Chapter 13 #4
Shade notices none of it.
Or maybe he notices and simply doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.
“Of course,” Shade replies flatly. His tone is the same as if she’d thanked him for passing salt.
Her expression falls for a heartbeat but Shade isn’t looking. Kitty recovers instantly and moves toward me. I barely have time to tense before she’s sitting in my lap, arms draped around my neck, close enough that I can count her eyelashes.
“Thank you,” she purrs softly. “I’ll never forget what you both did for me.”
I’m suddenly very aware of her weight against me, the warmth of her body, the way her braid brushes my arm. But what I notice most is Shade observing us with colorless eyes.
Kitty is doing this on purpose, trying to get a reaction from Shade. It won’t work.
“Do you miss me, Wolf?” Kitty asks, her voice low and intimate.
“Every day,” I say honestly.
Because I do miss her, just not the way she’s implying. Kitty glances sideways at Shade, clearly waiting for some sign of jealousy or irritation.
Shade tears another piece of bread in half. Kitty’s shoulders slump in defeat.
I have to look away to hide my smile. What she doesn’t know is that Shade confronted me about her years ago.
It was after a mission. We were cleaning weapons in the armory when Shade suddenly asked, “Do you like Kitty?”
I looked up, confused. “Of course I like her. She’s—”
“Do you have feelings for her?” Shade clarified in that flat voice.
“No. She’s like a sister to me,” I say quickly.
Shade nodded once, then he said, “She likes you.”
She doesn’t like me, Shade.
Couldn’t he tell that Kitty had been in love with him for a long time? It was obvious for me and Shepherd to see.
“Just be nice to her,” Shade said finally. “Don’t hurt her.”
“I would never—”
“I know.” He went back to cleaning his blade. “But I’m telling you anyway.”
The conversation ended there. Shade never brought it up again.
I wish they would just talk to each other, instead of this dance.
“You don’t miss me,” she says lightly, tilting her head back to look at me. “You’re too busy mooning over your golden prince.”
“I’m not mooning over him,” I deny quickly.
“Tell us about him,” Kitty demands.
I should refuse her and shut down this ridiculous request. Instead, I exhale.
Against my better judgment, I start talking. The words come easier than expected.
I don’t tell them everything. The dungeons don’t come up. Neither does the torture, the executions, or the horrifying truth about the Aeonians. Those are Garrett’s burdens to share if he chooses.
But I tell them about the rest. His kindness to villagers, the way he plays chess and argues. How people look at him with hope in their eyes.
Kitty listens without interrupting for once.
When I finish, she hums. “He sounds exhausting. Being that perfect all the time. Always being what everyone needs.”
I look down at my hands.
I think about Garrett covered in blood, crying in a tunnel. “He’s not perfect. I think he’s just very good at pretending.”
“You’ve been with Clayborne forty-seven days,” Shade says suddenly.
“Yes.”
“Three more to go.”
“I can count, Shade.”
He studies me with those unnerving eyes. “That’s not the face of someone eager for their contract to finish.”
Kitty laughs. “He doesn’t want it to end. Look at him. New clothes, clean hair, Our Wolf’s gone soft.”
“I haven’t—”
“You have,” she interrupts, leaning forward. “You like him. The golden commander.”
“He’s my assignment,” I dismiss quickly.
“He’s your type.” She grins at my expression. “Oh come on, Wolf. We’ve known each other years.”
“That’s ridiculous. “I don’t have a type—” I stop, realizing the trap.
“Right,” she says slowly. “No type.”
She leans back, inspecting me like I’m a mildly disappointing piece of evidence. “Your past lovers just happen to be tall and blonde.”
Is it really that obvious?
Blood rushes to my cheeks. My mouth opens but nothing useful comes out. I feel my face go hot.
Kitty leans forward, eyes bright. “Called it.”
She turns her head toward Shade with a triumphant little smile. “Pay up.”
Shade produces a gold coin from somewhere, slides it across the table without comment.
I stare at it. My face is burning. “You two bet on my preferences?”
“You genuinely had no idea, did you?” She sounds smug with her victorious grin.
They predicted I would fall for Garrett?
Kitty’s expression sobers. “What happens after? When your contracts end?”
“I suppose I’ll go back to the guild.” I remember Garrett’s words about me being something more than just an assassin and choosing a different path. The thought sits heavy and uncomfortable in my chest. It’s impossible and I don’t want to unpack that shit in front of my friends.
