Chapter 2
The top floors of Claret Hall were filled with gauzy curtains and the scent of cinnamon, the whole building a vision of glass and wood and stone.
Sunlight streamed through the panes of glass that made up the ceilings of the castle, and the flawless hallways spoke of the most ethereal place Arla had ever seen.
Hark had to be around here somewhere. His scouting group was back, and the soldiers in the courtyard were heading back to the barracks.
‘Arla Dragonhart.’ Two huge arms enveloped her, lifting her off the ground and spinning her so quickly she was surprised she didn’t vomit.
The second her feet returned to the floor she whirled on Sebastian. ‘You ever lay a hand on me again, I’ll cut your arms off.’
Sebastian exploded into laughter, his hair a rich brown in this light which only brought out the green of his eyes. He was handsome, really. There was a kinship developing between the two of them, something that was brotherly, almost. Gods, she was becoming soft!
‘What have you been up to today? Scaring the villagers?’
She elbowed him. Hard. ‘One, this place is far too big to be called a village. It rivals Hadalyn’s capital. And two, who says they aren’t the ones scaring me?’
Sebastian snorted, earning the pair of them a startled glance from one of the new maids Hark had recently employed. ‘I don’t believe you’re scared of anything. The people probably think you’re about to bite them.’
‘Good.’ She smiled sweetly.
‘Care for a drink?’ Sebastian said. She hadn’t meant to head in the direction of the sitting room they had all been frequenting each night, but it seemed it was where she would end up, anyway.
‘It’s three o’clock.’
‘Your point, Reinhart?’
Hark’s crew and her own maids were still adjusting to her new moniker, often fluttering between using her old surname and the name of the ancient bloodline from which she had descended. Dragonhart. It felt right.
Seb fell into step beside her, the swords sheathed at his waist knocking her legs as they walked. It was the calmest she’d felt in days.
‘Noah said you were after someone to train with. I’d be up for that. Might do me some good to train against Hadalyn’s famed assassin.’
‘Noah needs to keep his mouth shut.’ She didn’t know why she had started telling the man in the office downstairs these things. Like how she was desperate for a response from Halos and how she could feel a tornado brewing inside her because she hadn’t trained in … gods, it was weeks!
‘He just wants to impress you, you know.’
‘The gods know why. Everyone else is scared to be within ten feet of me.’ Which was the way she liked it.
‘Yeah, well, you aren’t exactly approachable, Arla.’
‘Where’s Hark?’ She’d had enough of searching what felt like this entire city for him. He’d promised to have dinner with her.
‘With the scouting group. I think he’s briefing them on tomorrow’s events.’
Of course he was.
Hark’s fear had been a palpable thing, staining everything in sight ever since Arla had taken a sword to the side for him during his rescue from Larkire Palace.
He worried constantly that his father would send Kastonia’s army after them, or that Arla wasn’t properly healed and might keel over at a moment’s notice.
But once the fear of Arla collapsing every time she stood up had eased, and the group had taken the time to digest everything that had happened, the subject of Elrod and his army had sparked an argument in Claret Hall that had resulted in a vase being smashed and Thara landing on the balcony railings believing that Arla was in danger.
Hark had been adamant his father would send an army after them, that he would seek revenge for Arla’s actions at Larkire Palace and the way Hark and his crew had managed to free every man, woman, and child that bore magical blood from Elrod’s prison camp on the northern border.
Arla had argued that the people needed stability now, that they needed to feel safe and free from fear of Kastonia’s king.
Hark had told her it would never happen.
And so he had taken to scouting the neighbouring mountains with a group of his soldiers every spare hour they had. Watching, waiting. Looking for anything that might signal Kastonia were coming to attack Flambriar. Arla hadn’t seen him properly in days.
‘So why aren’t you down there with him?’
Sebastian opened the door to the sitting room. Decorated in creams and wood, with soft settees, it was always a welcome sight when Arla was still getting her strength back.
‘Because it’s boring. We know the drill. We go out, we see nothing, we freeze our balls off, and we come back. Same shit every day.’
Seb opened the drinks cabinet and poured each of them a drink, a whiskey so strong it burned her throat seconds after she had swallowed it. She was about to ask after his offer to train with her when Kase floated through the door.
