Chapter 1
Cyra
The face of the first man I’d ever killed floated through my half-waking mind as my eyes fluttered open.
The face was long and thin with a slightly large nose and neatly trimmed beard.
The man had been young, his eyes dark brown and rich like the soil of the vineyard where I’d grown up, but they’d already been glazed over with the soft sheen of death by the time the symbiont’s shell had dripped away from them.
The man was the first of two I’d killed at the gambling den that night before my wedding. He’d appeared to be a monster, but under the symbiont skin, he was so very human.
I blinked away both the dream and the morning sunshine as the face dissolved and I turned over in bed, wanting to wrap myself around Bressen, but his side was empty. Panic rose as I remembered the assassin we’d learned yesterday had been living among us for weeks.
My heart still twinged with betrayal and horror at the thought.
The woman had posed as my lady’s maid and attended me here in my room, bathing me, dressing me, and listening to me jabber on as I tried to befriend her.
Gods above. She’d even walked in on me and Bressen when he’d had his head between my legs.
I recalled her reaching toward the daggers I now knew were hidden under her skirt, and I wondered what had stopped her from killing us that day when she’d found us in such a vulnerable position.
I opened my mind to search for Bressen, then relaxed when I sensed him nearby.
Bressen? Are you in your study? I asked into his mind.
Good morning, my love, he answered back immediately. Yes. Get dressed and come meet us. We have a problem.
I threw off the covers and rushed toward the closet, tamping down the automatic urge to send for Leeda, my lady’s maid. She – or Talyn, as she was actually known – was currently in a holding cell in the basement of the house.
I dressed quickly and hurried out of our bedchamber, through the sitting room next door, and into Bressen’s study. He was there with Axenus, but Samhail was absent.
“There’s breakfast on the table,” Bressen said as I entered, but I walked past it to his desk where he was sitting.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
He rose to meet me and pulled me in close for a good morning kiss.
His strong arms drew me against his body, and I closed my eyes when his lips met mine, neither of us caring that Axenus was there to witness the way he touched me so tenderly.
I opened my eyes again as I sensed something different in his kiss this time. An urgency…a fear.
“Bressen? What’s wrong?” I asked as I searched his beautiful turquoise eyes for answers.
“The assassin is gone,” Bressen said as he released me.
I stepped back from him. “Gone?”
“Escaped last night. Samhail and the twins are out looking for her.”
The twins, Samhail’s brother and sister, were gargoyles like him and could manifest giant black leathery wings.
“Escaped?” I said, unable to do more than parrot back Bressen’s words. “How?”
A muscle ticked in Bressen’s jaw before he answered.
“Apparently she managed to get the key to her cell and let herself out after everyone went to sleep.”
I waited for an explanation, and he obliged after a deep sigh.
“When Samhail went down to give her the clothes you found for her, he let her goad him into getting in the cell, and he challenged her to take the keys from him.”
I blinked again before my eyes went wide with fear. “And she overpowered him, even without her magic? How? Is he alright?”
“She did take the keys from him, but he stopped her before she could escape,” Bressen explained. “However, he didn’t realize she’d pulled the key for her cell off the ring before he wrestled it back from her.”
I just stared at him, unable to comprehend how the assassin, a woman only a few inches taller than me, had managed to get the keyring away from Samhail, an elite warrior who was nearly seven feet tall and packed with muscle.
“She injured his foot and his nose,” Axenus chimed in.
I looked at the merman. Although his expression was grim, there was a hint of unrestrained amusement in his voice.
Samhail and Axenus were friends and allies, but they had a strange, often antagonistic relationship, and I had a feeling this was something Axenus didn’t plan to let Samhail live down anytime soon.
“Did she hurt anyone else?” I asked as dread churned in my gut.
“Not egregiously,” Bressen said. “She snuck into the stables and stole a horse. One of the stable hands interrupted her, and she knocked him out and tied him up, but he’s alive.”
I pushed out a deep breath of relief.
“One of the other hands found the young man tied up this morning,” Bressen went on, “and we immediately checked the holding cell and found her missing. After we noticed the key to the cell was gone, that’s when Samhail admitted what he’d done.
