Chapter 7
Morgana
Iblink, trying to make sense of the action around me. Damia threw her knife, and now there’s another fae storming across the room. Ms. Frinach shrieks at the shining blade swinging toward her. I throw my magic outward, wanting to keep that weapon far away from the terrified woman.
Leon gets there the same time my power does.
As my orbital magic wrenches the dagger from the masked fae’s grip, Leon’s hand wraps around his injured shoulder where Damia’s knife hit him, fingers digging into the wound. The man screams and stumbles, allowing Leon to throw him down onto his back—only for the fae to vanish out of sight.
Sensic magic—it has to be. He’s tricking our minds into not seeing him. His sudden disappearance makes us all freeze for just a beat too long. When Leon draws his sword and slams it into the ground where the man should be, it meets no resistance.
“There!” Alastor shouts, pointing to a space to Leon’s left where the man blinks back into view. With his injury, he’s struggling to keep his magic going, but even in the few seconds it takes for Leon to swing his blade around, he’s gone again.
“The hallway!”
I feel a rush of air behind me as Damia leaps past, vaulting over a chair with her eyes fixed firmly on the living room door. She charges through it with her blade outstretched, only to shrink back, clutching her arm.
“Shit!” she hisses, blood dripping between her fingers from a shallow cut. “You little fu—”
Her curse is drowned out by a thud and an awful gurgling sound. Leon was just a few feet behind Damia, and as she pulled back, he swung his sword through the doorway. The blade lodges in something solid, and the masked fae appears again, his head almost completely taken off his shoulders.
Leon withdraws his sword, and the body hits the floor. Ms. Frinach screams.
It takes Fairon several minutes of soothing and consoling before Ms. Frinach will even stop crying.
I don’t blame her. I didn’t react so differently myself the first time someone tried to kill me and I saw them murdered in front of me.
After Fairon finally manages to calm her, she retreats to a washroom to splash some water on her face.
Once she’s out of the room, Fairon throws Leon a disapproving look.
“Was it really necessary to take his whole head, Leonidas?” he says calmly.
Leon shrugs. “I actually only meant to wound him—I wanted him alive so we could question him. But it’s hard to aim when you can’t see the bastard.”
“Neat bit of sensic work,” Alastor says, nodding at the corpse. “Must be a rare power. Shame it went to waste.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Damia says, realization dawning on her features. “The man who can disappear? He’s an assassin. They call him the Ghost.”
“Well, he’s certainly a ghost now,” Alastor says mildly.
“An…an assassin?” Ms. Frinach has reentered in time to catch the end of the conversation, and it’s set her lip to quivering. “Did he come here for me?”
My heart goes out to her. Everyone else in this room is a soldier, or at least has been hardened to the harsher facts of the world. But this woman is just a civilian, and we’ve brought violence and death into her home.
Fairon steers her into one of the chairs not speckled with the assassin’s blood, and I go and crouch beside her.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, making sure she meets my gaze. “Can I ask you your first name?”
“Kora,” she says, confused as to why a human woman is talking to her. We never got around to introducing me.
“Hello, Kora,” I say. “I’m Morgana. I want you to know that we won’t let any more harm come to you. I know that was terrifying, but the princes are powerful men, and whatever reason this has happened, they’re going to make sure you’re protected.”
I don’t need to reach across the mooring—I can demand agreement from Leon and Fairon with just a look.
“Yes…Kora,” Fairon says, trying out the name. “We will do everything in our power to keep you safe. But I’m afraid this incident only proves the importance of what you have to tell us.”
I have no idea what information Kora holds, but I trust Fairon when he says she’s important. Obviously, other people—the assassin-hiring kind—think so too.
“I know you’re afraid, Kora,” I say gently. “But we need you to be brave. Your princes, and Filusia, need you to be brave.”
Her eyebrows rise, and she glances up at Leon and Fairon. “Really?”
“Really, Kora,” Leon says. “We need your help.”
She thinks for a moment more, then nods.
“Alright,” she says. “I assume Your Highness just wants me to share what I told you before—about Nyron?”
“If you’d be so kind,” Fairon says.
She straightens up. “Two years ago, Nyron, my brother, was a ranger in Oudis.”
I glance at Leon, but I sense through the mooring that this doesn’t mean much to him yet.
“One night, Nyron saw a bright light in the sky, like nothing he’d ever seen before. He said it was like the tales they tell about Agathyre—a light from the celestial realm coming down to bless us. A falling star.”
Recognition rears inside me at the same time as it hits Leon. I look at Fairon, but his face is carefully blank.
“Nyron went out looking for it the next day. He wanted to be sure of what he’d seen before reporting it.
He found the star. Although he said in his letters that it was more like a stone—a piece of big, black rock.