“What about you, Shade?” I redirect. “After your hundredth mission?”
“When I complete my hundredth mission, I’ll free my mother from the crypts, then...” He pauses, and for the first time, uncertainty crosses his face. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought past freeing her.”
“I run,” Kitty says. “Far from the guild, from the brothel, from all of it. Maybe the Southern Isles. Somewhere warm where no one knows who I am, somewhere I can just... be.”
I pull Kitty closer. She curls into me, tucking her head under my chin. Her breathing is uneven.
“You’ll get there,” I tell her quietly. “The Southern Isles. Warm sand, no one knowing your name. You’ll make it.”
“Promise?” Her voice is small.
“I promise.”
Shade just takes another bite of pastry as she stares at me and Kitty. “That does look comfortable. Should I try sitting on someone?”
Kitty laughs, sliding off my lap. “Shade’s protecting the Queen of Aelfheim, Wolf’s playing bodyguard to Aelfheim’s golden boy, and I just bought myself thirty days of freedom. Look at us. Moving up in the world.”
“We’re Grimsbane, Kitty. The lowest of the lows. There’s no moving up from where we are.”
“Speak for yourself. I clean up very nice.” She stretches like her namesake. “Though I admit, this is strange. All three of us in Aelfheim at the same time, all on high-profile contracts.”
It is strange. Too strange to be coincidence.
Unless someone arranged it.
Kitty moves to the window and perches on the sill, silhouetted against moonlight. Shade follows, settling on the opposite side. They look like matching bookends, both comfortable in high places.
I drag my chair over, turn it around and straddle it backwards. My arms fold across the back and I rest my chin on my forearms, positioning myself so I can watch them both.
Especially Shade.
Worry gnaws at my gut.
There are rumors circulating through the guild.
Whispers that the Judges don’t want Shade reaching his hundredth mission.
They don’t want him freeing his mother from the crypts.
The Nightingale knows too much. She has too many secrets about the guild’s inner workings.
Her son gaining that kind of leverage is unacceptable.
I’ve been watching his assignments get progressively harder. Missions that should go to teams, not solo operators. Targets in fortified locations with impossible odds. Each one designed to push him closer to failure.
Or death.
This current contract is the worst yet. Protecting the Wiolant queen, living in the palace surrounded by potential enemies, guarding the family that destroyed his mother.
It’s a perfect trap.
If Shade fails, he goes to the crypts. If he succeeds, they’ll just add more requirements before he can free his mother. And if he does something stupid like try to kill a Wiolant, the guild has legal justification to execute him for contract violation.
They’ve boxed him in completely.
I study his face in the moonlight, searching for any sign of what he’s thinking. But Shade’s expression reveals nothing. Those pale eyes could be contemplating the weather or planning murder and I’d never know the difference.
That’s what terrifies me most.
“Does Rainer know you’re related to him?” Kitty asks the question in my head bluntly to Shade.
He’s quiet for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he says, considering. “If Rainer does know he doesn’t seem to care. He drinks, talks and I listen. It seems to help him.”
He pauses, then adds, almost like it’s an afterthought. “But he tells me many things he probably shouldn’t.”
That makes something cold settle in my gut.
Shade’s face reveals absolutely nothing. Those pale eyes reflect moonlight but give away no thoughts, no plans, no intentions whatsoever. I can’t tell if he’s genuinely content with this assignment or if he’s lying to us, biding his time for the perfect moment to put a knife in a Wiolant.
It would fail his mission spectacularly and send him straight to the crypts beside his mother.
But Shade has never been rational about the Wiolants.
Kitty breaks the silence again.
“Working for Rainer is all right?” she presses.
“He’s acceptable,” Shade says.
“But he’s a Wiolant,” she adds carefully.
A small shrug. “I like working for the guy. He treats me like a person rather than a tool.”
He likes working for the family that destroyed his?
That should’ve been the end of it. It isn’t, because my instincts don’t settle.
“Shade.” I lift my head from my arms. “You need to tell us if you’re planning to kill him. Or the queen.”
The room feels smaller suddenly.
“Why would I kill them?” Real puzzlement crosses his face.
“The Wiolants are the reason your mother is rotting in the crypts—”
“Not him. His brother.” He speaks over me, which he never does.
