Shattered Assassin (9 page)

The storm didn’t let up. Kazia slid easily through the darkness and up through her pine tree, Nakomi scaling the branches like she was part cat. They snuck through the window where Crystali waited with yet another bath and clean pajamas. Kazia cleaned herself quickly while Crystali burned the stained clothing. Not a word was spoken. As she slid into her soft cotton nightgown, Kazia fought to switch gears from her father’s most trusted assassin to the future queen of her country. And the storm raged. Through the night and on into the afternoon of the next day. The troops in the barracks stayed there and the four men watching Kazia stayed inside, accompanying her to the door where they resorted to letting Nakomi run while they all watched from the doorway.

Kazia snuck from her room sometime before dawn and prowled through the manor, but someone was always watching her. She fell into an exhausted sleep sometime after breakfast should have been served, but wasn’t. It was nearly dinner time when she finally did get up, realizing she felt better than she had in months, maybe longer. Letting her body exist on the schedule it wanted seemed to work well for her. She stretched and pulled the covers up to her chin, eying the window. The drapes were pulled and she couldn’t see the storm, but the wind still howled and she could feel the draft between the bricks. She debated staying in bed for the rest of the day, but curiosity got the better of her and she finally threw the covers off and padded across the room to get ready.

“It’s very quiet today,” she said as she swung the heavy door open.

“I think everyone is weathering the storm in their quarters where it’s warmer,” Heath said.

“And you’ve been in this chilly hall this whole time. How did I not realize how cold you must be?” she gasped, feeling horrible.

“There’s a fireplace, just there.” Luke indicated with a jerk of his head. His eyes met hers, asking silent questions she couldn’t understand and so could not answer.

“No one’s fed us, though.” Benjamin peered into her room hopefully, looking for food.

“Lady Kristina hasn’t made an appearance yet,” Luke said when Kazia turned horrified eyes on him. “The house staff says this is normal when Lord Jeffery is gone.”

“Why didn’t any of the servants feed you?” Kazia felt worse by the second. She slept the day away while those sworn to protect her starved.

“Lady Kristina doesn’t allow it,” Heath muttered.

“That’s ridiculous. Come with me.” She spun on her heel and stalked down the two flights of stairs to the kitchens. “Why weren’t my men fed?” She snapped as soon as she swung through the kitchen doors.

“Lady Kristina never told—”

“I don’t care! They should be fed regardless!” Well, look at that. The tiny princess could sound formidable. Kazia mentally patted herself on the back.

“Yes, Princess. Of course. Right away.” The cook fired up the ovens and snapped orders to the other kitchen staff, and with a flurry of movement they got to work and Kazia retreated. She was dangerous in kitchens. Fires tended to start easily in her care. She waited until her guards were fed and then spent the remainder of the night prowling the estate. She hadn’t had a chance without Jeffery or Kristina dogging her footsteps since she arrived. She wasn’t surprised to find Luke trailing her, although she pretended not to notice him for as long as she could stand it. But who was she to pretend she didn’t want his company? They both knew better.

“You should have woken me when my guards were starving.” She didn’t look at him while she admired a painting of some ancient relative, but she knew he heard her when she heard his footsteps coming closer.

“So you’re speaking to me again?” Luke asked, stopping at her elbow.

“Yes. Why? Was I not before?”

“I was Captain last night.”

“Ah.” Kazia remembered now. She’d never been good at holding a grudge. “Yes, I suppose I am.” They wandered through the room in silence before she finally blew out a breath and crossed her arms. “What is this room supposed to be, anyway?”

Luke chuckled, his green eyes sparkling in the dim light. “You’ll have to ask Lady Kristina.”

Kazia shook her head. “She seems to be out for the storm. Of course, our schedules don’t really coincide, so she might be up during the day. You know, like a normal person.”

Luke smiled as he took her elbow and steered her out of the room and into another. “I’m pretty sure this one is the library.”

