It was late, nearing midnight. Venick had been leaning out the window, studying a small balcony positioned several stories below, considering the drop. Too far. He’d break his legs if he attempted it. His back, if he landed wrong. And there was no telling where that balcony led, even if hedidsurvive the fall.
Now, however, Venick stilled. Kept his back turned, hands steady on the windowsill. The moon was high and strong that night. Its muted light set the room aglow. Even without the moon, Venick would have felt ready.
He had practice fighting in the dark.
The silence went on. It caressed Venick as he carefully lifted his hands from the sill, as he closed his eyes andlistened, with his whole body. He could hear nothing. Besides the slow undoing of the door’s latch, an elf would make no noise. An assassin would give nothing away.
So Venick imagined it. He imagined how the assassin would slide through the receiving room, weapon out and at the ready. That weapon would be small, easy to conceal. A knife, perhaps, or a seax. The elf would creep into the bedroom expecting to find Venick asleep, would have to quickly recalculate when he discovered Venick awake and upright. The elf would not be prepared for a fight. If Venick was lucky, he would not be armored for one.
Venick conjured up the memory of the elves he’d fought in the forest storm. Later, when he’d battled that elf from the southern army. Both times his sight had been stolen from him, but Venick knew now that he did not need his eyes to guide him. He could close them, and breathe out, and let instinct take over.
So it was instinct that had Venick counting one, two, three slow breaths.
Instinct, that alerted Venick to a slight change in the air behind him, a denseness.
Instinct, the moment Venick chose to duck and dive for his curtain rod, that allowed him to catch the assassin off guard. It gave Venick the upper hand as he spun and swung that rod, as the elf materialized into his vision, a shadowed form in the night. Venick caught a quick glimpse of the elf’s face—small eyes, cropped hair, a wide mouth—as Venick brought the rod down hard. Felt the impact, heard the satisfyingcrackas it struck the elf’s wrist, fragile bones breaking, a dagger falling to the floor. But this elf was trained, he was good. He recovered quickly, tucking his damaged hand against himself as he produced a second dagger. And then things happened too quickly for Venick to follow as the assassin lunged forward, pulling the darkness around him. As Venick attempted to parry the attack with his curtain rod, as he came to understand how laughable that weapon was against this elf and his arsenal of green glass daggers. The elf batted the rod aside, slipping easily into range. Venick saw a shimmer of green and thought, oddly,beautiful. It was the elf’s dagger. Green and black, short and elegant. Finely made.
Yes, beautiful.
And this, too. The elf. A master of his craft. There was beauty in the way he smoked forward, weapon-hand up, arcing down. His body drew lines Venick knew, could read well, and for a fleeting moment Venick understood its beauty.
Then the elf drove his dagger into Venick’s hip, all the way to the hilt.
A flash of pain. A rush of heat.
Venick stumbled sideways. His leg gave out. He dropped to his knees with a cry.
The blade. The sight of it embedded deep in his flesh. It was shocking. Foreign. Venick’s breathing went labored. His vision spotted white.
The elf loomed closer.
A long pause. A silence that spoke. It told Venick what would happen next. The first dagger was still there on the floor by the assassin’s feet. The elf would grab it. He would finish what he started and cut Venick’s throat.
But that wasn’t what happened. The elf studied Venick, the dagger, the moonlit room. He said something low in elvish, quick words Venick didn’t hear. Then he disappeared through the window.
Stillness.
Dread.
Because Venick was not dead, but still vulnerable.
Because an assassin wouldn’t just leave the job unfinished.
Unless, of course, he hadn’t.
Venick’s hand fumbled until he found the dagger in his hip. He ground his teeth and yanked it out. Blood spurted. The smell of it assaulted him, sweet and sickly. Venick fought a wave of nausea as he brought the bloodied blade into the moonlight and found the groove forged into its edge. It was the kind of groove an elf might use to house poison.
Venick exhaled, almost laughing. The blade was poisoned.
He kept the dagger in his hand as he angled his body upright. He tripped more than once on his way to the still-open door of his prison-suite. The staircase just beyond was high and narrow. The steps spiraled down farther than he could see.
Venick understood now that the surge of pleasure he’d felt when he heard the assassin enter his room was because he had been angry, and he had wanted somewhere to aim that anger. He knew it was because he had been lonely, and sick of worrying over the southerners and Ellina and how she ignored him. How ignoring him and being ignored had become the new habit between them. He had wanted something to distract him. Had been itching for a fight, forpaineven, if only because he knew it was the surest way to take his mind off everything else.
When the poison entered his veins, Venick understood exactly the kind of fool he was.
The tremors came first. They wracked his body. Venick shuttered and stumbled as he exited his prison and attempted to navigate the stairs. A cold sweat broke across his skin. His clothes became soaked with it, and with his own blood, which pulsed out of his hip and down his thigh. Twice, he stopped to vomit. He couldn’t feel his lips anymore, his face, his hands. And still he forced himself to move, because if he could make it to the bottom of this tower, if he could find help—
That what you think you’ll find, Venick?
