They halted again a hundred yards off, and Nova whistled. The response was shorter, accompanied by careful footsteps crunching on forest floor until the forms of both Cutter and Shiro were upon them.
“Do we have a problem?” Nova asked.
“An obstacle, maybe,” Cutter replied. “The groundskeeper reports it’s a small contingent, maybe fifteen total. Four soldiers on the perimeter leaves eleven in the house and… a single ward.”
Yemi frowned. “Who’s the ward? Dahlia’s here? Already?”
Cutter shook his head. “Dorian.”
That smarmy rat bastard. Of course the elder Drake would be more interested in the luxuries than the business of ruling. This was an opportunity to thin out her opposition, to rob Dahlia of some of her stability.
“It’s loud,” Shiro said. “Chances are, they’re drinking. Soft targets. Easy enough to take dead or alive.”
“Alive,” Nova blurted out. “We should find out where their allegiances lie. No sense in wasting a good soldier.”
Cutter and Shiro glanced at one another.
“What? Out with it,” Yemi said, eager to get moving.
“Such a small team has to mean it’s his personal guard.” Cutter looked apologetically at Nova. “You know the rigors those positions require. There’s no question. They are his.”
Nova sighed, and Yemi understood. In many ways, they were getting ready to relieve the world of soldiers with whom she’d grown up, whose sparring made her the elite guardian she had become. In every engagement, she was cutting through someone whose name she likely knew or had once promised a long, illustrious career in the service of the Crown.
“Your plan, then?” Yemi asked the men while Nova came to grips with their reality yet again.
“Eliminate the outer guards. Find a point of ingress on the upper floors and clear them as we work our way down,” Cutter explained.
“I want Dorian,” Yemi demanded. “Soldiers are a soldier’s business, but Dorian Drake pays me directly for what was done to Moss. That isn’t negotiable.”
She knew Cutter wanted to protest. It was improper for a royal to want blood.
“We can’t wait for them to settle down. We have to have control of this place before Derring arrives, or we’re setting them up for a loss,” Nova interjected. Yemi recognized the look in her eyes that said she was ready. “Take your team and clear the field. When you breach the house, we’ll look for Drake.”
Shiro waited for Cutter to nod before giving his men a silent lookthat saw them all disperse toward the grounds. A moment later, they’d disappeared into the dark.
“Wait for my signal,” Shiro told Nova before moving away to join them.
“Eyes up. Be bulletproof,” Cutter grunted.
“Heard.” Nova nodded.
He left Yemi and Nova to stay crouched in the underbrush, listening intently for the almost imperceptible rustle of the Gold Guard edging toward the manor. It was a testament to their skill that they blended into the breeze, their bootfalls indistinguishable from field mice skittering beneath leaves on the forest floor.
“Heh.” Nova laughed slightly in the dark.
“What?”
“We ended up at Holicrane anyway.”
Yemi watched one of the exterior guards bend to out a cigar on the far end of the circle. And when he stood again, he was yanked backward into the trees and replaced by stillness. “Here’s hoping it makes a better honeymoon spot than operating base,” she said.
“Not with the mess we’re about to make,” Nova scoffed.
Yemi trembled in the minutes of eerie silence that followed. The tea satchel felt as if it’d grown fingers in her pocket, and they were scratching lightly at her thigh, beckoning for attention. She couldn’t be sure if the low whistle in her ears was the wind. It could have been Shiro’s signal, too, yet another clandestine language for assassins. Except the whistling sounded vaguely like those familiar utterings ofFlesh.
She sniffled. There was blood on the air. Even from this far off, she could smell the deaths of the perimeter guards. And for the first time on land, as her pulse quickened, that animal consciousness tried pounding its way to power in her mind with force enough to knock her over. She told itno.
Not here. Not so close to Nova, who didn’t seem to notice her posture buckle or the gasp catch in her throat. Still, the sharpness in Yemi’s senses remained. When a flicker of light in one of the packards grew to a full-on flame, she could smell the burning leather in aninstant. And when Nova said, “Looks like a signal to me,” her voice was crisp, isolated against the world around them.
