While I packed and worried, Valerie chattered about what she wanted me to tell the queen and Vilkurn, Rimholt’s Master Spy and Torturer, who sent us Solstice cakes every year.
There wasn’t much I needed; the Guild had taught me to pack light, and I had most of my tools for killing sewn into my clothing or my apprentice’s cloak, some even in the heels of my shoes. But one thing was vital, and I wasn’t sure if Valerie would know where to get what I needed.
“Did you get any more of my herbs from Angel?” I whispered. In a pinch, I could gather wild carrot seed and wild yam on my own. But I needed much stronger herbs to suppress my scent effectively enough to move about in public. It took three weeks to sail from Verdan to Mirren, and an extended trip at sea would be dangerous without the herbs that suppressed my scent.
Valerie shook her head. “You can’t keep taking those, Roya. How long has it been?” I didn’t answer; she knew it had been four years, since the first time I’d noticed the scent.
I knew why she worried. They were designed to stop a woman’s courses while she was traveling, or if she needed to avoid pregnancy. Valerie made a lot of money selling them to women who had rich, old, impotent husbands and young, virile lovers. But a long-term side effect of taking them was infertility. Valerie acted like that was a drawback.
I saw it as a reason to take more. Who wanted a bunch of crotch-goblins around when you had empires to crumble and kingdoms to save?
“Valerie, I have to get more.” Her expression was mule-stubborn, so I went on. “Think about it. Me on a boat with only men? If even one of them is an Alpha—”
She covered my mouth with one hand. “Roya, I made certain you are on a boat with all Beta sailors. None of them will be affected by your scent.” I chewed at my lip, wondering if I could unearth another herb supplier in the next hour. “There’s not time; you leave before dawn.” She buttoned the leather bag on the bed closed. “You’ll be fine.”
Maybe she was right. Betas were not like Alphas. They didn’t feel drawn to Omegas, apparently—I’d never had any trouble at the Guild with any trainees who were Betas. In fact, they’d been the only ones who’d befriended me. And the Alphas at the Guild had never seemed out of control… Of course, I’d been taking a double dose of herbs for the past two years.
“Thorn!” I gasped, remembering something vital. “He’s an Alpha.”
Valerie’s grin grew sly. “Even more reason not to take them.” She carried my bag out the door, laughing softly at my muttered curses.
In less than a half hour, we were at the docks, all thirteen of us wearing black or shades of gray, traveling more silently than should be possible for a group our size. Thorn’s eyes moved almost obsessively over the shadows around us. Valerie had insisted on coming along, reminding Thorn when he protested that she was known as the Queen of Death, not the Queen of Hiding in her House.
“I’m probably wearing as many weapons as you right now,” she scoffed as we walked down the pier to the schooner waiting there, shadowy figures of men climbing over the sails and masts, readying it for the changing tide.
“I promise you’re not,” Thorn replied. “Valerie, they’ll come for you. Be ready.”
She sneered. “I was raised by the cruelest man in this country’s history. I learned how to anticipate evil when I was a child. Don’t worry about me.” I was shocked when she embraced him brusquely; Valerie wasn’t a hugger, and Thorn’s demeanor didn’t invite casual intimacy. “You keep her safe, or we’ll both find out who’s the better assassin.”
Then it was my turn. She pulled me close, whispering in my ear with a tear-choked voice, “I don’t want to let you go. All those years, pretending. I gave up too much, I kept secrets. I wish—” She broke off, and I wondered what she meant.
“Valerie, I’ll be back someday. Or you can come to Rimholt. It’ll all be fine.”
She took my chin in her hand and our eyes met. It was like looking into the future. All the Omegas in Milian’s group looked similar, but Valerie and I really did look like one another. Oh, Goddess. Could she be…?
“I will always keep you safe, my love. Or die trying.” Her eyes flashed with despair and resolve, an expression I had seen before, and I was hurtled into the past. Into our shared darkness, and for a moment I was once again a child in the Omega Suite in Verdan City.
I waited as a group of women came through the great oak doors, sobbing inconsolably. My sisters. Some of them were being carried by others. All of them wore ruined clothing, the beautiful silk and lace torn.
Some of them had bloodstains on their dresses. They had been beaten, bitten, scratched, and abused in the places we could see.
I knew there was worse beneath the clothes.
“Valerie?” I called out, not seeing the woman who was as close to a mother as I had in the Suite. She had gone with the group, volunteering to escort Melina, her lover. She had whispered her hope that she would be able to draw the soldiers’ attention away from the frail, broken Omega.
Melina had been growing thinner, and the apothecary, Paulo—a man who was as much of a friend as I had outside of my harem sisters—had been sneaking her herbs to help build up her blood and strength. It wasn’t working, and Paulo had explained, “Herbs can only do so much. Melina has lost her will to heal, and nothing I do will change that. The mind is more powerful than any plant.”
“Not more powerful than adderbane,” I shot back. He’d been secretly teaching me the names of poisons, and their effects. He’d slipped me a clever book, filled with hand-drawn pictures of the plants themselves, where they grew best, how to identify them, and how to make the ingredients for some of the most effective, common poisons.
“With your beauty, child, you will need weapons no one can take away,” he’d murmured to me in the small room just off the noisy kitchen.
“What weapons? Did you bring me any actual poisons today?” I was twelve, and he’d said I had to wait until I was older. But I always pestered him to let me get more practical experience. Like Valerie had told me, persistence beat politeness nine times out of ten.
“Knowledge,” he’d said, tapping his own head with one of the three fingers he had left on that hand. I’d asked him once how he lost the others. He’d just said Milian got food poisoning, and needed someone to blame.
When I saw Valerie, if I’d had adderbane in the Suite, I would have used it on every last one of Milian’s lieutenants, and then on him. I would have stood over them as they writhed in agony during their last moments, and laughed as they died.
Blood dripped onto the cold marble floor as she carried her lover, Melina, in both arms. Valerie’s eyes were wells of despair, empty pits of desolation.
