“Blood?”
“Yes.” He moved to the door. “Omegas can’t be forced to give their gifts—except for one of them. Their blood can be taken, and the Starlakian scholar let it slip that a mature Omega’s blood has magical properties, some sort of universal antidote. It may be true, it may not. I secured our supply, nonetheless. But the money they’re paying for her is all the magic we need, don’t you agree?”
Then he was gone. I walked to the table and glanced down at the paper he had left there, memorizing the details of the meeting with Wulfram. I was to take her the morning after graduation. She would be drunk, like all the others, and off her guard.
She would never expect to be betrayed by her Guild, and especially not by me.
Somehow, I had to find a weakness in my protégée that would keep her from graduating. That would give me an excuse to take her to Rimholt before the Guildmaster knew we’d gone—or better yet, humiliate her enough that she’d run.
But, except for her temper, the girl was perfect. She could do everything any assassin needed to do: speak and comprehend many languages, hide in plain sight, and master poisons and potions. She had some weakness in her sword fighting, but that test was over, and she’d passed.
Then a memory surfaced from when she was sixteen and newly arrived at the Guild’s training grounds. A child who looked at me with suspicion, as she did all men, yet she’d still trusted me enough to show her only weakness.
“Toast, Thorn!” she’d cried, her sapphire eyes flashing. “I can just about make toast, as long as no one minds scraping the burned ends off. So stop asking me to take a turn at breakfast. I’ll scrub out the latrines, I’ll do the laundry, I’ll take whatever rotations are left after the guys have theirs. But just because I have tits doesn’t mean I can cook!”
She hadn’t been wrong. The lass couldn’t boil an egg to save her life.
Goddess be praised! If Roya couldn’t boil an egg, thatwouldsave her life.
I watched over her only to make certain she escaped without trouble. It shouldn’t have shocked me that she didn’t stop at all—not longer than it took to squat behind a tree, although she took care to hide even that small sign of her passage—but I was impressed at how quietly she traveled, even when she must have been exhausted. She had reserves I hadn’t seen in training.
She had to be using her anger as fuel.
When she slipped out from the cover of trees, she found a place on the back of a fruit wagon heading into Verdan City. The plums and pears hid her own faint, sweet scent. It was harder to follow her now, but I managed to buy a dray horse from a farmer for a Guild token—wishing even as I paid him that I’d had time to grab less traceable currency from one of my caches. I told him I was heading to the capital of Rimholt, chasing after a runaway girl.
That bit of misdirection would make its way back to the Guildmaster and might keep me from being the first kill assignment for the new graduates.
He’d know by now I wasn’t following his directions; Mirren was a week’s ride past Rimholt’s capital. But maybe thinking I was taking Roya to Queen Vali would confuse him for a day or two, while I figured out what to do—and what Roya was up to.
Once in Verdan City, I used some of my regular informants to pin down her location, my gut growing heavier with every street and alley I turned down.
I was almost certain I knew where she was going, who she was seeking, and I wanted to throttle her. I gritted my teeth as I rounded one last corner, staring at the flowery wrought iron gates that marked the entrance to one of the most exclusive addresses in the city.
I sensed someone approaching from behind and made certain my hands were on my hidden knives.
“Hello, Thorn.”
I didn’t react in any way, except to reply politely. “Good evening, Valerie.”
“It’s Queen ta Farthan to you.” Her tone was icy.
I kept mine casual. “Why you held onto that asshole’s name is beyond me.”
A musical trill broke the evening air, more beautiful than a nightingale’s song. Roya’s infrequent laugh was much the same. “You’ve seen those men who hunt game and mount their heads on the walls? Well, think of my name as a metaphorical trophy of my first successful hunt.” She leaned closer. “Although between us, I may have a more physical trophy of my late husband on the wall of my private office.”
I almost choked. “His head?”
“Well, one of them.”
I had to laugh then. “Goddess, Val. Sorry—Queen ta Farthan. I missed our talks.” She wasn’t the true queen of Verdan; that title belonged to Queen Vali, who also ruled in Rimholt to the east. One of her trusted advisors, Darren Lindiss, had been appointed regent of Verdan, and from what I had heard, was keeping order in the country quite nicely.
He also had managed to keep his head attached to his shoulders, mainly by allowing Valerie to rule from the shadows. Everyone knew who wielded the true power in Verdan City. In six short years, Valerie had gone from being one of Milian’s Failed Omegas, to one of the most successful underworld leaders on the continent. She was terrifyingly beautiful, and incredibly lethal. Just my type, though we had never been more than friends. She liked women too much for that.
“I missed you, too. You’re not here to talk, though.” She stepped next to me, linking her arm in mine, and guided me toward the side gate. “You’re here searching for a different queen, aren’t you?”
Suddenly wary, I nodded and escorted her inside the gate, crossing the manicured lawn decorated with topiaries in the shapes of women holding swords, one also carrying what could be a severed head. The room she led me into was filled with armed men who would be called guards, if they were legally employed.
But these were murderers and thugs to the last glowering, hulking man. I flicked my hand down the hem of my cloak, letting the sharpened edge of my ring finger slice open a loose stitch. I ran the nail quickly down a sealed packet in the hidden pocket, allowing the sap inside to coat the tip.
