Strong arms seized Elia by the shoulders. She brandished her knife and swung hard as she twisted away.
Her captor spat a curse and snagged her arm as he retaliated. Steel glinted in the feeble starlight, but he pulled his strike at the last second. His dagger halted a hair’s breadth from her throat. “Elia!”
“Cass,” she gasped as she flung her arms around his neck. She hadn’t allowed herself to dare hope he’d come after her.
He wrapped his arms around her ribs and squeezed, pulling her close, burying his face in her hair. It was far shorter on the other side, and his hand drifted up to feel her curls. “What happened?”
“We have to go.” She pulled back, though she longed for his embrace. “Banne’s after me.”
His eyes darted back the way she’d come and he drew another knife. It was only then that she got a proper look at him. Blood marred his hands, a marbling of dark smudges reduced to gray in the dark of night. “I told you to head straight for Samara.”
She looked back, too, but the woods behind her were empty. Where had the assassin gone? Surely she wouldn’t let her go so easily. “We did. I found Peretor and we were running south, but his uncle found us in the woods. He was on horseback. He said he’d been looking for us.”
“Vinson?” Cass turned slowly, scanning the horizon. “Where are they?”
“Gone. Vinson took Peretor and left. He’s been watching you, Cass.”
He stopped, staring at her from the corner of his eye.
Elia swallowed hard. “Banne paid him off. Hired him to watch you.”
“Why would she tell you that?”
“Because she wanted information. Questions for questions, she said. But I think she gave away too much.” She brought her hands together as if to wring them and found herself staring at the knife in her grasp. She couldn’t fidget with that in her hand, but she didn’t dare return it to its sheath.
Slowly, he lowered his blades. “She’ll be listening.”
She nodded. “We should go.”
He hesitated and guilt flooded her. Asking him to help was asking him to sacrifice everything he’d done. Every struggle, every challenge, every injury would be worthless if he helped her flee. Time to deliberate or discuss it was a luxury they didn’t have. What right did she have to ask that he give up everything just to see her set free?
Just when she was ready to open her mouth and apologize, he shoved one of his blades into its sheath and grasped her by the wrist. His decision was made.
His decision was her.
Any other time, she would have thrown herself into his arms and basked in the wash of emotions, but fear still gripped her. It was lessened by the warmth of his touch and lessened more as he slid his hand down to twine his fingers with hers, then finally replaced by a spark of hope they might both make it out of this alive.
Half of her expected the assassin to burst out from behind a nearby tree, but as Cass took the lead, their footsteps crunching on the snow were the only ones to be heard.
“What did she ask?” He kept his voice low, though it carried in the icy air.
“She asked if I knew you before all this. If you were cruel to me. What you did in the palace.”
Cass spared her a sideways glance. “What else?”
Had the questions really been so few? Now that she looked back, Elia realized she’d done most of the talking. “She wants Gaius dead.”
“Half Kentoria’s bordering kingdoms do.”
“She killed Queen Eccenthe.”
He skidded to a stop and spun on her. “What?”
Elia froze, breathing hard. Her breath put a veil of white between them, a fog that struck her as oddly symbolic. “She didn’t say it, but—”
He swore before she could finish.
A soft, sweet-sounding laugh rose in the trees.
Banne had heard.
Cass turned in place with his knife ready, scanning the woods. The ground first, then the treetops. Elia turned to put her back to his and looked, too. The forest was empty, but another soft laugh drifted on the wind.
“She’s here somewhere,” he whispered. “Don’t drop your guard.”
She nodded back and rotated in place with him, her knife held low, but ready. The wind shifted and branches above them creaked and rattled.
Almost too late, she looked up.
Banne dropped toward her, dagger brandished.
Elia jerked her blade up to defend, but Cass shoved her out of the way. The assassin’s dagger raked through the air where she’d been. Before Banne could rise from her landing, Cass lunged forward to catch her by the throat.
The assassin swiped at his face, but his reach was longer than hers and the blade fell short of its mark. Her mouth twisted and she launched a kick toward his stomach instead. It hit hard.
He didn’t even flinch.
“Who is responsible for the death of Queen Eccenthe of Kentoria?” Cass asked the question through clenched teeth.
“Sounds like our little vixen was fast to yelp,” Banne replied coolly. She writhed in his grasp like a snake, twisting until she hooked a leg over his arm and wrenched his elbow so hard he was forced to let go. She hit the ground and rolled backwards as he cursed.
Elia gasped and reached for his arm, but he shook it out and waved her away before she ever touched him.
The assassin rolled to her feet and walked backwards, her knife held out in warning. “You were good, Badger. You were close.” Her eyes flicked to Elia and a grim smile twisted her mouth. “But maybe being good is the reason you never made it.”
“I worked too long for this,” he snarled.
“Yet all the hours you invested mean nothing,” Banne mused. “It’s already too late for you to change anything. With the two biggest contenders out of the way, who do you suppose will rise to power next?”
Cass almost roared as he hauled back his uninjured arm and flung his dagger at her chest.
The assassin gasped and turned, but the blade struck her shoulder, eliciting a cry.
He wasted no time in launching himself forward. Banne twirled as he came near, expecting a strike. Instead, he turned with her, caught the hilt of his blade and tore it from her shoulder.
