The noble pressed his lips into a thin line. “If the night mares are congregating it means they’vefinallyselected the next monarch of the Night Court.” He convulsively tightened his hands before he got a hold of himself and pressed them against his white trousers. “The Night Court needs a ruler. We’ve been without one since late fall, and it’s already May. The Night Realm…”
He trailed off, but I knew what he’d been about to say.
The piece of the fae realm that the Night Court owned was suffering without a ruler in place to keep the magic flowing.
They should have had a new ruler before the end of last year. But since the founding of the Night Court centuries ago, whenever the reigning monarch and their spouse died, the night mares chose the next monarch.
But the night mares had been ignored under Queen Nyte’s rule and run wild. It had taken months just to capture them all, and just as long to convince the savage horses tolookfor the monarch.
“I don’t know if they’ve found the monarch or not,” the stable manager said. “They’ve been searching for weeks—much longer than they should have. The missing night mares may have just decided to stay free.”
“A minimum of three night mares are required to choose our next monarch. How many are missing?” the noble demanded.
“Six,” the stable manager said. “The most recent one failed to return with the rest of the herd this morning.”
“Then it would seem they’ve found several candidates,” the noble said. “Find themtonight. Failure will bring consequences you can’t afford to pay.” He swept from the stable with a storm in his face and pompousness biting at his heels.
I blinked, comfortably motionless.
The stable manager rubbed his face and groaned. He shed a leaf or two—revealing just how frightened he was—and went out the back of the stable, to the pastures behind it.
I folded up my used rice paper and slipped it into a pouch on my belt—I wasn’t going to leave any sign of my presence behind.
I wasn’t concerned about the Night Court’s lack of a monarch. The Court had been in a downward spiral for decades. A new monarch wasn’t going to solve anything—we were too far gone for that. Besides, it was our rulers who had gotten us into this position.
But I was interested in the next monarch candidate because I’d been hired to find and eliminate them.
Rather,tryto eliminate them.
As an assassin, I had a perfect record. I’d never missed a target, and never bungled an operation. But given that my newest contract was to take out the next Night Court monarch, my chances of success were small.
As a fae I was forced into obedience to my monarch. The same kind of magic that kept all fae from lying also made it that we couldn’t raise a hand against our rulers.
There were ways around it. One might be able to arrange an accident, and the magic couldn’t keep us from annoying our monarchs. But coups and assassinations were near impossible.
My only chance of eliminating this new monarch was to kill him or her before he or she was officially sworn in, activating the ancient magic that governed us.
I’d stated this when I initially refused the contract, but the contractor insisted that merely trying was enough to consider the contract fulfilled.
Fae aren’t known for our generosity, which meant there was a fairly good chance this was a trap for me rather than an actual attempt to kill the next king or queen.
Which was why I took the contract. Traps didn’t worry me—there was no one they could hire who was skilled enough to kill me. But it would always be more efficient to eliminate a threat I was aware of rather than blindly encounter one.
Besides, I had no love for the Night Court throne. The idea that a monarch could save us was a fairy tale. It made no difference to me if the candidate died.
I hadn’t moved since putting the used rice paper away, but I heard the rustle of a rat, and looked down through the crack in the floor again.
Sure enough, the rat—my target—scurried down the stall aisles, moving to the far end of the barn, where he would pass just under the hayloft I hid in. He was sweating in his silken robes, and his complexion was waxy.
He was one of Queen Nyte’s old officials—her steward, if I remembered correctly. He was as crooked as they came, and had lorded his position over others while funneling extra funds into his pocket and punishing anyone who didn’t try to curry favor with him.
I wasn’t killing him because of his sins. He’d angered a fae noble lady from the Autumn Court when he refused to repay her for a magical artifact he’d purchased from her. She hired me to kill him as revenge.
He should have known better. It was well known she’d inherited the artifact from her brother, who had “mysteriously disappeared.”
That’s the way we fae operate. We can’t lie, but we twist and distort reality, struggling to amass power and taking what we like until it inevitably catches up with us.
It’s a never-ending game, even though the players die off like flies.
