Chapter 4
River
River had spent a full day observing the only person she’d ever known to successfully leave the Deathrose Guild—her former
partner, Vandra Ravenfall. River had been trailing her on and off, waiting for the perfect opportunity to speak. By nightfall,
she realized there would be none. Vandra never spent a moment away from her girlfriend, the famous Elowen True.
So from a neighboring rooftop, chewing on a mint leaf, River watched the two of them.
Vandra was wearing knee-high heeled boots and a shimmering maroon bodice, while Elowen was in her coziest nightclothes, both
of them nestled atop a mountain of pillows and blankets they’d constructed into some kind of backyard fort. As long as River
had known Vandra, she’d never dressed practically for anything. They’d once spent days together casing Archibald the Limb-Cleaver.
Days in which Vandra insisted on wearing a rotating collection of velvet capes in bright jewel tones.
“Just because I’m an assassin doesn’t mean I have to look frumpy,” she’d explained, plucking a hemalia flower in the same
shade of purple as her cape, then tucking it behind her ear.
The comment was probably a note for River, or maybe even an insult, but River didn’t take it personally.
River and Vandra cared about different things.
Vandra had an eye for aesthetics. She noticed the tarnish of a villain’s jewelry or what exact shade they’d had their nails charmed.
River was an expert at examining a room for good hiding spots.
Years of teleporting to inconvenient locations had made her keenly aware of what could hold her weight and what couldn’t, which in turn allowed her to be distinctly adept at figuring out where someone else might have stowed themselves away.
Their different focuses were what had made River and Vandra a good assassin team.
They’d helped each other rise through the ranks of the Deathrose Guild.
Until one day, sitting side by side atop a roof not unlike the one River was perched on now, Vandra had announced she was
leaving the guild altogether.
She must have made the right choice, because there she was, grinning ear to ear as she plopped Sizzle Crystals into Elowen’s
mouth.
“That’s enough,” Elowen said, then did something River had never seen from the famously grumpy Mythrian hero before—smiled.
“Desires is about to begin.”
Ghosts alive. Was River watching an . . . intimate moment between them? She closed her eyes, prepared to teleport to . . .
absolutely anywhere else. This was a bad idea anyway, coming to Vandra. As if River would ever follow in her footsteps. The
guild was all River had.
She shouldn’t have let Celine’s words get into her head. River’s job wasn’t to research her targets. Her job was to kill them.
This situation was such a mess. News had surely already reached the guild about her failed attempt at killing Galwell yesterday.
They’d trusted her with the biggest job of her career, and she’d completely botched it. They’d be waiting for a good explanation.
And River didn’t yet have one to give.
“How dare you start without me!” another woman’s voice called out, startling River out of her planned teleportation.
She opened her eyes to see Beatrice of the Four, also in nightclothes, walk into the backyard carrying a bowl of popped corn.
“Please tell me you have dollpeppers I can put on top of that,” Vandra said.
Beatrice tipped the bowl toward Vandra. “Already on there. Unlike the two of you, I consider my fellow sleep-outside party
guests when I make decisions.”
“If you’d looked at the conjuration for more than a second, you’d know it hasn’t actually begun yet,” Elowen told her. “They’re
still summarizing yesterday’s performance. I figured you’d be fine with missing that part.”
Beatrice plopped down onto a blanket beside the two women, no other word said on the matter.
Now it made sense. They were gathered together to watch Desires of the Night, a popular shadow play. But Beatrice had called what they were doing a sleep-outside party. River thought sleep-outside parties
were only for young girls. Not that she’d ever been invited to one as a child. Still, she’d never heard of adults partaking
in the activity.
For a while, River attempted to understand. Vandra, Elowen, and Beatrice were giggling and gasping in equal measure, reacting
to every shadow play reveal as if it personally affected them. How childish it was, these women sitting atop bedding they’d
dragged into the yard, eating candy and popped corn, watching a made-up story in which villains and heroes kissed and fought
and died and came back to life, sometimes in the same performance.
And still, a hollow ache settled into the pit of River’s stomach. What was it like, to be a part of a group where the only
collective goal seemed to be to delight one another?
River could not take another minute of this. She couldn’t watch Vandra forever.
She spit out her mint leaf, then whistled, long and low. When she’d worked with Vandra, they’d used this code whenever they needed to announce their presence without startling the other.
Vandra perked up. Her eyes scanned her surroundings until she found River on the rooftop. Her expression morphed into a deliberate,
hardened frown.
“Good to see you, too,” River called out. There was a lingering bitterness in her words, something she thought she’d long
ago resolved.