“Judging from the extraordinary amount of books, I’d say you are probably right.” She grinned.

“You never were normal,” he said, stoking the fire into a semi-raging inferno.

“Says you.”

“Yes, but is there anyone who knew you better?”

She backed away, eyeing him warily. “We don’t talk about that, remember?”

He followed her across the room. “Maybe we should.”

“No, we should not. It was your idea, Luke.”

“Maybe I made a mistake.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “Why? Why would you decide you made a mistake now?” She threw her hands in the air, glaring at him for all she was worth.

“Yesterday, when I couldn’t find you…” His voice caught and broke, and he had to clear his throat before he could continue. “I realized what life could be like without you in it.”

“I haven’t been in your life for three years.” She jabbed a finger at him, but her finger was shaking.

“You’ve always been there, Kazia.”

She was caught in his eyes, like the last three years hadn’t even happened, and she was remembering things she had refused to remember all this time. “No!” she yelled, taking him by surprise. He stumbled back, away from her rage. “Do you have any idea how much you hurt me? I
loved
you. I was planning my life with you — and you sent me away!”

“You were sixteen, Kazia! No one is in a place to make a lifetime commitment at sixteen!”

“It had nothing to do with my age. You sent me away because they told you if you didn’t, you’d never be Captain of the Guard.” His face paled, and she continued, “You think I somehow didn’t know that? Your best friend was my brother, Luke. I knew everything.”

Angry now himself, he stalked across the room, his hands in fists. “There wasn’t a future with you anyway! How could you have asked me to give up my future when I had no chance to be with you? My father was Captain. His father and his father before him were Captain. It’s in my blood, and I’m good at it.”

And there it was. The truth, the thing that had shattered her heart every single night for the last three years. “Yes, you are,” she whispered. She turned to go, unable to stay in the same room with him any longer.

“But you should know this, Luke. When I was sixteen and asking you to give up being the Captain of the Royal Guard, I was willing to give up any claim to the throne I would one day have.” She slammed the library doors shut behind her and ran. She didn’t care where she was going, she just ran, sprinting up flights of stairs with Nakomi on her heels. She heard him yell — not at her, but at Benjamin, telling him to find her, but she didn’t pause. She burst out onto the balcony overlooking the gardens. Somewhere in the back of her mind, where there was still rational thought she guessed her room should be right above her, but this balcony had a stairway leading down into the gardens and she took it, not pausing when the cold rain slapped her in the face. It was late now, and the deep clouds hid the moon, so she could only see a few feet in front of her, but she raced blindly, not caring if she could see, not caring about anything but escaping the overwhelming pain clutching at her heart. Again.

“Stupid stupid stupid!” she cried, glad for the pounding rain that hid her tears. Nakomi dissolved into the shadows; Kazia knew she was there but couldn’t see her and she felt so alone. She stumbled forward, exhausted, smacking her knee on a bench. She wailed even louder and plopped down on the concrete, grateful that it was out of the rain, sheltered by bushes shaped like strange animals. She pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her face. And she cried. She cried for Luke, but eventually her tears came for everything she had lost and everything she faced and everything she wouldn’t have. And even though it was freezing, she fell asleep, Nakomi at her feet.

She felt the sun burning through her damp clothes before she even opened her eyes. She was still curled in a ball on the rough bench, and everything ached. It took her several seconds before she realized that she had been in the sun too long, and she raised her head, moaning at her stiff neck, to survey the damage. One arm was completely covered in huge blisters, a sign of her allergy to the sun. She wanted to cry, everything hurt so much. But physical pain she could handle. It was the emotional pain that got her. Ever so slowly she stretched her legs out, squealing as they cracked and popped and objected to movement. Nakomi was nowhere to be seen. Alarmed now, Kazia scanned the surrounding hedges, but couldn’t see farther than a few feet in every direction. “Nakomi?” she whispered.

