Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
B eans and Bitty burst through the door, both beaming and dripping wet. They found the garden unguarded because it’s a shared garden. The area where the royals sit is indeed guarded, but the garden, as a whole, is not.
But the best part is that they were able to follow the young Prince Eryn Oferdu after they found him lounging in the gazebo during a break in the rain. They now know which room is his because Bitty was able to follow his footsteps through the castle. This makes them feel very proud of themselves, as they should. This is an excellent result.
We plan, as a team, how we’re going to sneak me in with Bitty on the lookout. First, we need to find me a uniform of a Patron on staff, which has me tingling in anticipation as I’ll get to sneak and steal one from the royal launders.
But the rest of our day is uneventful. It starts to rain again so the next part of our plan is postponed. We spend the afternoon eating and playing Talamu (I suck, which surprises no one), and we have an early night.
Rolling over in bed, I see the naked body of a man. It’s Riley’s pale, freckled skin glowing in the sunbeams of a new day. I stroke his chest, and he grabs my hand, flattening it against him roughly, as he pushes it slowly downward.
He flaunts his cheeky smirk and smoldering eyes that unleash immediate desire within me. My bare nipples harden almost painfully as I clench my thighs against the heat pooling in my core. When our hands reach their destination, I grip him, and he covers my hand with his. He guides my hand along his shaft, lazily pumping him to a full erection.
Unable to wait any longer, I hook my leg over his waist to straddle him. I slide myself along every delicious inch of his cock, coating him with my slick arousal. He holds my neck with one hand as he rolls my nipple between his fingers with the other. I arch and buck against him with the painful pleasure.
I’m guiding him to my entrance, when a sound catches in my throat, waking me from my dream.
I let out a very angry, very frustrated breath through my nose. The moon—not the sunrise—is streaming through the window, and Riley and I are most definitely clothed.
Riley’s sleepy voice startles me. “You okay?” he says, reaching for me.
I look up—I’ve managed to scoot down the bed so I am facing his chest. “No,” I say, causing him to sniff and sit up on his elbow, rubbing his eyes.
The room is still dark, the moonlight only illuminating the back of him, keeping his front in a shroud of darkness.
“Nightmare?”
I let out a breath, dragging my word. “No.”
“If it wasn’t a nightmare, why aren’t you—oh,” he says, as I capture his hand and drag it down my body .
“Just scratching an itch,” he says, a statement, not a question.
I pull up the long, sleeveless tunic I was sleeping in and confirm. “Nothing else.”
His hand moves to my hip, gripping and dragging my underwear down with a delicious scrape until it reaches the point where I can kick them the rest of the way. Hooking his hand under my left knee, he moves it to spread my legs.
“As you wish, Firecat,” he whispers down to me, stroking the shell of my ear with his other hand.
With painfully slow swirls, his fingers caress my inner thigh. I reach down to hurry his hand, but he grabs it with a growl, passing it to his hand beside my head to restrain me.
“If you want me to do this, I will do it my way.”
Apparently, he is waiting for a response as he hasn’t resumed his movements. I breathe the word “okay” at him. His hand slides along my thigh so quickly my breath catches, only to have him stroke the skin next to my core, where it meets the edge of my thighs. While he keeps my left hand restrained, my other is wedged uselessly between us.
I lean up to kiss him, but he dodges me. I don’t have time to wonder why, as he slips his fingers into my wetness and slides it up my slit.
He sucks in a breath. “You’re so fucking wet. What were you dreaming about?”
“Daddy Beans,” I tease, licking up the column of his throat, since that’s all I can reach while restrained.
He releases my hand and growls softly. “Then why don’t you ask him to scratch your itch?”
“Maybe I wi?—”
Riley slides a finger inside me, cutting my words short. The room is silent, and I stifle my moan so the two people on the other side of the room stay asleep. The slick sounds of his finger’s rhythmic movements are amplified in the silence, especially as he adds a second finger. He pumps in and out with deliberate strokes, and I muffle my ragged breath into his throat.
With my hand free now, I slide it down his torso, aiming for his pants. I need more, I need to touch him at the same time. I reach his waistband and slip my hand under it. He leans down to my ear. “I will not be able to remain as quiet as you are if you touch me, Firecat,” he whispers.
I grunt my frustration, nipping at his ear as I hold his hip instead. He slides his fingers deeper and brings his thumb around to stroke the bundle of nerves at the apex of my thighs. As his fingers slide out slightly with a curl of pressure inside, his thumb slides downward. Fingers sliding all the way back in while his thumb, now slick, slides up and over my sensitive nub.
