Chapter 26 #2
I tried to let my mind drift to other things as Talyn worked on me.
Whether she realized it or not, her story of the hilynx was more applicable to her than to Samhail.
She herself was an impressively lethal woman who’d spent weeks prowling around my home.
The only difference was that – unlike the man in Talyn’s town – I hadn’t suspected the danger that lurked so close.
Now that I knew about it, though, I wasn’t sure I wanted to let it go either.
Samhail was right. Talyn’s unique set of skills made her an extremely valuable asset.
Some rulers might be interested in her power to kill, but information could cut deeper than a sword.
Her ability to camouflage herself in any household and report back what she learned was worth infinitely more than her abilities as an assassin in my book.
The question was whether I could trust her enough after all this to bring her into my inner circle.
Could I trust her around Cyra? Or would we one day find ourselves torn to shreds by the creature we’d let in by the front door?
“Got it,” Talyn said, and I grunted in pain as she withdrew the tweezers from the hole in my shoulder. My body tensed, then relaxed as she laid the bloody tip of metal on the chair beside us.
I looked over at the small tip. How could something so little cause so much trouble?
My wound was bleeding again, and Talyn pressed a clean cloth down onto it hard.
“Hold that there while I get the needle and thread ready,” she said as she grabbed my hand and laid it over the cloth.
A smile twitched at my lips at how she ordered me around like I wasn’t one of the most powerful rulers on the continent. She and Samhail really were cut from the same cloth.
You haven’t earned the answer to that question yet, my lord. That’s what she’d dared to tell me when I’d first asked her who she was. I might’ve been impressed if I hadn’t wanted to kill her at the time.
I considered if I was still angry enough to want her dead.
She spied on us, planned to kill us, then kidnapped me and dragged me into the middle of my greatest enemy’s stronghold for purely selfish reasons.
Granted, I could almost empathize with why she’d done the last, but she’d been reckless with both my life and her own.
“It was you who set off the wards that night?” I asked as she pulled my hand off my chest and removed the cloth.
“Yes.” No pause.
“You realized you set them off and ported back down to your room before my power pulsed.”
“I didn’t quite make it back to my room,” she said. “I made it to the first floor, but I had to shift into a guard when the rest of the guards came rushing into the house.”
“And you were outside our room a week or so earlier in the middle of the night. Samhail caught you in the hall. What were you doing up there that night?”
This time there was a pause. “Actually, I was inside your room that night deciding if I should just kill you and be done with it,” she said.
I leaned up on an elbow. “What?”
Talyn sighed and met my eyes. “I was tired of waiting for Sandrian to tell me what he wanted me to do, so I crept into your room that night. Cyra woke up from a nightmare while I was standing at the foot of your bed. I could’ve sworn she caught a glimpse of me before I ported across the room to hide, but she must have thought I was part of her dream. ”
I fell back against the cot as my insides went cold. Nemesis take me. Cyra and I had been closer to death than we’d ever realized.
Talyn repositioned the lamp as she leaned over me with her needle. I winced as she pushed it through the first piece of skin.
“Why didn’t you kill us that night?” I asked.
“I hadn’t been ordered to yet,” she said. She let out a heavy breath. “Truthfully, I was having trouble convincing myself Cyra needed to die as Sandrian suggested.”
I raised a brow. “Just Cyra?”
She smiled down at me before pushing the needle through again. “Just Cyra,” she confirmed. “I was counting the days until I could kill you.”
“I have that effect on people.”
She huffed a small laugh.
“And now you no longer want to kill me, or are you just waiting until I’ve outlived my usefulness to you?” I asked.
She shrugged again. “You agreed to help me when you didn’t have to, when you in fact have every reason not to. I still think you’re an arrogant ass, but I don’t particularly have any desire to kill you anymore.”
I chuckled. “Be careful, assassin. Next you’ll be declaring yourself the head of my fan club.”
“Don’t you already hold that position?” she asked, and I couldn’t help the bark of laughter that jumped up my throat.
I groaned as the movement stabbed Talyn’s needle into my shoulder.
“No more talking,” she declared, glaring down at me. “I need to finish this and get back to my room. I can’t be caught down here.”
“Do you have a plan yet?” I asked.
“Not yet, but I’ll try to think of one tonight. It’s not safe for either of us to stay here very long. Morland knows why I’m here, and so does Magdalene, for that matter.”
I lifted my head. “What do you mean she knows why you’re here?”
“She knows I’m here to kill Morland,” she said. “Luckily, she doesn’t seem to care all that much if I succeed.”
That was certainly interesting news.
I remained quiet the rest of the time as Talyn finished stitching up my wound. She put a clean cloth over it again and rewrapped it with the piece of my shirt. We tried to make it look as much like I hadn’t been given any medical treatment while still keeping the wound clean so it would heal.
Then she gathered all her things back into the cloth sack and headed for the cell door.
“Have you been practicing with the caronium cuff?” she asked as she reached outside the cell to unlock it with a key she retrieved from between her breasts.
“It takes me a while sometimes, but I can do it,” I said.
“Keep practicing,” she said. “You need to be able to do it fast.”
I nodded, and she slipped quickly out of the cell before closing it behind her and heading back upstairs.
Morland was the issue. Talyn and I could escape easily enough, but finding a way to bring Morland with us was the trick.
Regardless of what Talyn wanted him for, I needed to get Aidan’s body back to Callanus.
Eventually his people would start to wonder where he was, and we needed him close if we were going to find a way to get Morland out of him.
In a strange way, I was actually grateful Talyn had brought me here. Who knows how long it would’ve taken us to find and get Aidan back if she hadn’t. If we could just get him out with us, then we could focus on removing Morland from his mind.
I already had one possible idea about that. If the memory that had come crashing back to me after Magdalene had invaded my mind was true, then I knew just the person who might be able to help us.