Chapter 42
Forty-Two
“You’re too smart,” Nicolas continued, taking slow steps toward Jade. “It’s why you’re so good at what you do. It’s part of what I love about you.”
Jade tried to ignore how casually he had thrown out the word love and focused on what mattered—Nicolas was the assassin.
He had killed Arthur, Grannam . . . Alanna.
A fiery rage boiled inside Jade at the last one.
She saw no justification for it whatsoever and would accept nothing he tried to explain it away.
He was the assassin . . . and here she was, alone with him.
Theo was coming behind her, but how far away was he?
Nicolas continued to approach her in the bedroom, but she couldn’t let him trap her. She had to get to the door he had just entered through. It was the only way out, her only escape. If he cornered her in the bedroom, she was done for.
Jade left the bedroom in two long strides, and he stopped, his frame still too close to the door for her to attempt a clean escape.
Now, closer to him, she was able to make out his features better.
The smile on his face was not that of a predator who had captured his prey, nor of a champion who had bested their opponent.
It was a genuine smile, with a significant level of pride behind it.
One she might see from her commander for a job well done. Like he wanted her to figure it out.
She would play that game. It would buy her time for Theo to arrive.
“It took me longer than it should have, to be honest,” she said, putting on an air of disappointment in herself. If she could be Elena Tavigne around him, she could be the person he wanted to see here too. “The signs were all there, but I was too close-minded to see them.”
Nicolas’s head dipped down and his arms uncrossed, his expression placating. “Don’t feel bad.” He stepped toward her enough to close the distance and placed his hands on her upper arms near her shoulders. “You’re very good. But so am I.”
Jade tried hard not to flinch at his touch, relaxing her face into a smile. “Clearly. And all the times I pursued you . . . I should have figured out it was you. Why else would the assassin not try to harm me?”
“Why indeed?” Nicolas raised his right hand to Jade’s face and cupped her jaw, running his thumb along her cheek.
His ungloved hand was warm, and something in the motion soothed some of the anxiety welling within Jade.
“You put yourself in too much danger following me, you know. I never wanted you to get hurt.”
“I know.” Jade’s words came out tight and quiet, but as the warmth of Nicolas’s palm radiated across her cheek, her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned into his touch.
He angled his head down toward her and found her lips with his, their soft fullness only meeting hers for a moment before she gently pushed him back. They were entirely too close to the open bedroom for this, and she didn’t want him getting any ideas.
“I don’t understand,” she murmured, pulling back enough to meet his eyes, the dark intensity of them only inches from her. “Why? Who were you working for? Another kingdom?”
The single laugh that left his throat seemed more like a scoff than anything, and he stepped back, allowing her some personal space. “I work for no one.”
Jade’s brows furrowed. “Then why do it? What did you have to gain from their deaths?” Her throat constricted as she thought of Alanna again.
Nicolas cocked his head, studying her with a disbelieving grin. “You haven’t figured that part out yet?”
The crease between her brows deepened as she shook her head. He’d expected her to solve that too? She barely knew anything about him. She didn’t even know who he was. A former private guard to the king, but how did that come into play?
She reframed her question: What did she know about the assassin?
Honestly, not much more. He used rienevoir to kill his victims. He could sneak around almost imperceptibly in the shadows.
She thought he was working for someone in the royal family, but he’d just told her otherwise.
He always seemed to get into places too easily, somehow depositing the rienevoir into food or drink without causing any disturbance.
Jade had attributed that fact to the assumption that he was . . .
Jade gasped.
A sorcerer.
And what sorcerer would be so intent on killing anyone trying to claim the throne? What sorcerer was able to stay hidden away because everyone thought he was dead? What sorcerer likely wanted revenge on the uncle who had been behind the murder of his mother and his own attempted murder?
The memory of Alanna’s last words floated to Jade’s mind. “I told Father, but he didn’t believe me. He said he doesn’t believe in ghosts.”
But Reynauld must have held on to some truth in Alanna’s suggestion, because when he thought Jade was an assassin sent to kill him, he said he’d kill her employer all over again.
The prince he had thought he’d killed eleven years ago.
