Tell no one about this.”
She nodded, retreating back into the barracks.
I kept playing the night over and over in my mind. I rounded the corner to enter the royal apartments and found Uncle Wylan leaning against the wall, his leg cocked uncomfortably to the side.
“Uncle?” Fear punched through me as I rushed forward, seeing blood on his shirt and sweat pouring from his brow. “We need to get you to the physician.”
“No.” He jerked away from me, bracing himself against the wall again. “No physician. I need to talk to you. In your room. Now. The blood isn’t mine. Not much of it.”
I slipped an arm underneath his shoulder, helping support his weight as the guard let us through the door and he hobbled into my room.
He sank into my desk chair, rolling up his breeches and stretching out his leg to reveal the swollen knee beneath.
A stab wound with blood still flowing was on his lower calf.
I strode over to the door, opening it to Howland on the other side and whispering for him to call the physician and have him wait in my uncle’s rooms. Uncle Wylan’s stubbornness would get him killed.
“What happened?” I demanded.
His breathing came fast and heavy, strained. “I was attacked.”
I pulled at the layers of his shirt, looking for any tears or weapon entries on the bloodstained cloth, but his leg appeared to be the only injury.
I retrieved a bowl of water and a towel from the washroom, returning to apply pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding. Blood soaked into the cloth and dripped back into the basin, turning the clear water pink.
“Attacked by who, and why were they trying to kill you?” My voice remained calm even as my insides churned.
He shook his head, taking a deep breath. “Assassin. They wanted something.”
He lifted his hand, revealing his blood-splattered ring. I had never seen him without it, knew the ring was important to him, but it didn’t look valuable enough to kill for.
“This ring signifies more than you know, boy. Whoever attacked me, they wanted it.”
“What did they look like?” I asked, wiping away the rest of the blood from his leg and going in search of a bandage. It would hold him until he saw the physician.
“Couldn’t tell. The corridor was dimly lit, and they were dressed in all black.”
I froze. “Do you think—”
He nodded. “I think these are the same people that murdered your brother. I’m afraid they might come after you next.
They wanted the ring. I know who they work for now, and I can promise you it is nothing good.
You need to be extra cautious. Don’t leave the palace grounds without sufficient guards.
Try not to go anywhere alone, even though I know Howland is always right behind you. Keep your guard up. For everyone.”
My mind flashed back to the girl with Analleia. She had tried to drug him once before. Maybe her friend wasn’t who she said she was. But no. They had wanted to get information from him. Not the ring.
But I’ll double check.
“Do you have any idea who they were?”
He grunted as he sat upright, examining his knee.
“Only that the guild of assassins they were from is highly trained and deadly. They will move about without you ever knowing and strike when you least expect it. You will only see them when they want you to. But I got them. I stabbed them in the right of their abdomen. I tried to look for a blood trail, but the rain was on their side.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance, laughing at us as it prepared to remove every trace of evidence. I glanced to the doors of my balcony. If they truly had murdered my brother, my siblings and I were next. And if he had left a wound on the perpetrator—that made them far easier to identify.
I walked out of the royal apartments, instructing one of the soldiers to send messengers to visit the physicians in the city and to report back if any of them had someone come in with a knife wound to the abdomen.
A wound like that would fester and kill without treatment.
We would find our assassin—dead or alive.