31. The Assassin
THE ASSASSIN
Silver
The library is full of blind spots if you know where to stand. I taught myself every shadow in this fortress long before I became one of its Overlords.
I slip between shelves, lean back into darkness, and wait.
The nephilim boy, Elias, arrives first, closing the door with one hand, and carrying a tray of drinks with the other.
Something smells off with him again, like it did last night.
That’s why I’m here. It’s nothing to do with the kiss earlier today, or the fact that Thorne said this wisp of a man is my cadets fuck buddy. Ex or current.
She arrives soon after, and Elias smiles at her. “Seraphina, I picked the table with the best moonlight. Here,” he gestures to the chair opposite him. “Take a seat.”
She doesn’t need a body guard, but fuck, she looks so small from here.
Smaller than she does in the training hall or sparring ring. Smaller than she does when she’s defying me with that sharp tongue and unbreakable spine.
“I wasn’t sure you’d show up. You were never into tattoos at the citadel.”
I frown. The citadel? What citadel?
I make a mental note to ask around about his background. Where this Elias came from and what he did before. Maybe it will reveal something about the mysterious woman sitting opposite him.
“People change,” is all she says.
He makes small talk, trying to bring up old times, but she’s tight lipped for the most part, steering the conversation to his tattooing. Who he’s tattooed recently, what designs he recommends.
He offers her a drink from the tray, but she refuses politely, and something flashes across his face.
I frown.
Disappointment?
Had he been thinking this was a date? And now he’s all hurt that she wants to get straight down to the tattoo?
“So what will it be?” Elias asks, rolling out a leather sleeve that must hold his tattoo kit.
He lines up the ink pots of every shade and color as she talks and I listen, not even breathing if I can help it.
“I don’t want something flowery,” she tells him. “No cute swirls or filigree. It has to mean something.”
“A turret?” he asks and I almost choke.
Has she told him about her visits to my turret? No. She wouldn’t have. I’m not sure she even likes him, based on her posture and refusal to go off topic or flirt.
I used to have the best view in Industria, she’d said while gawking at the view from my bedroom window.
She shakes her head. “I want scales. The old kind. Not the stylized court versions back home with perfect symmetry and polished lines. I want them slightly bowed in the middle, like they’re actually holding weight.
Like balance is precarious and hard to find.
Like it costs more than you might have to give when you finally do. ”
The nephilim frowns in confusion.
He doesn’t get it.
I do.
And I’m relieved she’s finally learning too.
A few weeks ago, she looked at me like a monster, with the perfect mix of fear and revulsion.
Today, and sometimes when we’ve been out on the roof, she’s looked at me like an equal, and dare I say, with desire hooding her stunning amber eyes.
“The beam shouldn’t be perfectly straight,” she explains, drawing invisible lines on the tabletop with her finger. “Let it tilt a little. Enough that it feels real. And the chains… make them fine. Detailed. Delicate enough that they look like they could snap if too much is placed on either side.”
Elias nods. “Anything in the pans? Maybe a stack of books? Or a sigil for Industria? A lot of my clients like sigils from where they were born.”
She pulls a face that doesn’t fit his question, one of almost revulsion before her expression flattens like it was never there.
“In one pan, I want a feather,” she says. “Gray but a bit darker than normal. Just one.”
Elias nods. “Anything in the other?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Something darker. But they have to balance. The feather can’t rise or sink. They need to weigh almost the same. Ash or smoke or shadow could work. Not black or white. Gray.”
The more I listen to her speak, the more perplexing this female becomes. More interesting and captivating too.
More than anything, it’s a relief to learn that the holier-than-thou angel girl is actually listening. Learning.
“Where?”
She tilts her chin up and runs a finger along her bare flesh, just below her collar bone. “Here.”
I swallow. It’s intimate. They’ll have to be close.
Before I can finish the thought, the waif of a nephilim man is moving his chair right up close to hers.
She flinches back. He notices.
“Don’t be shy. We’ve been much closer with a lot less clothes.”
Something starts to burn inside my chest and I realize my fists are clenched tight, knuckles white as I try to ignore whatever is suddenly pissing me off.
Elias nods, and soon goes to work on her design.
I don’t know if he’s any good or not, because I’m too caught up watching her face.
I’ve never had a tattoo. Lady Selmora would never have allowed it, and since breaking free of her sex cage, I’ve been covered up to my neck in silver veins. But I don’t need to have tattoos myself to know they hurt, Yuvi and Z are covered in enough of them. A few of the Sisters too.
