2. Clash of Stone and Steel
Clash of Stone and Steel
Prologue
Talyn
Talyn of Avril – “The Raptor” to those who paid her to kill their enemies – stood over the sleeping couple and wondered if she should end them now and be done with it.
The man and woman slept soundly, so she could easily slit their throats. The only complication was the size of the bed. It was huge, and the couple slept in the middle, so she’d have to port to reach them, but she could strike quickly enough that both would be dead before they knew what happened.
That wasn’t her assignment, though. Not yet.
Talyn studied the man. He was an exceptional-looking male, more beautiful than handsome.
His night-black hair stood out starkly against the pillow, and she knew even from brief glimpses that his bright turquoise eyes were mesmerizing under lids heavy with long lashes.
It would be a travesty to kill someone as stunning as him, but she’d do it.
Actually, she was looking forward to it. He oozed arrogance most of the time, and that alone made her want to stab him.
The woman sleeping beside him was another story.
She was beautiful as well, with haunting silver eyes so light they almost glowed, and rich brown hair that now spilled across her pillow as if being blown in the wind. Together the pair made a devastating couple.
While Talyn wanted to kill the man, her feelings about the woman were less clear. The lady was the main reason she was here in the first place, but nothing Talyn had seen of her said she deserved to die.
If anything, Talyn felt the urge to protect the woman.
Just a week or so ago, she’d heard a scream come from this bedroom, and she’d rushed to see what the matter was.
Never mind that she was supposed to be a servant and shouldn’t be rushing toward danger quite so eagerly.
She’d flung open the door without knocking and called to the woman.
She’d stopped short when she found Cyra, the Lady of Hiraeth, sprawled on the bed with her husband’s head between her legs.
Talyn realized immediately she’d grossly misinterpreted Cyra’s scream, and she’d been about to leave when she noticed Lord Bressen, Cyra’s husband, had pinned the lady’s wrists to the bed.
Talyn had stopped, suddenly not so sure everything was as innocent as it seemed. Some men believed they owned their wives and could have them anytime they wanted, regardless of the woman’s wishes, and she wondered just how willing Cyra was.
“Are you sure you’re alright, my lady?” Talyn had asked.
Lord Bressen had looked over his shoulder, amused she’d dared to question his intent, but she hadn’t backed down.
She’d kept her eyes locked on Cyra’s, watching for any hint of duress.
Talyn had a dagger at each hip hidden under her dress, and it would’ve taken seconds to draw them and port to the bed to plunge them into the lord’s neck.
Whether seconds would have been fast enough was the question.
Lord Bressen was a mind wraith, probably the most powerful one to ever exist if the stories were true. Mind wraiths weren’t common in general, but one of his ability was almost unheard of.
Lesser mind wraiths could read people’s thoughts, while more powerful ones could compel a person to do things.
Lord Bressen could do all that, plus glamour people into seeing things that weren’t there.
He could reportedly control the minds of hundreds of people at once, and it was rumored his ability to dominate a person’s will was so strong he could compel them to drop dead with one thought.
As if that wasn’t enough, he was also an angelus, a winged being that came with its own innate set of terrifying powers.
No, if Talyn had needed to strike at Lord Bressen to save Cyra, it was by no means certain she could’ve succeeded before he killed her.
Fast as she was, she wasn’t faster than someone’s mind.
She kept a mental shield up as a precaution, but the shield would only slow the lord down, not stop him entirely.
Talyn had been relieved when Cyra assured her she was fine, and the lord had released his wife’s wrists. Still, there’d been a wild look in Cyra’s eyes that had haunted Talyn ever since.
She looked down at the sleeping couple again.
They looked perfectly happy and peaceful at that moment.
Cyra’s body was free of the bruises she supposedly got while training, and the two were curled around each other, their heads tipped together as if they’d fallen asleep whispering to each other.
Cyra’s hand rested lightly on the lord’s chest while his arm lay across her waist under the covers.
Talyn had spent years sneaking into people’s bedrooms to kill them, but she’d never seen anyone sleep this way before, pressed together as if love drew them close, even while unconscious.
She rarely encountered couples sleeping in each other’s arms. Most liked their space.