I’d have locked him in the cell himself if we didn’t need him to help look for her. ”
His voice was angry, and crimson light flickered in his eyes as he slammed a hand down onto his desk.
“I don’t understand why Samhail went into the cell in the first place,” Axenus said, shaking his head. “He’s not usually that reckless. What was he trying to prove?”
Bressen and I looked at each other.
“Possibly the divine imperative?” Bressen suggested. “He’s bound by the Trinity to protect Cyra, so perhaps having an assassin get that close to her stirred something in him.”
It wasn’t an outright lie, since I didn’t see Bressen’s skin glow red, but it wasn’t the full truth either.
Only Bressen, Samhail, and I knew the assassin had come to Samhail a few days ago looking like me and tried to seduce him.
He’d stopped her before anything went too far, but he’d avoided both me and Bressen for days afterwards, and I’d seen the shame in his eyes when he finally sought me out to confront me about what he thought had happened.
Axenus was right. Samhail wasn’t usually so reckless as to step into a caronium-lined cell with a trained killer just to prove himself, but what the assassin had done to him was personal, and I wasn’t surprised he’d felt the need to confront her.
I’d wanted to confront Talyn myself, but Bressen had pointedly forbidden it.
There was nothing he could’ve done to stop me if I’d insisted, but I’d seen the wild panic in his eyes when I’d told him yesterday I was bringing her down a change of clothes.
He’d refused to let me go, and I eventually let Samhail take them down to her instead.
I should’ve anticipated letting Samhail see her wouldn’t have ended well. Bressen had wanted to destroy Talyn after he learned she was here to kill us, so he couldn’t have gone either. Axenus probably would’ve been the best choice, but it hadn’t occurred to me at the time to ask him.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“There’s not much we can do,” Bressen said. “The gargoyles are out hunting her down, and we just have to hope one of them finds her.”
I flinched at his phrasing. Hunting her down…
“Did…did you…Are they supposed to bring her back alive?” I asked, half afraid to know the answer.
Despite everything Talyn had done, I couldn’t bring myself to wish her dead. She hadn’t been a friend to me like Raina, but she’d started to open up to me over the last couple weeks, and I couldn’t help feeling we’d made a small connection.
Yes, she’d been sent to kill us, but she ultimately hadn’t done it.
At least not yet. The wards I’d set up around our bedroom had gone off a few nights ago, the first night I’d put them up, and I was almost certain Talyn had set them off trying to get in, but the fact remained she hadn’t tried to kill us again since.
A shiver went up my spine at how close Bressen and I had come to death. The concern I had for Talyn didn’t make sense.
If one of the gargoyles did bring her back, Bressen would try to keep me away from her, but I had to talk to her. I had to know what she’d been thinking. I had to know if, maybe, we really had started to become friends.
“I left either option open,” Bressen admitted. “Ideally I’d like her alive, only because there’s more we can get out of her about Sandrian and Magdalene’s plans, but I told Samhail and the twins that if killing her was their only option to keep her from escaping, they should take it.”
I inhaled deeply and nodded.
Bressen looked at me in surprise. “You’re not going to fight me on that?” he asked.
“I’d prefer to have them bring Lee-…Talyn in alive, but I also don’t want Samhail or the twins getting hurt. The assassin’s proven to be incredibly dangerous, and if killing her is their only option, I won’t take that away from them for their own sakes.”
Bressen nodded.
“So we just wait?” Axenus asked.
“She’s most likely heading for Rowe,” Bressen said, “so, despite my better judgement, I sent Samhail southwest on the most direct route there. I’m hoping his desire to make up for his mistakes gives him some incentive to find her.
Surgeon went west along the coast to check the ports, and Serise is trying to cover as much ground to the southeast as she can.
We’ll just have to wait to see what they turn up. ”
“There’s something we can do in the meantime,” I said as an idea occurred to me. “Talyn isn’t the only one who’s been working with Sandrian. Didn’t you say Glenora might have been helping him?”
Bressen’s face darkened. “You think I should visit Glenora in Revenmyer?” he asked.
“I think we should visit her,” I said, emphasizing the ‘we.’
His face darkened even more.
“And if I tell you it’s out of the question for you to go-”
“I’ll remind you that I’m your wife, not your prisoner, and I’m free to go wherever I want.”
