25
The morning arrives too quickly and I shudder from the cold as I get out of bed. We’re leaving before dawn as Wendil is a few days’ ride from here and we want to get there at nightfall.
I stifle a yawn and get changed into my combat gear. I kept the armour and straps from the battle a few days prior.
I add these to my usual attire, as well as a black piece of cloth that I tie around my neck.
I use the mirror and tie my hair into a crown of braids, keeping it from getting in the way.
I look out towards the glass door that leads to my balcony. The sky is still so dark that I can see my reflection. I sigh softly and turn to leave the warmth of my room.
The King and Cole are already at the stables, their bodies lit by the lantern along the wall next to them, casting a soft warm glow over their faces. They’re both standing with their arms crossed and in deep conversation as I’m approaching.
I’m considering turning invisible to listen in but Xander snaps his attention to me before I can do anything.
“Good morning, love.” He says with a soft smile.
“Are we ready to go?” Is all I reply.
“Just about, we were waiting for you.” Cole answers, his tone sharp.
I roll my eyes at him and go to find a horse before the King puts his hand up to stop me.
My gaze flicks to the black bag hanging from one of Xander’s hands.
“This is for you.” He says softly, “it holds a few things that might be useful.”
I reach up to grab it but he pulls the bag away. Eyeing me playfully, before bringing his hands down and tying it around my waist himself.
I watch his brows crease in concentration as he focuses on tying the knot. Warmth creeps up my neck and I’m about to slap him away when he pulls me from my thoughts.
“You’re riding with Cole.” He says sternly, not looking up.
I scoff at him. “Again? Don’t you guys trust me yet? I thought we got past this after I helped you the other night?”
“It’s just safer this way.” Is all the King says as he finishes tying the bag at my waist. His warm hands linger at my hips, just a bit too long, before guides me to where Cole is standing by his brown horse.
I get on in front and Cole jumps on behind me. The King straightens the reins and the bridle.
Xander looks up at me, blue eyes dancing softly in the dim light from the lantern.
“Try not to miss me too much, love.” He says with a wink. Then he nods to Cole, some sort of unspoken understanding and leaves.
I watch the King walk back up to the castle.
Hands in his pockets, all too casual and yet he has an incredible weight on his shoulders.
With his ambition to save the entirety of Aressor, yet no kingdom knows.
His desire to save the hybrids, yet no one knows the true danger they’re in.
I fall into a trance at the weight of it all, all he’s done and all he will do to save the people of Aressor who have no clue.
Why does it have to be him?
What’s his actual role in this?
Cole takes off abruptly causing me to gasp and slam back into him. Startled and violently ripped from my thoughts.
Cole barks out a laugh.
“You’re hilarious.” I say sarcastically.
“And you’re distracted.” He says with a laugh.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure.” He replies knowingly.
We make a fair amount of distance before I start to see the pink and orange hues of the sunrise.
The ball of light starts to rise above one of the mountains ahead of us.
Slowly illuminating the grounds and casting a shadow over the town below as it does.
It’s too far for me to see any details yet but we’re still in Erador so I know I’ve never been to the little town below the mountains.
We’re riding along a dirt path that links a few of the towns between Erador and Wendil, as we head around the bottom of Aressor.
“Are you missing your usual assassin duties?” Cole asks suddenly.
I scoff at his question. “My duties were a mix of thievery and assassinations, however I do prefer the former.” I reply before casting a look over my shoulder. “Whether you believe it or not.”
“The stories about you would suggest otherwise.”
I shrug. “Some are true, some aren’t but I don’t care either way. The stories, whichever ones, got me work and allowed me that little bit more freedom.”
Whatever freedom I got at the Agency was worth it, though they would never let me stray too far.
Never giving me enough money to leave and start my own life, yet even if they did, I couldn’t anyway.
Not with the threat against Abigail’s life, a threat that I’m sure still remains now that I know she’s alive.
“And you didn’t care what that work was?”
I shudder, past memories of old missions threaten to come forth. I had done unspeakable things in my first decade at the Agency. I push the memories back out of my mind and school my features. “I stopped caring a long time ago.”
“I don’t believe that at all.” Cole says, with a sense of certainty in his voice.
“I don’t care what you believe, commander.”
I had in truth become desensitised to killing a while ago.
While I much prefer it to be quick, I no longer lose sleep or throw up after missions.
It’s been a while since a kill has brought up my dinner.
Having known I was going to be at the Agency my whole life, I trained myself against it.
Part of the reason why my first years are filled with so much regret.
I was training to be a killer who doesn’t flinch and yet hadn’t drawn a line of how far I was willing to go.
I still don’t hesitate to kill now but I’m not as vicious as I used to be.
After the years of doing unspeakable things, I’ve tried to save what remains of my soul.
“I’m trained to oversee the soldiers, command them and have trained up our own assassins in the past.” Cole says.
“I have seen the killers who truly don’t care, they have lost all shred of empathy. They’re cruel, calculated and there is not one thing they wouldn’t do to another person. I look into their eyes and see no light at all, no redeeming qualities, nothing.”
