Always looking for an escape route—a habit Vilkurn himself had instilled in me—I flicked a glance out over the city of Turino. A flashing light at the top of one roof drew my attention, a coded signal.
Shit.Was something wrong with one of my street rats? Or my crew?
I snapped my attention back to the matter at hand as Vilkurn cursed softly.“Marriage is not a death sentence, Ratter.” He rubbed one hand over his brow, but I noted his other one was firmly clamped around the handle of a stiletto blade. His favorite method of assassination, though I was growing more certain by the second that he wasn’t going to kill me. When he spoke again,I understood he had far worse plans. “You can’t stay in Turino any longer, I’m afraid. You can’t even stay in the kingdom.”
I fought to control my reaction. “Exile?” I gasped. “Not that,please.I’m your best spy, Boss. I have work here?—”
“You are a liability!” he shouted. “You’ve killed four dignitaries in the past month alone.”
My jaw dropped wide for a moment. This was a steaming pile of bullshit. I didn’t mind being held accountable for murders I’d committed. But I hadn’t been on some sort of spree. “I stabbedone arserag, Boss!”
“You’ve killed a dozen in the past year.”
“A dozen? I only stabbed one. I justpoisonedseven,” I protested, trying to keep my tone respectful, but failing when his eyes narrowed. “They got the antidotes.” Hells, I’d given the antidote myself to one of them a month ago, and slipped another dose in his tea when he was still laid up after the first week.
Of course, he was the only one who hadn’t deserved to die, and the only one Vilkurn had expressly forbidden me to murder. But I’d gotten flustered. I’d never reacted to anyone like I had to the man who’d shown up at the castle three months ago.
Serak Zellum. I’d first encountered the dark-haired, blue-eyed eighteen-year-old, painfully handsome fosterling a handful of years before at the same ball where my parents—Haven, a rare Omega, along with her three Alphas, Graham, Niko, and Rand—had adopted me and my crew. I hadn’t been impressed back then; he’d stared at me in an incredibly disconcerting way until I threatened to cut his eyes out.
He’d departed after a week, and I had thought he was gone for good. But he’d shown back up this autumn with a large group of self-important Mirrenese merchants and “diplomats.”
Mirrenese scoundrels, more like. My crew had been worked to the bone since their arrival, trying to keep track of the sneaky shits, and keep the royal children safe.
Serak wasn’t originally from Mirren, though. He came from the small, secretive island nation of Pict, the same place my mother had fled from with me when I was a baby. I was desperate to learn more about the country where I’d been born, though Vilkurn had made me vow not to make any clandestine trips there. Everyone who tried to land on their shores vanished. No one knew if they’d been killed, but it seemed a safe assumption.
But having a resident of Pict that I could subtly question was nearly as good as going there, and Vilkurn had assigned me the task of learning Serak’s secrets. That was the reason I’d been spending so much time around him.
Too much time. He was as close-lipped as a clam, cultivating a mysterious, brooding air with a mocking edge to it that was too annoying to be attractive. But for some reason, being near him had made me…Ugh.I hated even thinking of it. I knew what it meant when a girl my age started to smell weird.
When it happened four weeks ago, I’d panicked, and poisoned him with a near-fatal dose of candellia root. Of course, I’d rushed him the antidote soon after. He didn’t deserve to die just because I couldn’t control my… urges.
Well, especially not before Vilkurn and I finished investigating. Serak’s presence here was so odd. Pict never sent their royalty to foster outside the island. Hells, no one had even known theyhadroyalty. Then Serak had shown up at a Mirrenese court as a gangly boy, with a crown missing half its gems to trade for being allowed to foster on the continent.
He wasn’t gangly now, and he should have recovered much faster than he had.Shit.Maybe I’d overdosed him. Was he a Beta?
He couldn’t be. Not only had Ireactedto being near him, he was the size of an Alpha, and had a distinctive scent. Peculiar,even. Copper and metal, like the air that blew across the blacksmith’s anvil, mixed with blood. Intriguing.
So intriguing you may have fatally poisoned him, you fuckwit.
I hated when I’d done something wrong. It didn’t happen that often, but guilt left a terrible taste in my mouth. Maybe I needed to chew on a taffy. I had one in my cloak somewhere.
“Are you even listening to me?” Vilkurn’s tone was as sharp as I’d ever heard.
“Yes, Boss,” I snapped out, shivering from the wind and his anger. “You were saying that the candellia antidote only works half the time for Betas. I know that, sir.”
“Then you should know how many you’ve killed. Four of them died before they got back to their homes, and two of the others are not far behind. Zellum is the only one who might live. And don’t lie to me. In addition to that man yesterday, after I expressly forbade you to use any more poisons”—he paused when I curled my lip at him; I was still pissed about that—“you killed four others with a blade in the past month. I’ve been up to my ears trying to think of plausible excuses for their deaths, and hiding the bodies outside our borders.”
I had no idea who he meant. “Who?”
To my shock, he listed another four of the fools who’d tried to take advantage of me in one way or another over the past few months while they’d been protected by diplomatic immunity. I’d contemplated adding their deaths to my packed schedule this year, but I hadn’t actually gone through with it. I’d put them on my to-do list, though, and planned to track them down when I had some time. When they’d vanished over the past few weeks, I’d assumed Vilkurn had taken care of it for me.
Now I was vexed. They’d been offed before I could get to them? And not by Vilkurn?
“Boss, I ain’t lyin,” I told him, my street rat accent making an appearance as it always did when I got upset. “I thoughtyoudid those four!” I’d heard rumors of some of Vilkurn’s men sneaking out of the borders with sacks full of “cattle feed” that had bloodstains on the burlap bags. I’d joked to one of my brothers about Rimholt’s new herds of carnivorous cattle. If only cattle would eat corpses, I wouldn’t have been forced to carry the assassins and feral Alphas I’d taken out over the years to the accommodating, discreet pig farmer who lived a half day’s ride toward Starlak.
“I’m the queen’s consort, a General, and the damned Master Spy of Rimholt. If I’d ‘done them,’ I sure as all hells would have covered my tracks.”
I blinked. That was true. No one knew Vilkurn’s kill count; he never left evidence. Also, I was pretty certain it would take a scroll the length of the Great Hall to write them all down.
