Chapter 2
Elysia clambered up onto a turret. Inside the turret was the bedroom of the man known as Kava’s Shadow. There was no doubt in her mind that he’d heard her not-so-subtle scraping and cursing as she climbed up the side of his damn house. Ass firmly planted on the roof, she kicked her legs and looked out at the horizon. Still two hours from sunrise, there was barely any light to be seen. Only a dim sheen filtered through the heavy sky. But that was normal here at any time of day.
The roof’s layered clay tiles were slick, slippery from the constant soft but steady rain. Soot was a dark, mournful veil upon Relaclave. Mixed with the rain, it became an oily substance that had sent many victims tumbling from roofs, balconies, and even on the solid cobblestone roads.
Watercolor streaks of charcoal ran down the sides of the cream-toned homes surrounding her. If she had been feeling poetic, she would have said they looked like tears. A torrent of wind whipped her dark hair back, and she was grateful for the stimulus. Every inch of her body cried from the lack of sleep. It was a miracle she was even still awake. The venture over here had left her with burning muscles and her breath coming short and fast, when it should have been slow and controlled.
But the icy wind and water stung her wide awake, forcing her to be alert. Rain continued to splatter against her skin. She picked at the wet fabric clinging to her body. Disgusting. And there was her heart thumping erratically, unable to withstand her usual physical torture. Frustration cracked through her cool focus. Get it together, Parker. The question of how long she could keep this up was becoming pressing.
The lack of sleep. The rabid, but necessary obsession.
All the while pushing herself through her normal routines and duties.
The sounds of Gage shuffling around inside his room carried up to her. She knew he was just making her wait. The man had likely known she was on her way, long before she stuck her butt on his roof and settled in. She dragged her finger across a tile and inspected the nasty film now infesting the underside of her nail. Relaclave was undoubtedly a city of gray. The sky. The speckled buildings. The people and secrets that it held close.
Elysia’s secret was that she traded in those secrets.
She’d been born into the court and its politics.
Her father, Jack, controlled the region’s trades and imports. A highly necessary and important business in a land where the sun hid and barely anything grew. Her father, like many of the current regime, had come from nothing. Instead of gold and silver running in his veins, it was a brutal, undying need to prove himself. To maintain security at all costs. This was buried deep, of course. She doubted he had any idea what was beneath his own skin. He didn’t worry about those sorts of things. He was too busy being vigilant about how to continue scraping his way to the top. If he could do it, then anyone could. And if they couldn’t? That was their own damn problem.
There are some things people never want to experience again. Hunger that bends you in half. The loss of a place to rest your head. Your body being used in ways that are not your own. Rage that blinds you senseless. The whispers told her that Jack Parker once knew something about those kinds of things. He was ruthless now. No one would ever imagine he’d once been scared or helpless.
He’d taught her to never apologize.
That her only responsibility was to herself.
And her only loyalty was to her family and the Crown.
The sun would shine in Kava before her father felt so much as a shred of remorse for all he had demanded of her. All those bodies. She wondered what the total was now. The rain drip, drip, dripped down her nose. She’d stopped counting near her sixteenth birthday. There wasn’t any point. Because it was never going to end.
Thankfully, it was rare she had to find a tip now. The king believed the worst of the curse to be decimated. But it was a constant threat in her father’s hand. That she’d have to go find someone to be put down like an animal. That he’d hand her over to the king instead if she didn’t obey.
And then there was her mother, Georgia. She carved out the social face of the Crown with expert strokes. Parties, cocktails, and gold flatware were her weapons.
Born into the Crown’s circle, she had used poise and grace like an ax to hack her position into existence. And now she wielded her power with the best of them. Who to invite. Who to ostracize. The art of putting someone in their place by seating them at the children’s table. By accident, naturally.
She made careers. And she broke them. People sweat in her presence as if she were the queen herself. If her mother had ever learned how to get her hands dirty, she would have made a terrifying general.
Elysia brushed the water off her face. She had always been a quiet child, unlike her sister, Beatriz, who screamed and raged like a soul caught between the dead and the living. While Beatriz was politely dragged out of sitting rooms that rolled with smoke and banter, Elysia had been allowed to stay, often tucked away in a corner long forgotten by the people who made the wheels of Kava turn.
And so Elysia began her training in the ornate halls and parlors of their kingdom’s finest. She collected secret after secret with no one the wiser. Because no one pays attention to sweet, soft girls in the corner.
And she liked it that way.
Rough fingers captured her ankle and yanked, startling her out of her thoughts. An embarrassing squeak escaped her mouth, but Gage’s strong hands had already grabbed her waist and pulled in her through the open window. Set on her feet, she teetered like a baby deer with her heart pounding loud enough she was sure he could hear it.
“You didn’t even notice me opening the window.” His deep voice normally settled around her like a warm blanket, but today the subtle reprimand sank beneath her skin, grating against her already raw nerves.
“ Maybe I have a good reason for being so distracted, did you ever think of that?”
His dark eyes twinkled, amused at her rancor. “Please, do share.”
A small laugh rumbled in his chest, and with her temper filed to a point, Elysia glared but didn’t say a word, knowing she’d regret whatever came out of her mouth.
Making his way to her, he pried her arms apart from where they’d been folded across her chest and looked down at her with genuine affection. Her frown softened, the tight ball of anxiety and anger melting a fraction under the warmth of his friendship. Moments like this made it easy to forget the man was a trained assassin who’d been born to continue his family’s empire.
