Chapter Eight #2
“But you need to learn to hide what you’re thinking.
” He gestures to my face. “You should’ve known how to break my grip the second I grabbed you.
And you need at least a basic grasp of hand-to-hand combat to keep up.
We’ll do what we can to help—that guard of yours is particularly skilled, so do what they tell you.
These noble daughters spend their whole lives training for the Assay, and they’re not fucking around.
” He shakes his head. “Neither are we. Frankly, I don’t give a shit whether you walk out of all this alive at the end.
What I do care about is that you survive long enough to do what we brought you here to do. ”
Asshole. “And what is that, exactly?”
His green eyes spark as he moves closer—close enough for the blade in my hand to meet the place where his pulse flickers beneath his sharp jaw.
The Whisperer leans into the knife’s edge, as if he’s testing me—and I don’t pull back.
The blade presses delicately into the short stubble there.
His eyes search mine, like he sees something in the gray, and determination settles behind that mask of his.
“You’re going to kill the High King for us,” he says.
“And we need you to do it before the end of the Assay.”
My blood races. “You brought me here to be your assassin.”
The idea is ludicrous—and beyond dangerous. How am I supposed to get close enough to kill a king? Even more important, how am I supposed to kill a king and live to escape after I do it?
He studies me, an expression I can’t decipher working behind his eyes. As if he expects me to beg for mercy or try to run. When I don’t, he gives a single hard nod. “Yes. Kill the king and our deal is done.”
We watch each other the way a wolf eyes a snare. I could go straight to the gardai and have them lead me to the Lady of Shadows to betray his plotting, then use the chaos of the inevitable slaughter that would follow to escape.
But… if there are gardai working for the Whisperers, there’s no way to know which ones already know to look out for me—and slit my throat before I can spill their secrets.
And if I get caught first, he’ll go after Finn.
I force myself to draw in a slow, steady breath. Right now my sister is alive. If this is the price for saving her, then I’ll do what I have to do to pay that debt. I’ll find a way to survive the Assay just long enough to do what I need to and then find a way to escape.
Whatever else the Whisperers are plotting, I want no part in it.
But I need to know one thing. “Why me?”
The Whisperer’s dark glare softens on me, just for a moment.
The stubborn hardness gives way, and the white edge of his incisor catches on his bottom lip as he reaches for the array of blades up and down his sides.
“Everyone else is too useful to risk,” he says quietly, but there’s a strange distance in his hard stare. As if he’s holding something back.
He offers me two of the knife hilts, both with steel so pure it’s almost blue.
They must be worth enough for a king’s ransom—but there’s no way a rebel would have access to what looks like Málmar steel.
The imitation is flawless, though, and something in my chest purrs at the ripple in the polished steel.
One of the knives is flat enough to rest against my inner arm in a gauntlet sheath, if I can find one here.
The other is as long as the distance from my wrist to the tips of my fingers, ending in a brutal, deadly tip that catches the light.
“As for you… I guess we’ll see what you’re made of, faolán.” He says it like fway-lawn.
“That’s not how you say my last name,” I mutter, returning the blade I snatched from him. It wouldn’t fit in my empty sheath, anyway. “And what exactly do you expect me to say if the Lady of Shadows catches me?”
He pulls the hood of his cloak up and turns for the door.
The mage with the predator’s teeth is already there.
His lips part as he looks back over his shoulder at me.
The spymaster’s name seems to draw up a barely caged glimmer of raw hate in his green eyes as they fix on mine. “Tell her Wolf says hello.”
If one thing is clear about what happens next, it’s this.
The Whisperers do not trust me, and the copper-haired guard sticking like shit to the backs of my boots is here to make sure I don’t screw them over.
It doesn’t matter where I go over the next hours—the guard is right here with me.
Sometimes they hang back just far enough for me to think I’ve escaped them, but most of the time they’re close enough for me to see every infuriating grin each time I lose track of where I’m going or nearly trip over chipping stone tiles while searching out the kitchens when Finn’s words fill my head.
Don’t skip meals.
I have about a dozen to catch up on from my days in the cell.
The cooks take one look at me and make a pitying noise when I mention I’m the peasant girl here for the Assay, and I play that pity like a string I can pluck to my tune.
I come away with a basket heaping with currant-studded farls of soda bread still warm from the ovens despite what’s supposed to be a shortage of grain across the whole isle, along with hunks of hard, sharp cheese and enough juicy apples to make me half suspect they think I’m leading a small army.
“Really?” I ask as my guard searches the basket before letting me bring it into my room.
They pluck one of the apples and toss it in the air, catching the crisp pink skin on a tiny dagger they pull from their sleeve in a blink.
“Really.” The guard grins, crunching into a bite. “They’re rationing meals with the servants and gardai so all the nobles have enough to eat during the Assay.”
A sliver of guilt works its way between my ribs.
I shouldn’t care, but… hunger is its own kind of torment. I know it all too well, from the years before the uprising, when our father’s stall was struggling.
I find the soft warmth of one of the farls and offer it to them as the guard shoulders open my door and follows me in.
Their brow lifts.
“Just take it.” I wave the farl of bread at them. “Don’t make this even stranger than it is.”
The guard tucks it into the bag they slide off their back. “For later.”
I shrug. “Suit yourself.”
If Wolf—my lips curl at the arrogance of the name since he’s nothing remotely close to being a protector or a guardian for me—hadn’t made it abundantly clear there’s a point to keeping me alive, I’d suspect the guard might even be here as my assassin.
But damn it, they’re funny. And almost… sweet.
I’m not stupid enough to let myself fall for it, though. I can still hear the crack of bone in the dim light of the dungeons, the heavy trudge of the guard’s boots with that peasant girl’s body slung under their arm. I don’t let myself wonder where her body is now.
The servants are clearly under the guard’s spell, though, flirting and eyeing the biceps through the short arms of their crimson-and-black uniform.
Each one gets a wink and a soft smile from them, and there’s not a doubt in me that any of the servants would turn a blind eye to my blood on the floor if the guard asked them to.
Two hours later, I realize scarfing down the soda bread and cheese so quickly might’ve been a mistake.
Every muscle in my body burns from more variations of planks, twisting sit-ups, and lunges than I knew existed. The guard insists any practice, even starting now, will give me a better chance of surviving the Assay long enough to kill the High King.
If the training doesn’t kill me first.
“Your hips and core aren’t as limber as they should be,” they insist after another hour of running up and down the staircase at the end of my hall, eyeing me up and down with a frown.
They’ve been taking notes on every exercise I do, no doubt cataloguing all my weaknesses to report back to Wolf.
“That’s why you keep feeling like you’re losing your balance when your legs get tired.
Building that stability is what’s going to help you duck and twist fast in a hand-to-hand fight. ”
“We don’t exactly have stairs like this in Quayside,” I groan. “Nothing’s taller than—”
“Two stories,” the guard huffs. “I remember.”
“You’re one of us?” I follow them down the empty corridor and into my room, where the wood fire burns in the hearth, sweet and warm.
There’s a reason we burn peat instead of wood in Quayside—wood is too expensive—and the extra beams it would take to reinforce a third story or anything higher? It’s out of the question.
The guard shrugs. “Used to be.”
“Ominous,” I murmur.
The guard tilts their head at me, a flicker of a question dancing in their warm brown eyes.
I seize the chance for distraction. “So, what are you now, then? How does a kid from Quayside become one of the gardai? Or… whatever it is you are.”
The warmth vanishes from the guard’s eyes. Both their hands go up, palms flat and facing me. “Thirty punches. Right now.”