House of Crimson Cloak and Silver Teeth (Elven Fantasy Romance #6)

Prologue

They say the hive city of Tiamat has a mechanical heart.

You can hear it ticking in the distant rumble of thousands of factories that never sleep.

The taste of ash coats my tongue even through the filtration mesh of my lupine half-mask.

Down here in the guild’s sanctum, three levels beneath Tiamat’s choking streets, the air should be cleaner.

It’s still poisonous enough to kill you in seconds.

Shade hasn’t moved in twenty minutes.

He’s sprawled against the opposite wall with one leg bent and arms crossed. To anyone else, he might look relaxed. I know better. I can smell the tension on him. There’s something else too. Anticipation? With Shade, it’s impossible to tell.

His demonic mask has a perpetual grin. The painted teeth and curved horns give him the look of something that crawled out of the worst nightmare. I’ve seen him sleep in that thing, eat in it, kill in it. In five years, I’ve never seen his face. No one has, except maybe our Arbiter, Rowan Shepherd.

Shade holds the unsealed scroll of his mission.

I shouldn’t look. It’s not my business. Guild contracts are private until the assassin chooses to share them.

I try not to think about what my own orders will say.

But then his parchment unfurls with a rustling breeze from the vents and I catch the header in my peripheral vision.

My head snaps toward him before I can stop myself.

“Aelfheim?” The word escapes me and echoes in the narrow chamber.

Shade’s masked face turns toward me. “For one hundred days.”

“There were other contracts. Shorter ones,” I say, pushing off from my pillar.

“It’s my last mission.” Shade’s voice carries no emotion, muffled further by his mask.

Of course. This is the job no one wants. The guild is offering it to Shade because they know he’s desperate enough to take it.

“But Aelfheim is where...” I stop myself.

Aelfheim is where the Wiolants are.

The current ruler, Queen Rhianelle Wiolant, sits on the throne of the elven kingdom.

Shade tilts his head just a fraction.

I want to shake him and ask if he’s planning to slit the queen’s throat the moment he gets close enough.

The Wiolants destroyed Shade’s family and left his mother to rot in the crypts beneath our feet for nearly five decades.

She was once the guild’s most lethal blade, the assassin who could kill a man with a whisper and leave no trace.

But she fell in love with Reinhart Wiolant and chose to run.

Now she survives on whatever slop the guild bothers to send down through that narrow slit barely wide enough for a bowl.

A punishment for the crime of almost choosing love over duty. Her fate is a reminder that even the greatest assassin cannot escape the guild’s long reach.

I’ve faced death a hundred times, but the crypts remain the one place that truly frightens me. Sometimes when the guild grows quiet in those dead hours before dawn, you can hear the screaming from below.

It’s just the wind from the ventilation shafts, I used to tell myself when I was young.

The guild promised Shade that after years of flawless service, they’d release her from the crypts after his hundredth mission.

He’s been working toward this for years.

Every contract, every kill, every coin saved and favor earned.

All of it building toward the one thing he wants more than anything. His mother’s freedom.

He’s so close now.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” I tell him.

Behind the mask, I think he might be smiling. “When have I ever?”

All the damn time.

I hope he doesn’t throw away everything for revenge. I cross the small space between us and grip his shoulder. “When do you leave?”

“The carriage should be here at any moment,” he says easily.

Above us, I hear the distant scrape of boots. Other assassins moving through the warren of tunnels that make up our home. Laughter resounds, high and cruel. The sound makes my jaw clench beneath my mask. It’s fucking Carver, fresh from whatever poor bastard he tortured for practice today.

Shade tilts his head, listening to the sound fade. “Some things never change.”

“No,” I agree. “They don’t.”

“Wolf.” His voice is softer now. “If I don’t come back—”

“You’ll come back.”

“—tell Kitty she still owes me twenty silver from that card game.”

For a moment we just stand there in this narrow stone room like the scared children we both once were.

“Stay alive, Wolf,” he says quietly. “Don’t let them put you in the ground.”

“Same to you.”

Then he’s gone, slipping through the door like a shadow.

The sanctum feels larger without him in it. I’m alone now. The walls seem to press closer in his absence.

I stand there for a moment, breathing in the stale air. The sound of approaching footsteps snaps me back. Heavy with a slight drag on the left.

Carver.

