The Hardest Thing
CAELAN
And that included having defended borders for over a century. Nearly dying on more occasions than I could count.
We had come close outside the throne room. She had wanted to. I had felt it with complete certainty. She had given me the opening, and I had taken it confidently. Then Maelor had appeared from down the corridor with the timing of a man working against me specifically.
The spar had offered another opportunity.
Excellent positioning. Optimal proximity.
She had been pinned beneath me, and I had many thoughts about that.
None of them honorable. Then we had discovered that she was channeling my magic, specifically mine.
The one power in the world that was supposed to be catastrophic and uncontrollable, and she was simply absorbing it through her palm.
I had shared my thoughts on the matter.
“So you are practically made for me,” I had said. “Specifically.”
She had looked at me.
I had looked at her.
She punched me in the face.
Not hard. It bruised my dignity more than anything else. Still worth saying.
After that, I had been on a mission.
My study, late afternoon. Riven had just taken a report that I had annotated and disappeared to pass it to Maelor.
Sera was at the tall window that overlooked the city, the last of the ambient light catching her face in a way I had stopped pretending not to notice.
I set down the documents that were no longer a priority and crossed the room.
She looked at me, surprised, and I had just begun to close the remaining distance when the door opened.
Maelor walked in with the report in hand, already composing his complaints about the contents.
The next morning, I sent Maelor to fortify the eastern pass. The pass did not need fortifying.
He looked at the order. Then at me. Then at the order again. His face had much to say, but he had made a calculation about the value of his current position at court and said none of it.
He was gone by midday.
The eastern gallery was supposed to be empty.
I had made sure of that because I walked it twice.
She was looking at a painting when I decided to make a move.
Had turned when I approached, soft smile, the one she had when she wasn’t guarding it.
I had covered half the distance when the servants came through the doors with polish for the frames.
The frames were gleaming. They polished them anyway.
I looked at the ceiling briefly.
Sera looked at the painting. “It’s a good painting,” she said, with complete neutrality.
We stood there while the servants worked with no apparent intention of leaving.
On the third day, we found ourselves at my study door.
I had turned to Riven and told him I needed complete privacy, that I was unreasonably behind on things requiring my attention, which was true, because I was unreasonably behind on this specifically.
I turned for the study and expected Sera to follow.
Riven took her by the arm and steered her down the corridor.
“He needs to be alone,” he told her.
I stood in the doorway and considered whether the eastern pass required a second person for fortification.
I went into the study with the air of a man who suspected the universe was doing this on purpose.
The balcony door unlatched while I was actually working through the documents that had been waiting.
“There are doors,” I said, without looking up.
“I was already on the roof.”
Xander dropped onto the sofa by the hearth with the ease of a man who had decided this was his room and I was the guest in it. He helped himself to the wine on the table.
“The Obsidian Hand contract,” he said, pouring red wine into a glass. “Same dead end.”
I set down the documents.
“The handler who placed it is gone. Not dead.” He smelled the wine and set it down, then picked it back up again. “Just gone. No body. No trail. No forwarding address.”
“The coin ran through three intermediaries before disappearing into a trading account in Blackwater Cape,” I said. Riven had uncovered this weeks ago.
Xander nodded. “I found the account. Dissolved the same week Sera took the job. Closed clean. And whoever was behind it—” He made a small gesture. “Cleaner than the handler. Which is saying something, because our handlers are professionals at disappearing.”
I looked at the fire.
Three intermediaries. One dissolved account. A handler who had simply stopped existing. Someone with resources and patience and a very specific interest in not being found.
“An attempt on my life, and it leads nowhere,” I said.
“It leads nowhere on purpose.” Xander finally drank the wine and made a face.
“Dead ends happen. This one was built. Someone with coin and connections like this exists on a shorter list than you’d think.
” He pushed the glass away from him as if he had a problem with the vintage.
“And I think you already have that list.”
I did.
I just didn’t like what was on it.
“The second attempt,” I said. “The assassins after Sera on the road. Riven sent you the details.”
“I’ll look into it.” He stood, and then paused. “I want to be clear about something.”
“Go ahead.”
“Sera thinks this is a professional transaction. Someone hired the Hand, she took the contract, things went sideways. She’s not thinking past that.
” His tone was still light. His eyes weren’t.
“If this goes where I think it goes, it’s not a transaction.
It never was. And she’s standing in the middle of something she doesn’t understand. ”
“I know.”
“She doesn’t.” He held my gaze. “Someone gave her that dagger deliberately. To create the bond. To link her to you and make you easier to reach by going through her first. She’s been here a month now, and whoever arranged this is still watching.
” He exhaled. “She’s the variable they introduced on purpose. She’s still the variable.”
The fire cracked.
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
“I won’t let anything happen to her,” I said.
I meant it the way I meant very few things. Without the bond as a reason. Without the politics. Just the fact of it, plain and without condition.
Xander looked at me for a moment. Calculation in his eyes as to whether or not he could trust me.
Then he nodded.
“She doesn’t complain,” he said, moving for the door. “She’s not going to tell you when she’s in over her head. So I’m telling you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He left through the door this time.
I sat with the fire and the notes Riven had compiled, all of them running to the same careful nothing Xander had found. Someone powerful. Someone patient. Someone who had watched their move fail and had not yet made another.
The waiting was the part I kept returning to.
Aggressive enemies showed you what they wanted. Patient ones waited until you looked the wrong direction.
I picked up the documents and put them down again.
Sera was the variable they had introduced.
Which meant as long as she was here, she was the thing they could reach.
And as long as I didn’t know who they were, I couldn’t make her safe. I could only keep her close.
I looked at the balcony door Xander had come through.
For once, having an excellent reason to keep her close didn’t make me feel better about it.