Beatrice and Elowen flung themselves off the blankets to assume the fighting stances River recognized from the countless statues
and tributes that had been rendered in their honor. How silly they looked, poised to attack while wearing their nightclothes.
Another reason adults should not have sleep-outside parties. You never knew when an assassin might ambush your hangout. Especially
when you were two of the realm’s most famous heroes.
Vandra still did not move.
Jumping down would have been the appropriate move for River to make, but she really did fear the impact it would have on her
knees. She needed to start wearing supportive braces.
She settled on climbing down the building’s overgrown trellis, suffering all manner of cuts along the way. By the time she
reached the ground, Beatrice and Elowen had dropped their protective positions. Elowen folded her arms across her chest instead.
Beatrice arched an eyebrow as she leaned against the back door.
Vandra lounged even harder than before. She had her hands behind her head and a smile back on her face, though this one looked
more threatening than friendly.
“Hello,” River said.
The air hung heavy with silence. River wished her embarrassment was only at the level of wearing nightclothes during an ambush.
This was worse somehow, arriving during the middle of someone else’s party and having no one care enough to ask why.
She cleared her throat, determined to appear unaffected. “I was wondering if I could discuss something with you,” she said to Vandra. There was no way River could explain her situation in front of Galwell’s sister, so she added, “In private. It’s related to the business.”
Vandra faked a yawn. “Sorry, Riv. I’m quite comfortable right here.”
She wasn’t making this easy, and River could understand that. But River did not know why she was making it so difficult, either.
They’d spoken a few times since Vandra left the guild. Nothing too serious, but nothing this strained. When they’d parted
ways, Vandra promised they would remain on good terms.
Perhaps River’s fatal error was referencing the business. Vandra had left because she felt defined by the guild. She thought no one cared about her as a person there. She believed
they only cared about her accomplishments.
Vandra had grouped River in with the rest of her colleagues, as if River didn’t care about her as a person. As if River only
cared about her accomplishments.
On second thought, River had no regrets about her current approach.
“Not a problem at all,” she said to Vandra, grinning in return. “Happy to discuss this in front of everyone.”
It was a lie, but River had to keep some semblance of dignity. Explaining this in front of Elowen and Beatrice was not just
inconvenient—it was dangerous. They had taken down the Fraternal Order—the realm’s most evil organization—not once, but twice. Beatrice had personally brought Galwell back from the dead. And again, Elowen was Galwell’s sister. According to all accounts,
they were the kind of family who actually loved one another. To tell them about the target on Galwell would be to put a target
on River, too.
“I was just wondering if you’d ever had a target whose devious deeds you did not know of when you were given the assignment,” River said.
“Never,” Vandra replied.
“Really? Not even once?”
This got Vandra to sit up. “No. I never once completed an assignment without knowing my mark’s misdeeds ahead of time.”
“I didn’t say I completed anything,” River told her. “All of this is hypothetical.”
“Who is your target?” Beatrice asked.
“She won’t tell us that. The guild has strict rules,” Elowen answered on River’s behalf. “But I sense a great deal of fear
from her. And also, beneath it, some hurt.”
River was seeing Elowen’s famous heart magic in action. And she did not like it. Not one bit.
“I have no target,” River said. “I was just inquiring.”
Elowen scowled. “You interrupted us in the middle of Desires of the Night to run a scenario past your former colleague who no longer works in assassinry and would therefore have the kind of moral
compass one might need when faced with an assassin-related existential crisis, and you expect us to believe it’s hypothetical?”
It did not previously seem possible, but River had found a way to make the situation worse.
“Forgive me for having a complex imagination!” River protested.
Vandra finally stood. She placed a hand on River’s shoulder as she said, “If you’ve come here for help, I have none to give
you right now, aside from this—come clean to the guild. About all of it. Ask them every question you’ve just asked me and
see what their answer is. And maybe, after that, ask the guild what your favorite color is. What your best non-assassin quality
is. Ask them where in Mythria you grew up. And when you find the answers to be unsatisfactory, just leave.”
It was such a change in tone, all Vandra’s posturing replaced with a sincerity that made tears threaten to well up in River’s eyes. She bit the inside of her cheek to stop the sensation from taking hold.
What terrible advice. Insulting, even. River did not bother to teleport away. No. She stormed off instead. The situation demanded
it.
What was she thinking, coming to Vandra Ravenfall? Vandra had let the time away turn her soft. She no longer remembered all
the good that the Deathrose Guild did.
River would find Galwell the Great again. She would watch him obsessively until she figured out the reason the guild wanted
him dead.
Then she would kill him.