Wraith glides silently behind me at my shoulder. She is skilled at remaining unseen and unheard, until she wants to be. She is part of the inner court and one of Aurelius’ deadly protectors.
I must never forget that.
Wraith is fragile with a sharp, pointed face and calculating jade eyes. Her white-blond hair is plaited with a gold ribbon.
She is dressed in the jade robes of the Guild of Spies.
“You’ve dropped your mask.” Wraith’s voice is hardly above a whisper, but I am instantly riveted to it. I glance over my shoulder. “Interesting that I can tell you are thinking about ripping off an Alpha’s knot from your expression alone. Remember your lessons this week: hide behind indifference. Disguise yourself and maintain silence. Deception is not about what you do or say but what youdon’t.”
With difficulty, I force myself to blank my expression.
Wraith nods. “Better. You’re a good student.”
Internally, I glow at the praise.
All Omegas have a praise kink, after all.
Yet I manage to keep my expression coolly detached. “I remember your lessons: be invisible in plain sight, build trust with the target by feigning vulnerability, shared interests, experiences, and frustrations, and offer up just enough of my own truth to make him open up.”
Wraith pats my shoulder, but she looks dreamy like she’s not seeing me at all. “It’s only a month. You don’t need to smuggle out information, only watch and observe. And don’t die.”
I stumble.
Is she thinking about Vicious? The Beta who she loved?
The assassin who was ripped apart under a sea of Lanlin’s rats?
Wraith has been an incredible mentor this week in the Spy Guild — a place of silent corridors, locked doors, and watchful, robed Betas — despite the death of her lover.
Perhaps, because of it.
What else has she been doing but training me to become a weapon against the Shadow Vampire who killed Vicious?
My throat is thick, and I struggle to clear it. “Not fucking planning on it. Hey, I’ll be fine.” A smug sense of victory at getting one over on the spymaster herself rises through me, as I announce like I’ve wanted to all week, “After all, I’ve been successfully spying onyoudragonssince I arrived in court.”
I tilt my chin up, proudly.
My pride dies, however, at the way that Wraith simply drifts past me down the corridor, not bothered in the slightest.
“But this time, my apprentice, it must be asecret.”
I stare at her back in shock.
“W-w-what?” I splutter. I dash after Wraith, tripping over my floor-length robe. “What do you mean?”
“I knew.” Wraith glides faster, barely making a sound on the marble. How does she manage it? “Your ruse was to play the good pet, while the fae played the bad pet, misdirecting our attention with the aim of becoming closer to the inner court and the King. It was a smart plan; one that I may have chosen myself. But not smart enough for me to miss it.”
I pale, shaking with shock.
Wraith could have exposed Daire and me from the start…?
I grab her arm. “Why didn’t you tell…?”
“Vic?” Wraith shakes me off. “She would have dragged you both into her Assassins Guild, then put you into one of her games, where they play with pain like it is pleasure. She would have taken you apart, piece by agonizing piece. She had been dreaming about the torture that she would use to punish the Bandit King for years. War? She would have simply taken off your heads with one strike of her sword. Luc? Betray his heart like that, and he will break you worse than any of us can. Are you forgetting who we are? We’re not the good guys.”
My heart speeds up. My eyes widen with fear.
Wraith backs me up against the corridor wall, resting her arm beside my head.
