Chapter 20
Isit on my balcony, staring out as the sun rises and gold stains the pale blue clouds above us. Despite the beautiful morning, the air still smells of cinders and smoke. An inauspicious start to the day.
As if trying to cover up for the horror of last night, a servant slipped into my room a few minutes ago, leaving me with bouquets of flowers and a teapot—pretty diversions before we start hacking each other to death in a stone pit.
I’m already dressed for the trial, with a raven sigil embossed across my hardened leather doublet.
I had the option of chain mail and a metal cuirass, but it felt too heavy and restrictive for fighting on foot.
Being able to shift and dodge swiftly will offer me better protection than a heavy breastplate.
During the few hours I slept last night, I dreamt that I’d buried dragons’ teeth in the soil, and an army of the dead rose from the ground to fight on my behalf. When I woke, it was just me again. And Rion’s words keep rolling around in my head. Tick-tock. Little machine.
He sensed I’ve been trained by someone who demanded absolute perfection.
Somehow, he knows I’m part human. It’s as if he can pull me open like a book and read every secret inside.
Is he a fucking telepath on top of the dread magic?
Because if he heard me thinking about his hard, muscled chest and abs, I will make it my mission to slaughter him today.
A knock sounds on my door from across the room, and Tristan’s muffled voice filters through the wood.
“Come in!” I shout.
Tristan crosses into the room, bearing a silver tray with my breakfast. As my head servant, some of these tasks fall to him. “Breakfast is served, Baroness Alis.”
“I do hope it’s hot. You know I flogged my last butler for serving me lukewarm tea.”
“Careful what you promise, Baroness.” He slides the tray onto the table and pulls off the silver dome.
Tristan and I joke about it, but he has actually been flogged with an iron-tipped whip.
His back bears the scars. Once, he took a lashing for me.
After weeks of brutal training, I’d vomited in the corner of the Undercroft.
Weakness wasn’t allowed, but Tristan told Auberon it was him.
He took the whipping for me, and I will never forget it.
Before me are hot bread, scones, butter, strawberries, and a few pieces of cheese.
“Please eat with me, Tristan. How are the servants’ quarters?” I ask.
He pours us both cups of hot tea. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt today, and my gaze brushes over his tattoos, the beautifully rendered leaves that coil up his muscles.
“A maid named Arlene keeps climbing into my bed at night. She claims she’s confused every time, then locks her legs around me.”
I spread butter onto a piece of steaming bread. “I hope you don’t get entangled in any romantic drama while we’re here.”
“Hard to avoid, sometimes. Perhaps it’s my fate.”
“Do you believe in fate, Tristan?”
He grabs a scone and leans back. The morning sun catches in his green eyes. “Fate is something people invent after they’ve already won. But the moment they lose, their destiny disappears.”
“What do you mean?”
“Auberon ruled for fifteen hundred years. They called it destiny.” His gaze flicks to mine, and a slow smile curls his lips. “Now that he’s dead, they call him a usurper. It only takes one battle.”
“One battle,” I say. “Maybe my fate will change today.”
He leans closer, his eyes locking on mine. “Don’t die today.”
“I will obviously be trying not to die.”
“If you do, I won’t let it go.”
“You are fantasizing about saying I told you so to my corpse right now. But I’m not going to die. I’m still the same ruthless Syn I’ve always been.”
He folds his arms, studying me with a cold appraisal. “Perhaps, yes. If you feel like your life is in danger, I think you’ll eat your opponents alive. It’s what happened with the real Alis, after all.”
I swallow a sip of tea, and the steam coils around my face. “Took you long enough for that vote of confidence.”
“I think you also have an advantage beyond your background in the Undercroft. You can charm the council. You’re beautiful. A wildflower grown from the Waste Land—that’s how they’ll see you.” He cocks his head, studying me. “Actually, I think we can play that up.”
Tristan has never called me beautiful before, and that word brushes softly against me, slipping under my armor like a caress before I can stop it.
He rises from the chair and draws some of the lilies from the vase, then crosses behind me.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing you.”
I feel him twisting my dark curls behind me, then threading them with the flowers. “When did you learn to do women’s hair, Tristan?”
“I’ve had reasons.”
A lump rises in my throat. “Do you ever dream of your family?”
“Better not to think of those days.”
The man never indulges my nosiness. It’s infuriating. For example, I know he’s broken the hearts of dozens of women, but I never get any of the details. And I think there’s one woman who truly wrecked him, but he’s never breathed a word about her—not even her name.
He steps around in front of me again, arms folded, appraising his work. “There. Better.”
I slide my teacup onto the table. “Tristan, have you ever heard that perfection in swordsmanship can get in the way of real skill?”
“No, because that makes no sense.”
I sigh, relieved that someone else thinks Rion was talking bollocks. “That’s what I thought.”
“Are you nervous?” he asks.
My heart flutters, but I don’t want to admit to being nervous. “Not really. But I have a question for you. How do I make the noble houses love me so they’ll spare my life if I surrender? You seem to think my beauty will charm them, but I imagine I need some social graces that I don’t have.”
He shrugs. “In my experience, many of the nobility are bored. Their lives are easy, but with little to entertain them. They don’t work, obviously. They don’t have real worries. They’ve run out of thrills. So, whatever you do today, Syn, make sure you don’t bore them.”
“Entertain them…” I roll the words over on my tongue.
Tristan casts an assessing gaze over me, his green eyes sweeping over my leather armor. “Are you ready, Baroness? It’s time for you to kill some aristocrats.”