‘Drinking in the day, Reinhart? I’d have thought you were above that.’
Arla rolled her tongue over her teeth, setting the glass down beside her as she leant back in the settee. ‘Well, I knew you’d be here and not even the gods could persuade me to sit through your company sober. And it’s ‘Dragonhart’ to you.’
Kase’s eyes flashed as she crossed the room to look out of the arched windows, but Arla didn’t miss the smirk that Kase bit between her lips.
There was definitely a respect between the two women.
Kase had fussed around Arla in the days after her waking, but the second Arla had been strong enough not to risk dying, the pair had settled back into that prickly understanding that had been formed the moment they’d set eyes on one another.
‘Another day of scaring the townsfolk?’
Oh, how she’d missed this.
‘Too late, Seb already asked—’
‘Enough, please. As much as I enjoy watching you two go claw to claw with one another, it’s been a long day,’ Seb said, striding over to Kase and grabbing her face between his large hands. ‘Play nice, Kasey.’
The speed with which she drew her blade was enough to rival Arla’s skill. ‘You ever call me that again, Sebastian, I’ll tell the dockmaster’s son in Vorstrum that you’re sleeping with one of the sailors.’
‘You wound me,’ he said, collapsing beside Arla as if Kase had struck him.
‘Not crying over the man at the docks again, is he?’ Jack’s voice pierced the laughter as he entered the sitting room, cane in one hand, his limp still there despite the hours Arla knew he spent with the healers.
She wondered, often, if he would ever recover from the magical injury he’d sustained trying to free the magics from one of Elrod’s camps.
‘Not yet, but he will be,’ Kase said sweetly, and Arla had to swallow the laugh that rose in her throat. She couldn’t tell exactly when she had become a part of this … family, but it warmed her ice-cold heart.
Jack inched closer to Kase by the window, despite the effort standing was clearly inflicting on his leg. Kase’s shoulders tensed, her chest rising and falling more noticeably than it had before. At least Arla had that over her.
‘Another letter came today,’ Jack said with a sigh, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. ‘Wasting sickness is spreading through Kastonia again. They can’t get on top of it quickly enough and Hadalyn is struggling under the weight of those who are fleeing there.’
The letters Jack received from contacts in Hadalyn and Kastonia always managed to add a layer of solemnity to everything.
The kingdoms were still suffering under the wrath of the gods as a consequence of Elrod angering them with his persecution of magics.
It was all the worse because, well, it should have all stopped by now.
There was a prophecy that spoke of Arla uniting the kingdoms. It said that she would be the one to put an end to the poverty and sickness that was spreading.
She thought she’d managed it by freeing the magics and putting an end to Elrod’s schemes.
She’d thought that would be enough to appease the gods.
Clearly, it wasn’t.
And she didn’t have a gods-damned clue what she was supposed to do next.
She swallowed the worry, eager to be rid of Jack’s depressing news. ‘You’re all boring me. I’ll see you later,’ she said, rising from the settee with the slick surety of an assassin … and plucked the blade that came flying at her out of the air without blinking.
‘You know,’ she began, turning to face Jack who had the common sense to look impressed. ‘You really shouldn’t commit murder on this carpet. Blood is awfully difficult to remove.’
‘You know, I still think you should have been a princess.’
Her knees threatened to buckle under her and her heart was thrashing in her chest as that lovely voice filled her ears. Hark Stappen filled the room, even as he leant against the doorframe, a single brow arched as he ran a hand through his tousled hair.
Arla’s mouth was dry and her tongue was tied as he met her gaze across the room and winked at her.
Gods!
‘Princesses don’t kill people,’ she managed to say, twisting Jack’s blade between her fingers.
‘Mine does.’
Okay, she really needed to go and stand outside for a moment.
‘Ugh. Do we really have to listen to this?’ Kase complained, pouring herself a glass of that burning whiskey.
‘Feel free to leave,’ Arla hissed, but she couldn’t summon malice into her voice, not when Hark was looking at her like that.
‘Gladly,’ Kase said, tossing her silver braid over her shoulder and sauntering out of the room, her arm brushing Hark’s in a way that made Arla want to bury the blade right between her shoulders.