Of course, once he’d confirmed his find, he contacted the palace directly.
He didn’t trust those Oudis lords, given all the trouble Your Highnesses had with them a few years back. ”
“Trouble?” I ask Leon through the mooring.
“Some lesser lords got greedy. My grandfather had us send them a message,” he replies.
I don’t ask for more, focusing back on Kora, who now has tears shining in her eyes.
“And what happened after that?” Fairon asks kindly.
“It was in the palace’s hands after that. But Nyron got sick, fast. He sent a message saying he couldn’t do his job anymore. Then he told me he didn’t think he had much time left, that this awful cough he had was getting worse and was bringing up all this black stuff. It had only been a few days.”
Her words come faster, like she’s trying to get them out while she can.
“I’d never heard of an illness like it, and he said the local healer was stumped.
I went to Oudis, I brought him a tincture from one of the dryads here in Lavail.
I was sure their medicine would be better than whatever he could get out there, but…
” Her voice breaks. “But it takes nearly a week to get there, and I was too late. He was already gone.”
She looks down at her hands, tears dripping onto her skirt and darkening the fabric of her dress as her voice hardens. “I barely even recognized him when I saw his body. That star wasn’t a gift. It was a curse. I wish he’d never seen it.”
I stare at Fairon. I hadn’t realized anyone else had gotten sick from the star that poisoned him. Unlike him, Kora’s brother didn’t have a purpose-built building with special healing magic. Considering how sick Fairon was even with that on his side, Kora’s brother didn’t stand a chance.
Maybe I could’ve saved him, but two years ago, I didn’t even know I had magic. A deep sadness washes over me; I still don’t understand why Fairon thought it was so important for us to hear this—or why anyone would hire an assassin to keep her from sharing her story.
Fairon clears his throat. “Thank you, Kora. I know this isn’t easy. And I believe that it all happened exactly as you’ve described. But I wonder if my friend Lord Gyrion here might use a little sensic magic, just to confirm your story.”
Kora nods, seeming not to care much either way, and Alastor steps forward. The buzz of his sensic magic fills the air, and Kora’s face relaxes a little.
“Is everything you’ve told us true, Kora?” Alastor asks.
“Yes,” she says. “It is.”
“Ask her what else she did, when Nyron told her how sick he was,” Fairon says to Alastor. There’s a tension in the prince’s voice that wasn’t there before.
Alastor looks puzzled, but obeys.
“Kora, when you learned Nyron was unwell, what did you do about it, aside from taking him the medicine?”
“I told the palace,” Kora says. “I sent a message before I left. I was worried whoever else they sent to find the star wouldn’t know it was dangerous.”
Alastor frowns. “How soon after getting his letter was this?”
“Right away,” Kora says. “Of course, I knew that he’d told them himself—I just wanted to make sure they’d gotten the message.”
A chill runs through me as I realize what this means. Someone at the palace knew the stone was dangerous. So why didn’t they warn Fairon?
“There’s more,” Fairon says to Leon as Alastor lets his magic fade.
“But Kora has already done enough for us.” He turns to the woman.
“I expect certain matters to be settled in the coming weeks, but until then, I will send a member of my private security to watch over you, to make sure no more danger finds you.”
“I will send someone as well,” says Leon. Kora nods gratefully, but I sense she’s eager for us to all be gone, to leave her alone with her grief. She glances past us, out into the hall.
“What about…”
“I’ll deal with that,” Damia jumps in, striding into the corridor and shutting the door behind her.
And she does. I’m not sure how, exactly, but by the time we’ve all said our thanks once again and prepared to leave, the body is gone. Most of the blood, too, though there is still a faint stain on the wood if you know where to look.
We step back out into the small street and lead our horses away. We’re more uneasy than when we arrived, and there’s little conversation until Damia catches back up with us.
“Is it done?” Leon murmurs.
“He’s Mariste’s problem now,” Damia says, her voice low, though the backstreets we’re traveling on are empty thanks to Fairon’s sensic magic.
She must’ve found some waterway to dump the body in.
She catches my expression. “Don’t worry, I know a good aquari who’ll make sure the currents carry him far away.
Whoever hired him won’t know what happened to the Ghost. They’ll likely just assume he took his payment and abandoned the job.
Assassins can be untrustworthy like that. ”
“Thank you, Damia,” Fairon says tightly. “Although I suspect the man who sent him was wise enough not to pay him up front. He usually is.”
“So are we going to keep dancing around the fact that we’re all thinking the same thing?” Alastor sighs.
“You mean that it looks like our grandfather knew the stone was dangerous and didn’t care that Fairon might get hurt?” Leon says.
“Oh, I think he cared very much,” Fairon says abruptly. “In fact, I think he was counting on that stone killing me.”