Chapter 2 #2
At least, it was the home Celine had lived in as a teenager, in a small hamlet right outside of Queendom. River hadn’t been
able to think of somewhere better to go. More accurately, she didn’t have the sense to do so. She was so overwhelmed by Celine’s
presence that she could not redirect her focus.
More than once, River had imagined what it would be like to see Celine again. She’d hoped to come off as cool and confident,
finally knowing how to speak as eloquently as Celine always had. Instead, River could manage only the linguistic grace of
a toddler, telling Celine, “Go into here now,” and pointing to the house. “Forget everything you saw. Forget you know me at
all.”
“You were going to kill Galwell,” Celine said. She had the audacity to search River’s eyes for some kind of understanding,
compassion bleeding out of her, as if River was being made to do this against her will.
“I was not,” River protested. “Go inside.”
Celine stepped back, scanning River from top to bottom. “You’re an assassin.”
“I am not.”
“You’re in all black. You’re wearing a satchel around your waist that’s full of weapons. You have on sensible shoes, fit for
jumping out of a tree. You threw two darts at Galwell when I called out to stop you, likely full of poison. You are obviously an assassin.”
“What if you’re the assassin?” River fired back. She had no idea why she was entertaining this conversation. She’d failed her assignment,
which was bad enough. Now here she was, chatting up the only witness.
Celine was very clearly not the assassin. For one, her flowy blouse was tucked into a skirt that went right down to her ankles.
An inconvenient ensemble for assassinry. The skirt would surely get tangled. Even in her youth, Celine had possessed a chaos
that bubbled out from the seams of her clothes, like all her dreams and ideas could not bother to be contained inside her,
thus skewing the already messy bun atop her head, caramel-colored curls haloing her face, and untidying the tuck of her blouse.
It was a lovely kind of mess, impossible to recreate. She also held a large notebook, which would make for a most impractical
weapon.
Ghosts. A notebook . . .
She was a scribe.
“I’m not the one of us who is trained as an acrobat,” Celine said. “Nor am I the one who can teleport.”
“Well, you’re much smarter than I am,” River said. “Surely you could somehow kill people with that memory of yours.”
Something curious flashed on Celine’s face—regret?
Embarrassment? She’d always been known for her head magic gift of perfect memory.
In their teenage years, Celine was quite proud of that fact, touting it so often that some of their classmates took to calling her Miss Memory.
That was obviously how Celine recalled the fact that River knew acrobatics in the first place.
“Surely you know I must report your actions to the royal guard,” Celine said. “And then I will write about them.”
This was already bad enough. Celine seemed determined to make it worse. If River teleported, she might end up on top of a
tree again. She couldn’t chance two risky jumps in one night. She was in her thirties now. Her knees could only handle so
much.
What she needed to do was kill Celine. But River wasn’t that kind of assassin. No member of the Deathrose Guild took out innocent
people, no matter how troublesome they were.
River would be punished for this increasingly bad situation.
So much for rising in the ranks.
“I don’t suppose you want to help me instead?” she asked, trying out a sly grin. She’d been told that, on occasion, she had
a sort of ragged charm about her. Not that Celine Hazelton was the type to be easily charmed.
River hadn’t worked with a partner since Vandra Ravenfall, and that was years ago. She found she preferred to go about this
kind of job alone. There was much less distraction. Yet here she was, requesting company. It was the only way out of this
that didn’t involve losing her position in the guild.
“You think that I want to help you kill off our realm’s greatest defender? The man who made Mythria whole again?” Celine asked.
Ghosts, Celine looked lovely like that, so full of righteous frustration.
Still, it shocked River to hear Celine admire Galwell with such vigor.
Then again, he was probably the exact kind of man for whom a woman like Celine should pine.
She deserved someone earnest, someone who would bow for her when she walked into a room.
Someone who could earn the softness she kept hidden under her bullheaded determination.
“Are you obsessed with him or something?” River asked. “One of his worshippers? I wouldn’t take you for a Galwellian.”
This time, there was no missing the expression on Celine’s face. She was angry, her cheeks blooming fiery red. “I am not a Galwellian.” She paused, fidgeting with her notebook as her hand moved toward the quill she had tucked into her hair bun.
“Did you make that up, though? That’s actually quite good. I could use that.” She shook her head. “Never mind. That’s not
my point. I do not worship him. I just happen to know that our lives would be significantly worse if he hadn’t saved Mythria
a decade ago, and the last thing he deserves is to be killed off again. Hasn’t he suffered enough? Haven’t we all? How could you murder him?”
“We in the assassin business don’t like the word murder,” River said. “We find it very uncouth. We’d prefer you use kill or assassinate, if you don’t mind.”
“So you are an assassin,” Celine said.
River bit her lip.
“You’re in the Deathrose Guild, aren’t you?” Celine continued. “Isn’t their sole purpose to rid Mythria of nefarious figures?
Name one nefarious thing that Galwell True has done.” She used her hands and her notebook to punctuate her points, even going so far
as to nudge River with the notebook in exasperation.
Yes, this was definitely the Celine River once knew. Eerily astute. And unrelentingly ambitious in her pursuit of answers.
When they were in school together, Celine often stayed after hours to read library books on subjects related to whatever they
were being taught. It made sense that she’d channel all of that into being a scribe. And that she’d be the last one to go
home for the night, trailing Galwell through the darkness in hopes of finding the best story possible.
“I’m not the one who decides the targets,” River said, shrugging. “Why don’t you find that person and annoy them with your questions?” She regretted the use of annoy. She wasn’t annoyed at all. If anything, she could stand to be substantially more annoyed by all of this.