Jade searched Nicolas’s face with new eyes, searching for vestiges of familiarity to the royal family.
The angles of his face. The shape of his nose.
Those were the king’s. She’d seen little of his mother, the queen, when she’d been alive, but she couldn’t forget her almost black hair and dark eyes, and his tan skin tone matched hers.
No wonder he’d only shown himself in public at the masquerade, where his face could be hidden behind his mask.
She released a long breath, almost in disbelief, but she saw the proof of it now before her eyes. “You were never a private guard for the king. You’re Artis. You’re the true prince.”
Nicolas stepped back and gestured with his hand down his entire body, that same delighted smirk shining on his face, as if he was proud of her for figuring it out. “In the flesh.”
“But . . . ” Jade shook her head, not knowing how to piece this part together by herself. “Your father and Reynauld had you killed because you’re . . . a sorcerer. You died.”
“That’s what I wanted them all to think.
” He crossed his arms again, a shadow passing over his face and hardening his features, the smirk from before wiped away.
“Yes, my uncle discovered the truth about me and told my father. I knew something wasn’t right when my father said he wouldn’t be joining my mother and me on our trip away.
Then some lackey posing as a courier showed up at our country home, and I immediately noticed something strange about him. He seemed nervous.
“We had minimal staff at the house, so the footman who had answered the door asked that I take the courier to my mother, who was in the morning room. He offered my mother a sweet, something supposedly sent by my father as a token of his regret that he couldn’t join us.
” Nicolas clenched his jaw, his dark eyes turning deadly.
“My accepting, loving mother took the sweet without question and ate it. I took one too, but I wasn’t in the mood for gifts from my father, so I set it aside.
“The moment my mother started reacting to the poison in the treat, I ran to her, but I quickly realized I couldn’t do anything.
In my distress, I didn’t notice that the courier had taken candles and lit the curtains on fire.
When I finally smelled the smoke, the courier tackled me, holding a poison-filled syringe to my neck since I hadn’t eaten the treat.
“My magic wasn’t strong then, but the fear and rage within me fueled it.
I used magic to get him off me, and then I stabbed the syringe into his own neck.
” Even with his arms folded, Nicolas balled his hands into tight fists, as though holding back the same fury he’d felt in that moment.
“The room was ablaze by then, so I had to get out of there if I wanted to live. I had to leave my mother behind to burn.”
Jade’s mouth fell open, and she took two steps toward Nicolas, resting a compassionate hand on his arm.
Tears stung the backs of her eyes, taking her by surprise, but the pain of losing a beloved mother still lived in her own heart.
And for his mother to die such a cruel death, in front of him, no less .
. . That was a pain she wished on no one.
“Oh, Nicolas,” she whispered, her voice thick with pity and unshed tears. She looked up at him, finding a glimmer in his own eyes as well. “Or should I call you Artis?”
He shook his head. “You know me as Nicolas, and that’s what I want you to call me.
It’s one of my names, so it’s not entirely wrong.
Artis Affero Nicolas Venemer. But I’m a different person than Artis now.
” He lifted his gaze to look past her, staring blankly at the wall.
“Artis did die in that fire, for all practical purposes.”
Something within Jade compelled her to close the little distance remaining between them, lifting her hand to his face as he had just done to her. He smiled again at her touch, the shadows of the past falling away and returning to her the Nicolas she knew.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered again, forcing her tears back. “I know what it’s like to lose a mother.”
Nicolas’s arms wrapped around Jade’s waist, and his hands rested on her back. He nodded, as though he already knew. It led her to a question she’d wondered before and now burned in her mind. She needed an answer.
“How long have you been watching me?”
Nicolas tilted his head, lifting one of his hands to push a stray strand of hair behind Jade’s ear before returning it to her back.
“Since the conflict began. I was keeping close eyes on all those involved. When I started to see you cropping up places, usually hidden or in disguise, I knew I needed to learn more about you. When I discovered you were one of the military’s top espionage agents, I decided to follow your movements. ”
Jade narrowed her eyes and peered up at him from under her brow. “That’s not creepy at all.”