Cole stops for a moment and I realise this is the most I’ve heard him talk, least of all to me.
“However, I have been observing you, I have looked into your eyes and while I believe you can do cruel things, you haven’t lost yourself or your empathy entirely. Although I wasn’t certain in my observations until I saw your face after we killed those Hidale soldiers— you cared.”
I stay quiet, not knowing what to even say in response to his admission.
He is wrong and yet he isn’t. He knows nothing of the things I have done and what I care about and yet, he’s not wrong about that night.
I didn’t enjoy seeing those men die. Though I only cared when I realised they were normal fae, who had been conscripted to fight a war they didn’t want any part in.
How many would have gone home and vomited at the thought of killing innocent hybrids?
I know many of Hidale’s soldiers are brutal, I saw as much when I saved the mother and her two boys. But I also know there are regular fae in the mix, just normal people who had been born in the wrong place.
I hate the way the commander has read me so easily. I have let very few people in over the years. There’s hardly any fae in the land that know my life and who I am outside of the things that I do.
None however, know about Abigail.
Yet even still, the knowledge that on the inside, past the cutthroat exterior, I'm not as much of a monster as the stories say, is a vulnerability that I do not care for.
Yet I have allowed myself to become vulnerable with the King and Cole. I’ve allowed Cole to see right through me.
“Don’t worry.” Cole says and I jump, slightly startled by his words pulling me out of my thoughts.
“I won’t tell anyone. Your precious reputation as the heartless assassin will still be intact.” He says it like it’s a joke but he doesn’t understand that my reputation is my life. It’s how I get to where I need to go, how I survive, how she survives.
“How generous of you.” I say back through gritted teeth.
Before dusk, we find a town and he guides the horse in to find us a tavern for the night.
The town is small, with only one dirt road leading up the middle. The houses stacked on top of each other, are a mix of stone and wood with small lanterns lighting the way to each door.
Staircases run up the sides, leading to the second and third floors of the small homes.
We reach a tavern in the middle of the small town, the building much larger than the houses and small stores around.
The door to the tavern is held ajar by a large boot. Allowing the smell of smoke and alcohol to fill my senses. We walk in and are met with a dark and dingy interior, only lit by the lanterns on the tavern's tables.
We’re in a town that clearly lacks money and is mainly filled with people of lower social rankings.
Which is why we get lots of strange looks as we walk through.
The stares, a mix of disgust, anger, lust and greed.
I make my face a mask of stone and stare them down as we walk through, daring them to try anything.
“We’ll need one room.” Cole says to the tavern worker, who gladly offers us a room and overcharges Cole. I wonder if the commander noticed.
The worker walks us to the room and I grab Cole’s wrist. “What do you mean one room?” I whisper.
“I’m not taking any chances.” Cole says, “I don’t need to worry about these men coming after you all night.”
Before I reply and inform him I could take them all on easy, he holds up his hand in mock surrender. “Relax, I know you could easily kill them, they’re not even soldiers but we do not need a trail of dead bodies.”
I let go of his wrist and we walk down the narrow hallway, until the worker finds our room and opens the door for us.
I gasp, as I stare at the one bed in the small room.
“I am not—”
I start to say before Cole interrupts and turns to the worker. “Do you have a room with two single beds?” He asks.
The worker looks at me amused and then gestures for us to follow him on. I want to wipe that smile off his sick face.
He takes us to another room, which is still small but does in fact have two separate beds. Cole claims the one closest to the door and I am next to the window.
The room surprisingly has a bathroom attached but it’s very small and dark and as for the room itself, it’s much the same. Save for a candlelit lantern on a small dresser against the wall opposite the beds.
I walk over to the small window near my bed and stare out at the town below, we’re only on the second floor but that just makes the town look even smaller.
I have been to places like this in the past for different jobs with the Agency but never this place, never this far south.
Though they all look the same and tend to have the same type of fae.
This is the type of place where people come to hide if they’re on the run or come to live when they’re out of options.
Because no one really cares about the people that are out of options, I mainly came to towns like this to find the ones that came to hide.
“What are you thinking about?” Cole asks, looking at me from where he sits on his bed.
“Past jobs.” I say with a shrug.
“Any you’d like to share?”
“Like you’d care anyway.” I say and sit on the bed to take my shoes off before slipping under the covers.
“I don’t not care.” He says softly.
“How touching.” I reply with a small smile.
I roll over onto my side, prop my head up on my hand and look at him. “Is this you calling a truce?”
I watch as he gets into his bed and lays down, looking at the ceiling.
“It’s my job to make sure you’re not going to betray Xander or destroy our home. I had to observe you, make sure you were still a good person underneath. Make sure you’d be willing to help us.”
“Well, I’m not a good person but I’m not going to destroy your home.” I hesitate before saying what I want to say next. But I suppose it can’t hurt, he already read me like a book earlier.
“I don’t do monstrous things without something to gain.”
“I know.” He says quietly.
I sigh, rolling back over to lay down. “Goodnight Cole.”
“Goodnight Maeve.” He says.
I realise that it might have been the first time he has ever said my name.