Hark crossed the distance between them and lifted his hand to her face. She let him touch her cheek. Allowed the gentle scrape of calloused hands over her skin. ‘How are you?’
‘Hungry. Ready to kill Kase.’ She didn’t miss the choked sound Jack tried to mask as he swallowed his drink. ‘Oh, and I got some new gloves today.’ She pulled the purple gloves from inside her jacket, savouring the feel of the wool between her fingers.
‘The people are beginning to like you,’ Hark said, moving around her to retrieve the bottle from Sebastian’s hands and gulp directly from it.
‘They don’t trust me. You haven’t told them I’m not a threat.
’ Hark looked at her, the dark rings beneath his eyes more pronounced than they had been yesterday when she’d caught sight of him in the hallway.
He was working too hard. And she wasn’t working hard enough.
Her fingers drifted to the golden brooch pinned to her jacket – a flame encased in a heart. A dragonhart.
She was sure the brooch heated at her touch.
‘I’m not their king. I don’t tell them who they can and can’t trust. You almost dying for them should be enough to earn it.
’ There was a command in his voice she wasn’t used to hearing, and truly, she didn’t like it at all.
He could deny being their king all he liked, but when he slept in a castle that looked over the valley like a dragon protecting a nest, it was hard to deny.
‘Were the mountains clear today?’ she asked, keen to move the conversation away from Hark’s reluctance to step up as ruler.
‘Yeah, we’ll check the other side again tomorrow.’
Seb opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it. He caught Arla’s eye though, and it seemed to her like a warning not to say what she was about to.
She’d never listened to warnings anyway.
‘No one will attack us here, Hark.’
He whirled to face her, and it was so reminiscent of how things had been only months before; how they had spent their whole lives hating one another and sending each other those looks filled with hatred.
She stepped closer to him. Not a chance would she back down.
He looked her dead in the eyes, his own the same icy shade as his father’s. ‘You are na?ve if you think they won’t. You made my father look a fool and Hadalyn thinks you betrayed them by being with me. Arla, don’t be stupid.’
She settled into that calm place and let the fire within her rise to the surface. Just a taste of it. Just to remind him who she was.
In a lethally soft voice she said, ‘I am not na?ve, and I am not stupid, Stappen. You’re forgetting who I am and the things I have done. Nothing will threaten this kingdom.’
His eyes flickered slightly, a yielding she took more delight in than she should have. She didn’t know when she would be able to leave that side of her behind – perhaps never. It had served her well for nine years. It had made her the best. It was ingrained on her soul.
‘I’ll see you at dinner.’ Her arm brushed his on the way out of the room and she ignored the electricity that flooded through her body at the contact.
Her feet smacked loudly against the floors of the hall as she made her way to her rooms. Her mind spun with the argument with Hark.
How had it managed to send her heart racing and bring forth a twisting feeling in her stomach?
Why had it rattled her so much? She was King’s Assassin; she was the dragonhart. A little disagreement over whether there should be scouts in the mountain shouldn’t have her wanting to force Hark into submission, and it shouldn’t have made her delight in the way he backed down just then.
She knew why though. She knew she was so flustered because this wasn’t an argument with a king or a courtier. This was Hark. Hark, who was the other half of her heart. Hark, who was the only person in the world who could leave her powerless in the face of her own emotions.
She hated the vulnerability.
Because that was exactly what she was feeling. That was why she had left the room before her voice could crack in front of their friends. Arguing with Hark exposed those soft parts of her heart she wished to keep concealed – the ones she reserved only for him – and it scared her.
She shouldn’t have walked away. She shouldn’t have brought up the topic of Elrod’s army finding them. That wasn’t what people who loved each other did. Perhaps she should go back. Perhaps she should go and find him and apologise and tell him—
What is wrong with me?
She closed the doors to her room behind her, inhaling the soft silence of the glass-roofed room. This wasn’t her – this wasn’t who she thought she had always been. Arla Reinhart had always been hard and unyielding. Had always put her own feelings above other people’s.
To give way for someone else, to allow that slither of vulnerability to show itself for Hark…?
She was scared.
And the only place she could fathom going in order to dissolve that fear, was into the arms of the man who had caused it.