“You will need to do many despicable things throughout your years as an assassin, Lory, that’s for sure. Dancing with those pricks at court is only one of them.”
Lory rested her head against the wall, ignoring the heat pooling in her belly at the hungry look in his eyes.
“Jealousy is a petty trait,” she repeated what her mother used to tell Evven and her when they had sat at the side of the street, watching the wealthy people of Dunai promenade along the bazaar, splurging with jewelry and fine fabrics they surely didn’t need but looked oh so pretty, and Lory had voiced her thoughts.
“I’m not jealous.” A dangerous flicker flashed in his eyes as he lifted his free hand and brushed her cheek in a whisper of a touch all the way to her chin. He gripped it lightly, tipping her face up. At any point, she could have pulled away, could have freed her wrist from his loose grip, had she wanted to, but the fire smoldering in her core dictated otherwise.
“You can dance with every last man in this entire kingdom,” he growled, his mouth mere inches from hers. “As long as it isyour choice. But if it weremine, it would be me. It would bemeand no one else.”
Ten
Lory
The next morning,Lory’s appetite quickly disappeared when, at the second ring of the bell, the door closed and locked, and she realized there were too many empty spots at the tables. Out of over one hundred and seventy ashlings, over a third were gone, killed for their tardiness or in one of the countless training sessions. With a glance around her table, she marked her friends’ tense faces as they stared at the side entrance by the leadership platform. Any moment now, Brunn or Ycken would call for the stragglers, and Khayrivven would march them in,his face not animated and full of emotions the way it had been when he’d sealed his words with a breathtaking kiss last night that had left Lory’s core throbbing, but dead as he marched someone to their execution.
Then there was the dread that this day would be the day she’d finally be called forward to be the one delivering their death, no longer a mere background noise, but a screaming concern that had her in a chokehold.
“So what’s the mission?” Tabi interrupted Lory’s musings. “Did Ycken give any more information? Are you going back to the Amrin Mountains?”
Lory had shared with Tabi and Thal that she was to go on a mission, but nothing more. Naturally, their curiosity got away with them now and, since that wasn’t a fruitful endeavor, apparently their imaginations, too.
“Or something here in the city. Perhaps some magic wielder hunting?” Thal suggested.
“I can’t tell you,” Lory whispered, her eyes fixed on the opening door and her heart stuttering at the heartbreaking image of Khayrivven with his saber pointed at the last of the four students entering the room.
The students didn’t deserve to die for missing a bell; perhaps some other sort of punishment would be more appropriate, but voicing that opinion would only put her right up there on the dais, at the front of which they were lined up like cattle for slaughter.
“Pick a student,” Brunn demanded from Khayrivven as she did every morning, except for the rare ones when no one was late.
“That’s Narica Hayley,” Jarek muttered a few seats down the table, his eyes wide as he took in the young man and two young women. “She’s in red with Maes.”
As if in confirmation that his sister wasn’t there on the platform with Narica, Jarek whipped his head around to the side of the room, where the reds were sitting at two long tables, and when he spotted her, his chest did a heave like he hadn’t breathed in a minute.
“Maes is safe,” Eira reassured him, but Lory had spotted the fear in his eyes at the thought that his sister could have been among the four. And Maes, clear as Eroth’s wrath, wasn’t fine, even if she wasn’t going to be killed. Herfriendwas.
Forcing herself to face the platform once more, Lory fought the tears of injustice pricking behind her eyes.
“Today, Captain,” Brunn barked when Khayrivven didn’t speak.
His throat bobbed, shoulders tense and free hand clenched. “Hadrian Bleek.”
Lory didn’t look when Bleek followed the summons and approached the platform, climbing the stairs to join the sentenced. His dagger sang as he pulled it from his scabbard, and the boy at the very right sucked in a sharp breath as he realized he would be first.
No, she didn’t want to watch as the light left his eyes, but she did. For all four, Narica being the last of them to slump into a puddle of her own blood, did Lory watch, to memorize them as victims of this academy, of the Triad, and, per extension, of Ulder’s rule. Bile rose in her throat as Bleekpulled his blade from Narica’s stomach, and the girl wrapped her arms around her torso as if she could hold herself together. But her face wasn’t filled with fear anymore. Instead, defiance stood written in the set of her chin, the hardness of her expression.
“Death to the tyrant!” she shouted, staggering back before Bleek could grab her. “Free Criulias. Ashthorn is a l?—”
Her voice tore off like a ribbon cut with sharp scissors, and Ycken got to his feet, stepping out from behind his table to retrieve the knife he’d thrown at her neck, where it sat embedded, rivers of crimson gushing from the wound.
The collective whispers of shock and outrage erupting in the hall were smothered by the pounding of Lory’s heart, her powers sparking to life in her palms, creeping up her arms and heating her entire body until breathing became hard. Her magic, ready to defend her and begging her to free them. But when her gaze met Khayrivven’s, he shook his head ever so slightly.
No magic. She couldn’t lose control.
“What, by the Guardians, did she mean?” Eira prompted, but Lory barely heard the murmured conversation now occupying her own table, her mind spinning. What tyrant? Ulder? And if so, what did that have to do with Ashthorn?
“She was Criu,” Jarek was saying when Lory finally pulled her gaze away from Khayrivven, folding her hands in her lap to hide the thin glow beneath her skin. “Maes told me Narica’s family fled Criulias years ago to find safe harbor in Dunai. Her parents were both in the common army, loyal soldiers; that’s why the Triaddecided to allow their children into Ashthorn when they showed signs of magic…”
Lory was still trying to wrap her head around Narica’s last words.Ashthorn is a l?—
