Lord Linus slung an arm over my shoulder. “We’re going to have such fun—just you wait.”
“I’d rather not,” I said.
Indigo—passing in front of me so she could also get a good look at the original king’s artifacts, patted my hand.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Now you know how Skye and I feel when we deal with you,” she said.
“Thanks,” I repeated, sarcasm lacing my voice.
Indigo cackled, but Skye ignored our conversation and moved ahead like a museum tour guide.
“If you come this way, Queen Leila, you’ll get to see the artifacts that belonged to the original king’s consort,” she called.
I shrugged Lord Linus’s arm off and rolled my shoulders back. “Coming!”
Chapter Two
Rigel
Iwaited in the shadows of a tree for the imbecile fae that thought he could kill me.
I’d received an offer for a contract—which immediately raised a warning flag.
Although I was a famous assassin—and I was still known as the Wraith to all—the contracts for my services had dried up over the past few weeks. A necessity given that I was now consort to Queen Leila of the Night Court.
As consort, I couldn’t go around killing supernaturals—or at least I couldn’t let itpubliclybe known. The monarchs of the other Courts were ruthless. At least one of them would construe any paid assassinations as an act of war by the Night Court. And while I wasn’t certain I wanted to help Leila with her insane quest to end infighting among the fae, I had no desire to make her life—and mine by extension—more difficult by introducing a war to it.
Our wedding was at the beginning of the month, and given the stir it created, everyone knows and probably has their own theories on my loyalties. The only supernaturals who have offered me contracts since the wedding have all been traps. Though none of them were so badly disguised as this one.
I glanced at the pile of rubble that had once been a tiny, thumb-sized sculpture of a knight.
When I’d arrived at the meeting place—a weed-riddled parking lot behind a factory in the manufacturing sector of the city of Magiford—at the agreed upon time—sunset—I could feel the death spell the tiny statue held from two blocks away.
It was a clumsy spell—one of fae origin. It could be keyed into a specific target—me, in this case—and once sprung it sealed the target in a confined area with a ward, then blasted the target with magic, killing it.
Not the subtlest of disposal methods.
Deactivating the statue was a simple matter of destroying it. I’d done that bit by throwing my twin daggers at it. Since they were artifacts, a spell that increased their destructive powers went off on impact, and they’d blown the statue to bits.
This, obviously, would have also not been a very subtle disposal method. Except I knew better and raised a ward that sealed the spot off and silenced the explosion.
I shifted, growing bored, and idly wondered what new trouble was spawning back at the mansion.
Was it yesterday Leila made the chef mad when she refused to drink the celebratory tea he made her, or was that when she nearly knocked out Lord Hermes when she hurled a riding helmet at him?
I couldn’t tell Leila I found her amusing. She’d point out her humor was a hidden bonus to marrying her and would insist our rather one-sided bargain for marriage had been fair all along.
In reality, despite my “queen’s” ability to lie—and her unusual personality—I was surprised to discover that moving to her mansion and all the changes in my life weren’t entirely negative.
I tilted my head when a car pulled into the parking lot, stopping at the crater where I’d destroyed the statue.
Ahh yes. My would-be employer, it seems.
A fae slipped out of the car—a mid-sized car from the early 2000s, so he most likely lacked significant funding in addition to intelligence.
His blond hair and blue eyes weren’t distinctive to a single Court, except that he wore a gold pin of three interlocking leaves—a symbol of one of the local unseelie Courts.