In any case, if Cyra was afraid of her husband, her body language didn’t show it.
Talyn took her hands off the hilts of the daggers sheathed beneath her dress and resigned herself to waiting.
She wasn’t sure why she’d ported into the bedchamber tonight to begin with.
Maybe curiosity, or maybe the need to do something daring so she didn’t go mad from the monotony.
She’d been working as Cyra’s lady’s maid for several weeks now, trying to gather information for Sandrian, but spying wasn’t her usual role.
She was an assassin, and she liked it because there was a certain rush that came with the job, one that – ironically – made her feel alive even as she took the life of another.
Spying was different. There was some danger involved, but it wasn’t the same feeling.
This job was more dangerous than most, given that both the lord and lady could read minds, but Talyn’s masquing power – her ability to shift her body into that of another – allowed her to mask her mind to a degree, even beyond a normal mind shield. It was an added perk of the power.
Still, she didn’t want to be here any longer than she had to be.
She’d sent Sandrian a message a day or two ago letting him know the lord and lady had returned from their ocean voyage and had retrieved the collar and rings he wanted.
She’d been unable to get them for him, though, and he’d sent back a message telling her he’d take care of it.
Talyn was about to go back to bed when Cyra stirred, and she tensed. She may have been angling for some action, but she wasn’t stupid. Being caught here at one in the morning would be a problem, and she’d been careless to come.
Cyra gasped and bolted upright in bed.
Talyn ported immediately, throwing herself across the room and around a corner across from the bathing chamber.
She thought Cyra might’ve seen her for a brief second before she was able to port, but perhaps the lady had been too muddled with sleep to understand what she’d seen.
Talyn’s heart hammered in her chest as she waited for Cyra to scream or sound the alarm, but the woman did neither.
Bressen’s voice met Talyn’s ears. “Cyra? What is it? Are you alright?”
“I…I was in a nightmare, but not mine,” Cyra said. “Somehow I dream walked into Axenus’s nightmare.”
Axenus…It took a moment for Talyn to summon the image of the merman, but his garnet-colored hair, cerulean eyes, and lightly iridescent skin finally swam to the surface of her mind. Axenus was the second of the three devastatingly handsome men that lived in the house.
And the third of those men…Gods above.
Talyn thought she was immune to fits of thigh-clenching arousal, but when she’d seen that third man for the first time, Protector save her.
She wondered how the servants got anything done with these men around.
She’d seen most of the women, and even a few men, blatantly staring at them on occasion.
For that matter, she had no idea how Cyra herself managed to be around them.
Talyn was lost in her thoughts when the rest of Cyra’s words hit her.
“Somehow I dream walked into Axenus’s nightmare.”
Fuck. Cyra could dream walk.
As if Talyn didn’t have enough to worry about with the lord and lady’s mind reading abilities, now she also had to make sure she didn’t dream anything that might give her away.
Sandrian wasn’t paying her nearly enough to do this job.
Talyn eyed the door across the room, but she was too far from it to port outside in one shot.
Her range was about twenty feet, and the door was more than that.
She’d have to port a few feet in front of it and then onto the other side, but she didn’t dare do that with Bressen and Cyra awake.
She tried to listen, to at least gather more information while she was here, but she was having trouble hearing what they were saying as they spoke in low voices. Only a few words drifted to her.
“Axenus said he owed you a debt,” Cyra said, her voice barely reaching Talyn. “You freed him, didn’t you.”
Talyn raised a brow. There was a debt between the Lord of Hiraeth and the merman? She wasn’t sure if or how this information might be useful, but she stowed it away for future reference. She knew Axenus was training Cyra to use her magic. Was that the debt Axenus was paying to Lord Bressen?
Talyn had never met a syphon until Cyra of Hiraeth, but no one else had either as far as she knew.
Syphons were the most powerful perimortals in the world due to their ability to draw powers from other perimortals, but so far the Lady of Hiraeth didn’t seem like much of a threat.
She’d been raised among mortals for the first couple decades of her life, so she’d had no powers to draw on during that time other than the natural elemental ones around her.
Or so Talyn had learned from other servants, whose knowledge seemed to rival a royal spy network.