"Careful," Red hisses. "We're trying to be discreet."
We're carrying a seven-foot corpse through the castle. I think discretion sailed away the moment he decided to interrogate a prisoner in the palace's dungeon.
We are halfway to the outer corridor when—
Footsteps echo toward us. They're getting closer. We stand exposed in the center of the passage with nowhere to hide.
Damn it.
Let it be someone weak. A young knight. Someone Red can silence with a bribe or I can threaten. I do not want Rhianelle to know.
Do I kill whoever rounds that corner?
We are past that,the Noble Wolf growls in my mind.
The figure rounds the corner.
Blaire.
She stops dead in her tracks, her blue eyes going wide as they take in the scene. Me gripping a dead man's shoulders, Red holding his legs, both of us frozen with a tarp-wrapped body suspended between us.
For a moment, nobody moves or breathes.
Blaire looks at the corpse and the blood still dripping from a wound on his side. She's not screaming or running for guards yet. The girl is Rhianelle's closest friend, the Maiden of Arawynn. She is chosen by the Goddess of Love herself. This has to be terrifying for her.
Blaire takes a slow breath.
"Is that a body?" she asks. Her voice sounds unnervingly composed.
Red and I exchange a look.
"Yes," he admits.
Her gaze travels over the corpse, lingering on details I would expect a sheltered temple maiden to recoil from.
"You questioned him first," she observes.
"Thoroughly," Red confirms.
"Did he tell you everything?" she asks.
"Everything he knew," he replies. "Which was considerable."
She lifts her eyes to us again.
"The well behind the south tower. Dispose of him there."
We stare at her.
"It's been dry for decades," she continues calmly. "No one checks it. It's deep enough that no one will find him quickly. By the time anyone thinks to look there the evidence will be… compromised."
She chooses the word delicately.
"More importantly," she adds, "it's close."
This is not the reaction of a soft temple girl confronted with murder.
"You're leaving a blood trail," she adds, gesturing to the corridor behind us.