“You think I don’t know that your heart is good,” Celine said, low and even.
“You’re wrong.” River placed her dagger on Celine’s throat. “I could murder you right now, in front of your childhood home.”
She really did hate saying that word. But she needed Celine to stop with the belief in her goodness.
River Pricemark was not a good person. Not even a little bit.
“Do it,” Celine dared.
River would have. She really, truly would have. Except Celine kept talking, prolonging the task.
“Go ahead and murder me, a friend of yours, after failing to murder Galwell the Great. Villainize yourself for no good reason
at all. It must be worth it to you.”
It wasn’t the villainizing bit that stopped River. She was fine with being seen as a villain, though in this case, it wasn’t
true. The guild must have had a good reason to want Galwell the Great dead, and River just hadn’t been told of it. That wasn’t
her part of the job.
It was the fact that Celine had called herself a friend.
“I don’t have time for this.” River retracted her dagger and sulked off down the once-familiar road, a place where she’d spent
a year of her life feeling like maybe, just maybe, she belonged.
She couldn’t deal with the Celine of it all anymore. She needed to return to Galwell and finish her assignment. If it came
to blows with him, at least River would die attempting to rid the realm of someone as dangerous as Galwell surely must be.
In River’s line of work, it would be as noble a death as Galwell’s supposedly was ten years ago.
“If you go back to Galwell right now, I will tell everyone in Mythria what you did,” Celine said, following River down the street. “As I’m sure you’ve already figured out, I write for the scribesheets. I can have it published as early as tomorrow morning. I’d be the first to break the news.”
“Which scribesheet?” River asked, feeling like she might need to go read every piece Celine had already written. Just to see
how bad this whole thing was, of course.
“Mythria Spectator,” Celine said, chin high.
River could not swallow back her surprise. “You write for a gossip pamphlet? Those things are filled with nothing more than mindless lies.”
River had threatened to murder Celine not one minute ago, and Celine hadn’t even flinched. But this made her stop dead in
her tracks.
“Oh, now you’re done stalking me? But what if you get a detail of my attire wrong? In the gossip pamphlet,” River said mockingly. Now that she knew it was a bruise, she also knew she had to press on it, if only to prove to Celine
that they were not friends.
River had no friends.
“And I thought you wanted to be an acrobat in your family’s troupe. How is this where you’ve ended up?” Celine asked. “You
told me once how much you loved climbing the ladder they’d rig up in the tents, because you could jump off the highest step,
flipping and spinning through the air with a harness around your waist. You said there was no feeling like it because you
got to fly while knowing exactly where you’d land. You knew that no matter what, you would be safe. And that was the only
place in your life where that was true.”
River felt as though her head might explode, hearing Celine recite long-dead dreams River had given up on years ago.
She began walking again. “Stop trying to make me feel guilt, or regret, or whatever it is you’re aiming for, using your perfect memory as a weapon to pull upon heartstrings that cannot be pulled.
We knew each other for a year when we were teenagers.
I hardly remember it at all.” That was not even remotely true, but River wished it was, and that was essentially the same thing.
“It isn’t magic that’s made your presence stay with me,” Celine replied, keeping pace. “I’ve kept you in my memory because
you’re worth holding on to.”
This, regrettably, made River trip, the toe of her sensible shoe getting caught on a stray rock.
“I won’t stand by and let you destroy your life by taking Galwell’s,” Celine finished.
“What exactly do you think happens to me if I don’t go through with these orders?” River asked, glossing over the whole tripping
ordeal. If nothing else, she would not be embarrassed tonight. “I am as good as dead if I don’t do this. The guild will never
let me get away with turning down this assignment.”
Celine pressed a hand onto River’s forearm. Her touch was warm, and her grip was sure, even after all the trouble River had
caused her. “Then I will protect you,” she said. Worse, her eyes—that dangerous kind of brown, welcoming and soft—gazed at
River with surefire conviction.
River laughed. One did not simply protect someone against the finest assassins Mythria had to offer. And certainly not a writer for one of the realm’s least respected
scribesheets. “And how do you think you’d pull that off?” she asked. “Checking out a library book on how to exit organized
crime?”
“It’s very possible they have one. The library has a book for everything.”
“You’re not capable of taking on an entire guild of assassins on your own,” River told her.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of when I’m determined,” Celine said.
Years ago, when River and Vandra would pass time together on assignments, waiting out their target, Vandra used to tell stories
of Galwell’s sister, Elowen True. Elowen had the heart magic gift of sensing other people’s emotions. River had often thought
that to be a tedious power. What good could ever come from knowing other people’s feelings? But for the first time, River
found herself wishing she could have such a gift. She was desperate to know why Celine cared this much.
“You’re pathetic,” River spit back. She didn’t mean it. Not even the tiniest bit. If anything, Celine was too brave for her
own good. But River needed to shake her off, so she could go kill the shit out of Galwell the Evil.
Celine folded her arms, hardening all the softness in her features. “Fine. I get it. You can’t be swayed. But every scribe—even
the ones who write for gossip pamphlets—knows you never accept a story at face value. You dig. And then you dig even more, until you’re positive you know exactly what you’re writing about. Surely you’ve done that in
your own profession. Surely Galwell True should die. Because the River I know wouldn’t kill an innocent man.”
River couldn’t hear another word. Or waste another second. She teleported herself away.
She’d meant to take herself to Galwell. But that’s not where she ended up.