Yuvi says he’s addicted to them even though they are ‘Painful as fuck.’
Despite this coming from an Overlord who I have personally witnessed endure torture that would turn even Satan’s stomach, Seraphina Scarvo does not flinch, or tremble, or even wince.
She’s still. Utterly and completely still. Too still.
I’ve seen seasoned soldiers endure less pain and tap out while calling themselves warriors.
Instead she’s thinking. Deeply. I can see it in the lines of her striking face.
Her eyes aren’t here. They’re somewhere else, somewhere darker.
Only when he offers her another drink do her muscles finally react by tensing up.
She takes a glass, and he smiles, but I don’t miss how she doesn’t sip before setting it down.
Why?
She doesn’t speak or move again until Elias sits back and declares he’s finished.
His eyes dart around the table and he pats pockets that aren’t even sewn into his clothes several times. “Sorry, I must have forgotten my mirror. There’s one in my room if you want to have a look there? One of the best polished in Vulcaris. We could have a drink for old times sake?”
I can smell his arousal as he looks at her, waiting for an answer. There’s something else mixing with it, something off, something even more unsettling.
“It’s okay,” she says, reaching down and messing with the laces of her right boot. “Mine is well polished enough.”
No. I suck in a breath.
Not her laces, she’s reaching inside the boot.
As she straightens, sitting up with perfect poise and posture, she slides a dagger free from the thick leather where it had been concealed somewhere near her ankle.
I squint and my nostrils flare.
Not any dagger.
My. Fucking. Dagger.
So that’s where it went.
Shit. She is in so much fucking trouble she has no idea.
But then she holds it up to the moonlight like a mirror, and tilts the sharp blade up and down between her fingers, until she must have a good view of the tattoo and holds it there.
I know it’s sharp, I honed the damned thing myself.
“I’ve been thinking, Elias,” she murmurs almost to herself. “About how in Industria they teach that evil is obvious.” Her voice is soft and controlled. Gentle even. “And about how the worst evil even smiles sometimes.”
Elias’ throat bobs as he swallows but doesn’t say anything.
She tilts her head, eyes finally meeting his for the first time since she arrived.
“Did you smile like that when Nyrielle accepted your offer of a poisoned cocktail too?” she asks, arching a brow.
“Or did you wait until you were leading her back to your room, intoxicated and unwilling, and raped her?”
He opens his mouth, but before he can form a word, her finger is pressed to his lips and she whispers. “My father’s right about one thing. A sinner with no virtue does not deserve to live.”
She lifts the blade to his throat.
It slices across flesh, and for a split second, Elias looks less like a man and more like a child who didn’t expect consequences.
Clean.
Efficient.
Fatal.
And all with a haunting lack of hesitation.
Blood pours over her hand. She doesn’t recoil or look sick, but she doesn’t look triumphant either. She looks… like she just completed my kata for the hundredth time without breaking a sweat and is bored of it.
I remain in the shadows while he drowns in his own blood, wondering what the fuck I’m supposed to do with this girl now.
I should have stopped her.
I should arrest her right now, take her straight to the Sisters.
I should punish her, sentence her to the same fate.
Make an example of her, at least.
Instead, I watch as she starts to clean up before his body has even finished twitching.
What I’m seeing isn’t murder. It’s a verdict being delivered by someone who played judge, jury and executioner.
When Elias finally stills, she mutters something about murder, theft and rape. And uses a word I’ve not heard before:
Unrepentable.
There’s no shaking in her hands or panic, only the quiet and calculated steps she takes to frame this to be anything but the assassination it was.
Before she’s done, I step out from the shadows and offer her a slow clap.
Once.
The sound cracks through the library like a whip.
Her entire body goes rigid.
Twice.
She pivots, blade already up.
My. Fucking. Blade.
Thrice.
She spins, dagger back in hand and ready to throw it at my neck.
Fuck me, she’s magnificent.
And something tells me she wouldn’t miss.
“Overlord,” she says evenly.
No guilt, or fear, simple readiness.
I step into the moonlight and my gaze flicks to Elias’ corpse, then back to her bloodstained fingers and bloodied weapon.
“You missed the carotid by half a millimeter,” I say mildly. “He bled slower than necessary.”
Her jaw tightens. “Good.”
Fuck me. Why does that one word make her even more irresistible?
Capable as she might be, my gut is also telling me she doesn’t want to gut me like the fish she made of the nephilim boy.