He must realize I’m close, because he cocoons me entirely under him, all while his fingers slip in and out of my core and the heat of his thumb caresses along my slit. I buck and arch my back, holding my breath against him so I don’t make a sound. My nails dig into his hip as I quake with release. I pant as quietly as possible, trying to return to even breathing as my body continues to quiver and shudder with aftershocks.
“I can still feel your climax fluttering around my fingers,” Riley whispers, fingers still inside me. And then he laughs quietly as his words cause my walls to clench around his fingers in another wave of pleasure.
Finally able to breathe normally, I relax onto my back, and he gently removes his fingers. I reach for his face, but he rolls off the bed to stand. The moonlight streaming through the window reveals the silhouette of exactly what I was missing between his legs. He hands me my underwear quietly and moves like a ghost into the washroom.
Never have I been able to climax with someone else’s fingers, proving how wound-tight I really was. I consider following Riley into the washroom, surely he could be quieter in there. I want to taste him, feel him in my mouth. I haven’t done that since the time I was forced to, and I thought I’d never want to again. But I do, if it’s Riley. I must fall asleep thinking about him fucking my mouth because he startles me awake, crawling back into our bed, erection gone.
“I’ll scratch your itch next time,” I promise.
“No need, Firecat. I just wanted to prove I could fuck you with my fingers. Goodnight.”
Thankful for a moonless sky, I’m climbing the outer walls toward Prince Eryn’s room the next night. Unfortunately, I am still only wearing a black hooded cloak instead of a sneaksuit. It’s risky and dangerous to be doing this so exposed, but we have no choice. Part of our plan is to kidnap the young prince and get him to tell us where the doxies are. Then tomorrow, hopefully before anyone realizes he’s gone, I’ll take my new uniform for a tour.
For a tyrannical king, it’s far too easy to get to his son’s room. Bitty is nearby and will cause a diversion if they hear anything to suggest someone has spotted me, giving me time to get away. But so far, so good, there is not a single guard around.
It’s the middle of the night, and Bitty said they’ve heard nothing since the prince went to bed a few hours after sunset and has heard nothing since. Praying to the Divine this isn’t a trap, I silently open his window and slink into the room, closing it behind me.
Crouching under the window, I allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness and survey the prince’s room. My heart skips a beat before realizing the three faces looking at me across the room are only a realistic painting. The large and gaudy frame takes up most of the wall, and as my eyes continue to adjust, I make out the super detailed faces of who I assume are the king, his deceased queen, and their son, Eryn.
Yet another tragic royal death. Queen Jasi broke her neck falling off a horse a decade past. Though I do remember there being something in the rumor mill about it, so there may be more to the story than what was made public. But I had my own shit to deal with at the time—learning to become an assassin in exchange for Jaena cleaning up my mess and avoiding the inevitable execution she promised I’d receive otherwise. I didn’t really care what was happening to a royal family across the world.
I quickly survey the room. There is a bedside table and a large canopy bed to my left, with another bedside table on the other side. Along the left wall is a large dresser toward the far wall. The far wall consists of an open door to what looks like a washroom next to the painting, which sits above a long cabinet that runs almost its entire length. Two sofa seats are to my right, next to what I assume must be the door to exit. A plush rug takes up the empty space in the room, and a cold shiver overtakes me, looking at how bare the room is of personal belongings.
I can hear the soft snoring of sleep, and I crawl forward to see the tousled hair of a 16-rev-old boy in his bed. Fortunately, he’s alone.
I crawl further into the room, so I can stand without casting a shadow in his window. Taking both blades from my thighs, I pounce on the kid, using one hand to cover his mouth and the other to hold my knives in his view.
He doesn’t make a sound as I keep my voice low. “Try to scream, and you’ll be dead before it leaves your throat.” He nods .
Sitting on Eryn’s chest, I move a blade to his ribs and one to his throat. My knees keep pressure on his arms.
“How many guards are outside your door?”
“None. Well, not directly. They’re stationed outside my sitting room next door,” he whispers, not even a tremble.
“I don’t want to kill you, but please do not misunderstand. I won’t hesitate if I have to, Prince Eryn.”
“What do you want? My father will not pay a ransom. He would sooner send the Silent Assassin to kill me before rescuing me.”