Somehow, she didn’t scream. Her own dagger raked across his back and Elia’s frightened gasp was all that touched the air. She didn’t know how to fight, but she leaped forward anyway, clutching tight to the blade that was still in her hand.
The motion caught Banne off guard and instead of turning to strike at her, the assassin spun to flee.
Cass started forward, but Elia planted a hand against his chest, fear bright in her eyes.
“I’m all right,” he snapped, but the moment Elia let go, it was already too late.
A patch of crimson marked the snow where Banne had been, but the assassin was gone.
He swore and kicked a clump of snow. It burst against his toe and he swore again. Any other time, such oaths might have made Elia cringe. Right now, all she could do was stare at his back.
The assassin’s knife had torn right through his coat and the shirt underneath, but it hadn’t pierced the bandages.
Somehow, the injury he’d sustained while protecting her had saved him.
Cass stared at the bloodstain on the snow for a long time, then exhaled hard enough that his shoulders sank.
In that moment, Elia’s heart twisted. He’d been so close, a hair’s breadth away from unraveling everything he’d been sent to resolve.
He’d given up the resolution to his mission, and he’d done it for her.
“No,” she gasped. She ran a few steps, searching desperately for marks in the snow that might show where the assassin had gone. “We can’t lose her yet!”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Your job is over.”
“No!” Elia turned in a slow circle, praying for some sign of Banne, clenching her fists and thudding them against her skirts when she found nothing. “Not yet, not when we can know what she was doing! Two contenders out of the way, she said. She’s after Gaius and—and—”
“Nylmeres,” he concluded, defeated. “If she’s the one who killed Eccenthe, then it’s Nylmeres.”
“And you’re just going to accept that? We can still stop her, Cass! What if this was the goal all along? To rile up Nylmeres and make them lash out against Kentoria, to distract the Nylmerian crown while she…” Her breath caught and she couldn’t make herself finish. She knew so little about the king and queen of Nylmeres, yet thinking of the faceless couple with an assassin at their throats made her sick. “We have to stop her.”
“That’s my job,” Cass said, voice harder. “Not yours. You’re done. We have to get you back to Samara.”
“I can’t go back,” she insisted. “Not until I know what she’s done, what she’s doing, what you’re—” She caught herself a moment too late and bit down on her tongue.
He paused and grew still. “What do you mean?”
She froze, though her hand drifted slowly to the collar of her dress. She could no longer grip her coat or play with its buttons, the coat left far behind.
Cass advanced on her, his eyes narrowing. “I thought you were here to help your friend.”
“The king wanted—” The words caught in her throat and forced her to swallow. “I wanted—”
“The king,” he repeated before she could go on. Banne was right; he was sharp, and as he put together the pieces she’d spilled, his face crumpled into a scowl. “He never cared about your friend, did he? That’s not why you’re here. It was never about help, was it? Never about punishment, either.”
She backed up a step, shaking her head.
“He sent you to watch me, didn’t he?”
“Cass—” Elia almost choked on his name.
He snorted, the steam that curled before his face reminding her of an angered bull. “And if you hadn’t been here, I could have gotten her to trust me. I could have found this sooner, found answers for my kingdom, put my people at ease.”
“I never meant to get in your way,” she said. “I would never do anything to hurt your country or mine.”
“Your country?” He scoffed. “My people are racked with grief over this. As far as they know, Eccenthe’s death is on the hands of your king. You think they aren’t calling for war? I could have stopped this sooner!” He jabbed a finger toward the ground as he shouted.
“That’s not my fault,” she protested.
“Yet you delayed me. Sidetracked me. You served your king like a perfect little lap dog, barking to cause a distraction.” His eyes flashed fire. “If she’s the one who killed Eccenthe, then it was all a ruse to cause a rift between us and Kentoria because it would leave us weak! There could be an assassin moving on my king right now. If Banne’s people reach him first, it’ll be more than just cries for vengeance in the streets.”
Elia touched a hand to her throat, as if she could trap the sob that swelled in her chest.
Every inch of him seethed with anger. Cass gritted his teeth as he jammed his knife into its sheath, his hands trembling with the effort of restraint. “You don’t even deny it.”
“It’s not like that,” Elia said. “I promise it’s not. I asked to be sent, to be given a chance—”
“So you volunteered to watch me? Squeeze information out of me to carry back to your king?”
She couldn’t reply. Couldn’t breathe.
“And I gave it.” His voice dropped to a murmur. “Like an idiot, I fell for it. Well, you’ve got your information now.”
“Cassian—”
He shook his head to cut her short and took a step back. “I can’t believe I loved you.”
The admission should have sent her spiraling into joy. Instead, it struck her heart like the edge of an axe, shattering it into a thousand glittering pieces. Tears brimmed on her eyelashes and she couldn’t hold them back.
Again, he shook his head. He clenched his fists at his sides and changed course, heading due west. Nylmeres waited, and nothing she could say would bring him back.
Elia watched him go with cold tears streaming down her cheeks to quiver on her chin. Step by step, he faded into the dark of night, slipping beyond her grasp.
Her knees trembled until she could no longer stand, and she sank to the snow to cry.