The air between us changes.
Shade’s entire body goes rigid. Something shifts in his expression. “Rainer was not involved in what happened fifty years ago.”
I should leave it there and recognize the warning in his tone. But the wine and the strange comfort of being with them makes me stupid.
“But Reinhart Wiolant is—”
The change is instant and terrifying.
Shade moves faster than I can track. His hand is around my throat, lifting me from my chair and slamming me against the wall hard enough to crack the wood.
“Don’t say that name,” he says very quietly. His face is inches from mine, and those pale eyes are completely empty. They’re not angry… just a void.
My feet dangle above the floor. I can’t breathe.
“Never say that name in front of me.” Each word is precise and controlled.
His grip tightens. Black spots dance in my vision. I claw at his wrist but it’s like trying to move stone. My lungs are screaming. The world is starting to gray at the edges.
“Shade!” Kitty’s voice cuts through sharply. “Let him go. He didn’t mean—Shade, you’re killing him!”
Something flickers in those empty eyes. Confusion as if he’s waking up from somewhere very far away. His hand releases and I drop, gasping and choking.
Shade steps back, looking at his hand like it belongs to someone else.
“Fuck I’m sorry, Wolf,” he says remorsefully “I hurt you.”
“You think?” I wheeze, massaging my throat. It’s going to bruise. Badly.
Kitty crouches beside me, hands hovering like she wants to help but doesn’t know how. “Wolf, fuck, are you okay?”
Shade kneels too, that empty look replaced by something almost like panic. “I’m sorry. Wolf, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine,” I rasp, though my throat feels as dry as sandpaper.
“I hurt you. I could have killed you.” He sounds horrified by himself. “Are you—can you breathe?”
I nod.
“Shade.” Kitty’s hand lands on his shoulder. “Give him space.”
But Shade won’t stop staring at me. His jaw tightens.
“That name is not to be spoken,” he says, his voice turning darker.
He pauses and something colder settles behind his expression. “That bastard is the reason she rots in darkness. The reason I was born cursed and the reason everything is wrong.”
“I understand,” I manage through my damaged throat.
The pain behind his eyes vanishes, replaced by something desperate. He pulls me into a hug.
His arms wrap around me tight, face pressed against my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Wolf. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it—I’m sorry.”
I can still feel the phantom pressure of his hand on my throat, the terrifying emptiness in his eyes. But in this moment he sounds twelve again. The boy who fought beside me for a piece of chocolate. The friend who claimed me in a courtyard covered in blood.
“It’s okay,” I rasp, patting his back awkwardly. “Shade, it’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. I could have killed you—”
Suddenly my head jerks backward. Pain shoots through my scalp.
Kitty has fistfuls of both our hair, yanking our heads back. Then she slams our foreheads together with shocking force.
The impact makes stars explode across my vision.
“Stupid boys,” she says flatly, releasing us both. “There. Now you’ve both apologized with your skulls. We can move on.”
Shade rubs his forehead and I exhale something that might almost be a laugh if my throat allowed it.
Kitty straightens, stretches like nothing just happened, then reaches for her pack.
“I should go,” she says casually. “I need to report to the guild tomorrow. See what fresh horrors they’ve prepared for me this time.”
My gaze flicks up.
“New assignment?”
“Or maybe I’ll take a break.” She pulls on her cat mask, and just like that, she’s a grimsbane again. “Try not to die, boys. I’d hate to drink alone next time.”
Then she’s gone, melting into shadows like she was never there.
Shade and I sit in silence for a while, finishing the wine. The food is mostly gone now, the expensive bottles nearly empty.
He hands me a wrapped package. “For your prince. The house pastry chef made them. They’re very sweet.”
“Why would I give Garrett pastries?” I complain.
“Because people give gifts to people they care about.” He pulls on his demon mask. “I should return. Before Rainer drinks himself to death.”
Shade actually cares about Rainer Wiolant.
He opens the door, pauses. “Don’t die, Wolf.”
“Don’t die yourself.”
“I’ll try.”
Then he’s gone too, disappearing into the night.
I sit alone in the abandoned house, surrounded by the remnants of our feast. I look at the package Shade left, pastries for Garrett.
A gift is a way normal people show affection…
I tuck the pastries into my pack and leave the house, heading back toward Elvarstyne keep.
Back toward Garrett.