I blink at him. No love was lost between the prince and his father then. I file that bit of information away to share with the others.“You look resigned to death either way?”
“Well, if you cannot ransom me, what else is there?”
Letting a long breath out of my nose, I look at the kid. He’s surely over 6-foot, and not so wiry that he wouldn’t be able to overpower me if he had been taught. He’d likely still die at my blade but is it not better to die fighting than to not try at all? It disappoints me that the king did not teach his son to defend himself or even post sufficient guards.
“Where does your father keep his doxies? Have you seen the Gifted Princess Ofnemoris recently?”
Eryn’s face changes, to almost…excited? Happy? I cannot tell in the darkness, but his voice is quick and punchy. “You’re here to rescue her?”
“So, you know that she didn’t go home?”
“I saw her once after my father had said she’d left two weeks prior.”
I sigh, relaxing my blades slightly. “This is the first good news we’ve received since…well, since she went missing.”
“The doxies are in an entire wing in the East. Their windows are guarded, though.”
“Thank you. Knowing they’re in the east wing is already a massive help. We can figure it out from there. Why are you helping me?”
“Besides those knives aimed at me?” he laughs nervously. “She was always nice to me and helping her get away from my father is the least I can do.”
This boy is either an exceptional actor or… “Do you want to be kidnapped anyway? I have it on high authority the Silent Assassin won’t kill you.”
“Why?” the prince drags the word out slowly, inquisitively.
I shrug, slowly pulling my knives away from their threatening position. “To get you away too.”
“He would find me, somehow. How do you know the Silent Assassin wouldn’t kill me?” he asks, studying me.
“Retired,” I say as I put my knives away, getting off him gently so he can sit up.
His face lights up. “You’re her! ” he hisses.
I rub my face. The last few nights of shitty sleep are catching up to me. “Yes. But as I said, I’m retired.” Why did I just admit who I am to this kid? I adjust my hood to ensure my features are still hidden.
“I thought you’d be scarier. I’m bigger than you!”
I snort derisively. “And yet you didn’t try to overpower me, my darling prince.”
“Rude,” he says, feigning indignation.
I watch him for a moment, his innocence and enthusiasm reminding me of Bitty. He stares back at me pleasantly, not acting in any way I would have expected a first-born Prince Oferdu to behave.
It also isn’t the first time that someone has realized I am the Silent Assassin and reacted…differently. I’m so conditioned to the Osraed response of spitting on me or being obviously disgusted by me as a person. This…exci tement? I’m not sure which makes me more uncomfortable.
Standing to stretch my back, I ask him, “So how do I trust that you won’t go running to your father the moment I leave?”
He moves to sit on the edge of his bed. “You’ll have to trust my word, as I’ll trust yours, that you’re here to do exactly what you’ve said and nothing more.”
“There’s the Royal backbone I was looking for,” I tease.
Walking to the window, I peer out to make sure it's clear.
“What’s your next move?” Eryn asks.
“I wouldn’t be the Silent Assassin if I told everyone what my plans were, kid,” I chuckle.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a projectile heading toward me. Throwing myself back into a flip and unsheathing both knives, I land in a crouch, poised to throw.
As a pillow hits the sofa seat, plopping softly onto the ground.
Eryn’s face is stricken; he holds his hands up in panicked surrender. “Sorry! Sorry. I was…I didn’t think!”
I glare at him from my defensive crouch, letting him sweat a bit. My hood has fallen back and— of fucking course —the light through the window has illuminated me. He can’t help it. He’s already studied my face and hair before I realized he could. I stand, sheathing my knives, giving myself a moment to decide what to do.
I should kill him. It’s bad enough that he knows the Silent Assassin is here and could tell his father, but now he can identify me too. I’m still weighing my options as I stare at him when he slaps his hands over his eyes dramatically.
“I didn’t see you. Were you Sadoriborn? Nemorisborn? Couldn’t tell. Couldn’t pick you from a crowd, that’s for sure.”
The prince’s word vomit finally comes to an end, and I sigh. The Silent Assassin is getting soft. Or I’m just really fucking tired. Probably both. “I’m going to go now before I accidentally— or deliberately— kill you and your pillows. I’ll see you around, prince. Or not.”
I slink out the window I came in, cascading down the reinforced gorge walls that make up the front of the castle. Reaching the bottom, I pause, waiting for an alarm to sound. Looking back up, I spot Eryn watching me from his window, and he gives me a tiny wave. I awkwardly wave back.
What a strange kid.