Gage rarely talked about his family, but from what she’d gathered, they were indigenous to Bellia, the next closest country to Kava, and it remained the seat of their power. No matter where they called home, you could find a Reyez in every important kingdom and city, keeping a finger on the pulse of things. The family business extended far past the unseemly matter of relieving people of their lives, but as Gage said, it was important to stick to your talents, and there was no use crying about what they were.
Kingdoms were intricate and complicated pieces of embroidery, stitched together with lies and truth and dead-end dreams. People like the Reyez family were the back of the needlework. They were the knotted and tangled mess everyone was happy to pretend didn’t exist.
But they did.
The false beauty of the many kingdoms in their world lazed on. And the Reyez empire counted their coins, knowing their business would never cease. Because people were knotted and tangled on the inside, too.
Gage rested easily in front of her, and even after so many years of training beside him, Elysia still noticed how his body was an instrument that sang with even the most simple of movements. He waited patiently for her to tell him what was going on, his stare quickly becoming an uncomfortable weight against her.
“Let me guess, you went after a tip without an exit plan, got lost in the thrill of it, and now you’re in trouble? Or is this about what’s actually been going on with you?” His voice was torn between brotherly amusement and parental concern.
Elysia remembered the feeling of adrenaline as she attempted to escape Topp’s rooms only hours ago, and her mouth pinched at the both accurate and inaccurate observation. She did enjoy the thrill of chasing secrets, but she also had no choice about working for her father. And more importantly, that wasn’t why she was here at all.
Gage noticed her reaction and clamped his mouth shut. She could tell he was itching to pry. Her behavior over the last few months had likely been driving him up a wall. He wasn’t a man who did well with information being withheld, but he also knew she was about as skittish as an alley cat and would bolt if he tried too hard to get her to open up.
His current silence was probably for the best, considering she didn’t want to hear anymore of his concerned questions. Not today and probably not tomorrow, either. She could practically hear the questions stuck behind his lips and even the thought of them left her feeling exposed. “ What’s wrong? I’ve noticed how you’ve changed. Please tell me, so we can fix it.”
She wasn’t ready for that conversation, and for once, she had an easy card to play to get him off her back. Elysia pulled the note out of her pocket, handing it over to him. He looked curious until she tacked on what felt like pertinent details.
“Came with a box and a bloody tongue.”
Elysia stepped back, wrapping her arms around her middle as she watched his face work through flashes of emotion. Surprise. Anger. Resigned violence. Yes, this is what she had expected.
It was a strange miracle that she had ever met Gage. Even now, it was a puzzle to her why he had made himself such a permanent fixture in her life.
In some circles, Gage was a legend.
The one you brought your plea to and prayed to the undead gods that his price was not too steep. Because for his kind of work, there was always a price unseen. It was never going to be just coins. In other circles though, Gage was no one. He simply did not exist because how does one even trace a shadow in a city without the sun?
Expression hard, he handed her back the note. “What did I tell you about working alone?”
Elysia swallowed the vile barbs building behind her lips. She was here to beg his help, and she wouldn’t come out on top of a verbal pissing match, anyway. Not today, when she barely had her wits about her. The venom slipped back down inside her for another day, another fight, but fatigue slapped her in its place.
It was exhausting to always pretend.
She hedged, picking at her gross wet clothes. “Will you help me?”
His hand clasped against the back of her head, his grasp firm and steady. “Always. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to have a conversation about this at some point.”
Relief swept through her, her head tipping forward and tears stinging her eyes. She blinked, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. Stepping away from his touch, she tried to hide her discomfort, but even his palm against her hair felt too intimate at this moment. Her instinct was to hide, and it was proving difficult to override it.
Gage studied her. “You’ve never crossed this line before. There’s a difference between an informant and an executioner. Do you want to keep your hands clean, or do you want to come?”
Palms open in front of her, she thought of the long tally of lost lives behind her name. Was she really so different from an executioner? She wasn’t sure all the people who’d died because of her tips would think so.
All the emotion left her body as she answered. “It’d be smarter if I stayed out of it.”
“But you need to know it’s been handled.”
“Something like that.” She looked up from the floor, their eyes meeting in understanding.
Gage flicked off the lights as they walked through his home. One by one the lights went out, and with each switch he flicked, his movements grew smoother and somehow deadlier as he slipped into a dangerously focused state. Elysia trailed behind him. The man had more money than was healthy and a love for the boom of technology slowly crawling through Kava now that magic was gone. The end result was a home fitted with electricity and running water and the kind of tub she dreamt about. Her own flat only boasted a washstand and a communal toilet.
Her eyes went back to Gage as he strode in the direction of the docks. They both knew something about terrible choices made out of necessity and survival, but there was no joy or even vengefulness pumping through her now that the task was before her. As was often true, she was simply left with a grim resolve to make it through the day, and today that meant shadowing an assassin through dark alleys and strange buildings until the problem was solved.
The sun had risen when Elysia finally collapsed onto her bed.
She’d wondered if what she had seen would keep her awake with her brain spinning. Violence was nothing new in her world, though. Not with a hanging or beheading happening at least weekly since she’d been a child. In some respects, this had felt cleaner. Gage knew exactly who to go after, given that he had tracked every guilty individual since she had involved herself by tipping off the Crown. Usually she scoffed at his over-the-top protectiveness, but today she was glad for it. He knew where to go and who to seek.
Their mission had been simple, efficient even. Find the guilty parties. Remove them from the picture. Regardless of his feelings for her, Gage’s kills had been fast and neat, his crew always only a few steps behind to perform cleanup. If anything, the most shocking part was how organized and rote the entire operation appeared to be.
Sprawled out and finally safe, exhaustion overcame her. Her last waking thought was that there was still a tongue in her sink.