Watching her first kiss with a pimpled, gangly trainee when she was just eighteen enraged me. When I understood it wasn’t anger at the boy I felt, but envy, a darker emotion burned through me: shame.
I deserved to go to the hells for thinking of a girl nine years my junior in that way.
But the last few years had me wondering if I was already sitting in the lowest levels of the Goddess’s hells. I had made a promise long ago to protect her, though she wanted nothing more than to learn my trade. Keeping her safe meant staying close to her.
Close enough to touch her if I ever let myself. I never did.
After she had grown into a young woman, I did everything I could not to think of her as anything but the child she had been when she was given into my keeping. But resisting Roya had become almost impossible. Her scent, her laughter, how perfectly focused she could be when creating a poison, and how distracted when she was asked to do more traditional feminine tasks. Her sewing had been abysmal until I asked her to imagine she was stitching up a stab wound. Her cooking… well, that had never improved, and it enraged her when I gave her that final ridiculous task.
I loved her rage as well, the way her cheeks flushed with fire when her temper rose. I had taken to agitating her recently, taunting her just to watch the blush move over her perfect, soft skin. Imagining it was passion.
I had been considering my options—taking a mission overseas, even sending her far away for her first mission—when the Guildmaster had sent a message to meet me in his cottage. I was already wary when I went in, as his regular guards were nowhere to be seen. When his eyes glittered with a strange satisfaction, I knew something was very wrong.
“Thorn, I have a new task for you.”
Though it was the same thing he said before every mission, I was suddenly uneasy. Every year, I escorted former trainees to a target city with their orders for their first missions. Gather information, taking out nascent uprisings, even seducing individuals who had risen to power since the last graduation.
The slight smile that threatened to turn up the corners of his thin, dry lips triggered the same sort of focused awareness I felt while on a mission.
The Guildmaster never smiled.
“Your mission is to escort trainee Roya to Starlak. You will be met at the border by the warlord Wulfram and his warrior elites. Make certain she is well secured by them—drug her if necessary. Non-fatal means only, please. Then return to escort your other trainees to the capital of Mirren for the usual first mission tasks.” He turned away, as if he hadn’t just instructed me to break the Guild’s code.
“Guildmaster?” I had never questioned him before, but I had to make sure I had heard him correctly. “You want me to deliver one of our own to Starlak?”
He turned back, his muddy brown eyes cold. “You dare?” He dropped the hood of his cloak, and I ducked my head in a show of respect. He had been my Guildmaster for six years, but he was merciless. I knew he would kill me if he thought I showed the slightest sign of insubordination.
“I only want to make certain I know which drug to use. Some can cause greater harm.”
“Ah.” He let out a soft exhale, and ran a hand over the thin, patchy beard he grew on his sharp chin. He was only a few years older than me, but his short hair was thinning and the lines on the sides of his mouth were deep. “She is not to be harmed at all. Well, not by you. I’m fairly certain the warlord will accomplish that himself.”
“So this is her first mission,” I murmured, letting him hear me, pretending I didn’t know exactly what was happening. But I needed him to say it out loud, to be specific enough to incriminate himself. “Good. She’ll most likely kill the warlord quickly and be back before the other trainees return.”
“You fool, she isn’t to kill him. That’s why you need to sedate her thoroughly. He has procured an ancient text on Omegas that reveals not only the gifts she bears, but a way to harvest—” He stopped when he saw my eye twitch, and let out the most terrifying sound I’d ever heard.
His laugh.
“Goddess, Thorn, you think I haven’t noticed you sniffing at her like a dog in heat? You think I can’t smell what happens to her when you walk into any room she’s in?” He leaned on the table between us. “It took a long while for me to put it together, as it never happened if you were absent.”
My eye twitched again, and I pulled my hood down lower.
“Ah, yes. You’re wondering why I haven’t punished you for keeping it from me. Weekly updates for six years, and you never breathed a word of her changing. I’m still the only one who knows, other than you.”
We both went still. He hadn’t punished me, and he hadn’t reported this to the Assassins Council, which meant he had a deeper plan.
“You kept your knowledge well hidden. She practically threw herself at you for years, not that you ever touched her. I was surprised an Alpha like yourself could keep from it, but you always have been one to hold back.”
The way he spat the word Alpha revealed a deep bitterness I wasn’t sure he meant to reveal. The Guildmaster was a Beta, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous. In fact, it led many to underestimate him.
I held my breath until I saw flashes of silver behind my eyelids, then let out the air slowly. If I didn’t get control of myself, I would kill him, and the Assassins Council would come for me. “How did they discover she was an unbroken Omega?”
“Starlak? I told them, of course.” The small smile crept back out again, like a viper sunning itself. “The royalty in Starlak and Mirren both are slavering to get their hands on a true Omega, since that little queen in Rimholt showed herself.”
“How much?” I asked, forcing a casual avarice I didn’t feel. I wasn’t accustomed to dissembling with the Guildmaster; I wasn’t one of his sycophantic followers, but we had always shared an uneasy, mutual respect of each other’s capabilities.
Until now.
“Enough to buy every crown in three kingdoms,” he hissed, “and what’s better, they’ll share her gifts. You’d like that, eh? Go for a visit to Starlak and get a taste of what you’ve been missing? As long as you bring back the blood they promised us—”