Bressen crossed his arms as his chin went up a notch, and I prepared for an argument.
“It’s true enough that as your husband I have no right to dictate where you can and can’t go,” he said, “but as the warden of Revenmyer, I do have authority to regulate who goes in and out of the prison.”
I narrowed my eyes. “True, but you might want to think carefully about when you exercise that authority and over whom. I have a bit of authority to regulate who goes in and out of certain places as well.”
Our eyes locked, but although I’d intended that last part as a warning, Bressen only smirked at me from under heavy-lidded eyes, and I swore inwardly.
He and I both knew trying to deny him sex was an empty threat.
Bressen knew my own body better than I did, and he’d have me begging him to take me by evening with nothing more than a few seemingly innocuous touches and caresses throughout the day.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said huskily, and I swallowed, already thinking of abandoning my threat and dragging him to the bedroom.
Axenus cleared his throat, and we broke our stare to look at him.
“Far be it for me to question how you run Revenmyer,” Axenus said carefully to Bressen, “but it might be good to bring Cyra with you if you see Glenora. You’ll want someone with truth seeing abilities.”
Bressen glared at him, but Axenus gave him a ‘glare all you want, but you know I’m right’ look, and Bressen sighed before running a hand through his night-black hair.
“I really wish you’d reconsider,” Bressen said to me. “Revenmyer is a disturbing place, and the idea of subjecting you to it…” He trailed off.
“I can handle it,” I said. “I’m a Hand of the Gods, remember?”
Bressen rolled his eyes.
Others might be impressed that I was a powerful perimortal with the ability to syphon different kinds of magic from anyone around me, but none of that phased a man who’d been known as the Nemesis Incarnate most of his life.
Granted he’d recently had to cede that title to me when we discovered that, of the three gods in the Trinity, I was bonded to and served the Nemesis.
“Fine,” Bressen said, uncrossing his arms. “I’ll make arrangements, and we’ll go tomorrow, but the deal is that while we’re there, you do exactly what I say, when I say it. Revenmyer can be almost as dangerous to visitors as it is to the inmates.”
“I promise,” I said.
I’d seen only a glimpse of the prison once in a vision I stole from Magdalene, but it was enough that I didn’t doubt the truth of Bressen’s words. The lack of a red glow on his skin confirmed it as well.
A message leaf suddenly popped into existence in front of Bressen’s face, and he snatched it out of the air to read it. His brows pinched together, and I saw the flash of red in his eyes again. He closed them for a moment, and it looked as though he was doing his best to maintain his composure.
“Bad news?” Axenus asked.
Bressen opened his eyes and passed the message leaf to Axenus. The merman read it, and his brows shot up.
“For the gods’ sakes, what does it say?” I asked, pulling the leaf out of Axenus’s hand.
The message was short and vague, and Bressen took another leaf from his desk to scrawl a longer message on it this time. His handwriting was messier than normal from the anger I felt wafting off him. He held up the leaf when he was done, and it disappeared.
“What does the message mean?” I asked Bressen and Axenus.
“It doesn’t matter what it means,” Bressen said. “It’s unacceptable.”
“You don’t trust Samhail?” Axenus asked, surprised.
“Normally I do,” Bressen said, “but his judgement seems to be compromised where this woman is concerned, and I’ll be damned if he’s going to keep me in the dark about what he plans to do with her.”
We waited in tense silence for about thirty seconds before the message leaf reappeared. Bressen grabbed it and growled angrily as he read it. He slammed it down on the desk where I saw Samhail’s two-word answer in all capitals: TRUST ME.
I felt Bressen’s anger grow hotter as he took two fresh leaves out of his desk and wrote on them.
Normally Bressen trusted Samhail implicitly, but this assassin had threatened my life, and Bressen wanted her back here to face his judgement and his wrath.
Whatever Samhail was planning, Bressen wasn’t willing to entertain it.
Bressen finished writing and held up the two leaves between his fingers to again let them vanish in puffs of smoke.
“What are you doing?” Axenus asked him.
“I’m calling Surgeon and Serise back,” Bressen said. “In addition to hunting down the assassin, apparently I need to have them hunt down Samhail now as well.”
Tandem Read: Go to Clash of Stone and Steel (Bk 3), Chapter 15