I smell him before he rounds the corner.

He carries the constant stench of dried blood, a scent that seems to have soaked into his skin.

I despise looking at his long modified metallic hands.

They’re proof he enjoys his work a little too much.

His Grimsbane mask is a grotesque thing, a human face twisted in an endless scream.

He carved it himself from the skull of his first kill.

“Well, well. Heard you’re one strike away from joining the underground entertainment.”

My teeth grind together at the jibe.

“I’m still armed, Carver. You’re not that stupid,” I say without turning around.

He laughs. The grating sound makes my skin crawl. “All that bite won’t help you when you’re screaming in the dark. You know what they do to failures, don’t you? The Judges don’t just lock you up. They make you useful.”

I fucking know that.

The guild wastes nothing. Failed assassins become practice dummies for the initiates, for as long as they last in the crypts. The failures learn what it means to be truly broken.

“Maybe I’ll volunteer to be your handler,” Carver continues, moving closer. I can hear the smile in his voice.

My hand moves to my blade before I can think. The motion is smooth like everything the guild taught me. But my grip trembles.

When did that start?

“Nervous?” He’s close enough now that I can see the fresh blood under his fingernails. “You should be. Word is, your next assignment is already picked out. Something special for the walking failure.”

“Move along, Carver,” I say quietly.

He’s already walking away, cackling. “Better hope it’s not a kill order, Wolf. Would hate to see you join the chorus downstairs.”

His laughter echoes through the tunnels long after he disappears around the corner. I force myself to breathe and unclench my fist from around my blade. The trembling won’t stop.

I need to move. The tunnels of the guild stretch out in every direction, a labyrinth carved into the bedrock beneath Tiamat. My boots echo on stone as I walk to the Contemplation Room.

When you’re summoned here, the guild has already decided your fate. You just don’t know what it is yet.

The chamber is isolated from the rest of the sanctum.

I settle on one of the stone benches, the one facing the iron door.

This space is carved from the same black stone as the rest of the sanctum.

There are no windows or decorations. Its walls are lined with black glass that reflects your image back at you from every angle.

Hundreds of masked figures stare back at me from the darkness. They all wear my face. I have to look away. I count my breaths and wait for my name to be called from the iron door.

I should prepare mentally for what’s coming. Instead, I find myself thinking about Shade’s mother in the crypts below.

The Nightingale who gave up everything for love and lost it all anyway.

Shepherd steps through the door behind me. I sensed his presence a while ago.

He could pass for a man in his early forties despite the years and violence that have weathered him.

The Dunethar don’t age like normal humans, not after drinking from the Fae King’s fountain of youth.

Black hair silvered at the temples frames a face too refined for the guild’s underbelly.

He looks like he belongs at court banquets rather than in blood-soaked tunnels.

But the scars on his hands and the way he moves mark him as one of us.

He leans against the wall with arms crossed. The posture is casual but his expression isn’t. There’s something hard in his eyes.

Disappointment.

It makes my gut twist. He was the Nightingale’s second once, her Shadow Partner before she fell in love and tried to run. Now he looks after Shade, Kitty, and me as our Arbiter. He’s the closest thing to family any of us have left in this place.

“Two failures, Wolf.” His voice is stern, colder than I’ve ever heard it directed at me. “You know what happens at three.”

My throat tightens. I nod because I don’t trust my voice.

“The first task was understandable,” he continues. His gaze never leaves mine. “Torture missions break even the best of us. I argued for leniency with the Judges and told them you just needed time to find your edge again.”

I remember that mission. My hands were shaking when they gave me the tools. I couldn’t do it.

“But the second mark was supposed to be easy.” Shepherd’s jaw clenches. “A lonely nobleman, traveling without guards. You let him walk away.”

My target wasn’t alone though. He had a daughter. A little girl with dark curls who laughed when he lifted her onto his shoulders. The intelligence hadn’t mentioned her. I watched through the window as he read her bedtime stories and kissed her forehead goodnight.

The blade grew heavy in my hand.

There’s no way in hell I can tell Shepherd that.

“Why did you let him go?” he asks.

Because I saw myself in that little girl.

I saw what she would become if I took her father from her. Another lost child for the guild to break and reshape into a weapon.

“I don’t know,” I lie.

Shepherd pushes off the wall and takes a step closer.