“Easy, lad,” Torio soothed. “We’re not going to hurt her.”
“Ican’thurt her,” I said, when it became apparent he didn’t believe us, that he would exhaust himself to defend her. My wyvern, though still prickly, approved of the young man’s tenacity. “She’s my sky bond. I literally can’t hurt her… or let anyone else do so, either. What’s her name?”
The sky was cloudless, but I would have sworn I heard a thunderclap. Felt the approach of a storm, before he spoke. “Roya,” he said, his eyes the color of a troubled ocean. “Roya ta Milian of Verdan.”
A storm indeed.
My sky bond was the same woman I had been sent to collect for Talon—the price of Havira’s freedom from the embargo. Repayment for the Omega who was stolen by Verdan so long ago. My chance at being allowed, after forty long years, to go home.
Fuck.
* * *
It turnedout the lad was named Kavin, hailed from Starlak, and could eat more than a stable full of horses after a hard ride.
He looked up from the meal of fish stew and brown bread, and over to the wall where Altair was propped. The prince was so weak that he could only drink if someone lifted the water cup to his lips. I tried to hide my pity and anger as Torio nursed him.
“Is it just us? You three, and us three?” Kavin waved the lump of bread around the room, his eyes falling on the woman in my arms.
He hadn’t wanted me to keep holding her, but I couldn’t put her down. Soon, she would wake alone in a strange place, and I wanted to be the first face she saw. Anyway, the half-dead man was already taking up the only decent bed on board, not that I would tell the others about the Guild’s spy. I had wrapped her in a blanket, of course. Her clothes were drying on the deck, tied to bits of rigging by Torio.
“Why do you ask? Should there be more?”
“We had another, a man who was thought murdered by the regent on Havira. We’d hoped to at least find his body for her.”
“For her?”
“He was Roya’s teacher,” he explained. “Saved her from King Milian when she was a child.”
“What did he teach her?”
“How to be an assassin,” he said, matter-of-factly.
I choked on my soup. “A what now?” We were both speaking Mirrenese; maybe I had heard the word wrong. “How to kill people?”
“That’s the one.” He scooped more bread into his mouth. “Sorry to eat your food. I can help fish if you like. Can’t be that different from the Northern Straits.”
“You sail?”
“Sure,” he said, slurping soup. I could remember being that hungry at his age. He had to be no more than twenty; I was over thirty-five years his senior, though my wyvern’s blood hid my true age. “Every warlord’s son has to be able to ride, hunt, captain a boat—”
“Don’t get any ideas,” I joked, while my mind spun. The woman in my arms was not only my sky bond, but my brother’s promised Omega, the Guild assassin’s student, and a killer herself.
Ah, the Goddess had a cruel sense of humor sometimes.
I began to laugh and let myself press my nose into her hair to take in her scent. “Who is she to you, then?” I asked Kavin. “And that one, Altair. Who is she to him?”
He gave me a strange look. I felt a blade at my throat and a raspy, feminine voice answered. “She is a person. And Altair is the rightful ruler of Havira. The regent had drugged him for years, keeping him sedated—”
I cursed, ignoring the blade. Harder to ignore was the way her voice seemed to reach inside me and stroke places that had never been touched. “I had suspicions, my lady, though Gullen informed our king that Altair had a wasting illness.”
“Yes, the kind that comes from being systematically poisoned for years.” The table knife—for that was what she had in her hand—pressed harder against my throat. “Now, tell me where I am, who you are, why I am naked in your arms, and how soon we can get off the ship and back to Havira so I can find my… teacher.” Her voice had grown stronger and her tone darker with every word.
I let my eyes close, the wyvern nature in me reveling in her savagery, her aggression. “I am Icarus, disgraced younger brother of King Talon of Wyngel. You are aboard my ship, the Younger Brother, and my crew consists of Whistler there, and Torio. Our other crewmate, Shahaf, was injured in a storm a week ago and is recovering on Wyngel now. We… are on our way to collect him, and you are welcome to stay on board until that time.”
The knife dropped away. “Shit. He’s gone then.” She shuddered with suppressed anguish. “Thorn. He’s dead.” A jagged sob tore through her.
“No,” I whispered, unable to let her suffer for even a moment. My own heart felt like it was ripping in two. “Your teacher is on board, little dove. He is injured and may not live. But—”