Her big wolf didn’t materialize out of the shadows like she always did. Kazia stumbled to her feet, having to catch herself on the hedge when she fell over. She needed to get out of the sun, but first she had to find Nakomi. Her throat was raw, but she yelled as loud as she could, “Nakomi!”

In the distance she heard her guards coming, yelling her name.

And then a single bark.

Nakomi was okay.

Minutes later, the big black wolf led them around the corner to where Kazia sat on the muddy ground, leaning against the bench. None of them smiled in relief at the sight of her, in fact, most of them looked like they wanted to kill her. She closed her eyes. “Do you have any idea what you’ve put us through?” Luke yelled, and she peeked long enough to see him shoving his way to the front.

Forcing herself to her feet, she refused to meet his eyes. “I was wrong when I said I wasn’t stupid, Captain. Very, very wrong.” She brushed past him, clinging to Nakomi’s fur to steady herself. It only took about five steps before Benjamin was at one elbow and Heath was at the other. The rest of her guards, the ones she hadn’t gotten to know well yet, followed silently. Kazia assumed Luke also followed, but she didn’t look over her shoulder to find out.

She made it to her room without falling and barely even stumbling. “Princess. We’ve been so worried,” Crystali said as she rushed to ready Kazia’s bed. She yelled for the other servants to bring water for a bath and shooed all the guards away, shutting the door in Luke’s face before he could get a word in. “I brought the ointment, luckily.” Crystali busied herself around the room, mixing oatmeal into the bath the servants brought, throwing in a dash of this and a pinch of that like a pretty witch over a large and oddly shaped cauldron.

Kazia slid low in the bath, grateful for the warmth soaking into her muscles even as the medicines burned and healed her sores. “The captain was beside himself trying to find you last night. I’ve never seen him so distraught.”

“Yes, I suppose if something were to happen to me he would be out of a job,” Kazia muttered, her lips barely above the waters’ edge.

Crystali stopped her fussing and put a hand on her hip. “That was not his worry, Princess.” Kazia said nothing, so Crystali continued, “Nakomi showed up after dawn and brought them straight to you. Thank goodness for your wolf.”

Kazia finally smiled, eyeing Nakomi where she lay by the fire, her fur drying in the warmth. “Yes, thank goodness for my wolf.”

Clearly trying to keep her spirits up, Crystali said, “I remember when you brought her home. The guards had been hunting her pack for months — the demons kept killing local livestock. But you saved the runt. No one believed she would live through the night.”

Kazia’s smile widened as she remembered. She hadn’t slept for a week, nursing that baby back to health. Everyone loved the little pup until she started growing… and growing. And then they started saying she should be killed — she was a danger to the whole kingdom. Kazia’s father tried to talk some sense into her, but she wouldn’t hear it. She got in more than one fist fight protecting Nakomi. When a particularly nasty fight required her to get several stitches and a villager thrown in the stocks, Brodi and Luke started protecting her whenever she went for a walk, because someone always seemed to be trying to kill her wolf. Luckily, Nakomi grew so big that eventually everyone gave up trying to kill her and just stayed as far away as possible, because she was too terrifying.

“I’ll have the kitchens send something up. We haven’t had a formal meal yet. I think Lady Kristina must be catching up on beauty sleep.” Crystali winked, but Kazia frowned, sitting up in the water. “No one has seen her?” That night. The other life. The other Kazia, threatened to escape and take control, but Kazia forced it back.
Not now.

Crystali shook her head. “Doesn’t her staff council with her every morning? What about her lady’s maid?”

“They are told not to disturb her,” Crystali said. Kazia grabbed a towel and struggled to her feet. Moving was problematic after the previous night. Crystali rushed to help her dress.

“I’m going to check on Kristina,” Kazia said. Crystali swung the door open and Luke stood just beyond the threshold, the look on his face darker than the clouds last night.

“You. Are. Not. Going. Anywhere.”

Kazia changed her mind, deciding they could find Kristina without her help. She retreated, like a kicked kitten, to her bed for the rest of the day.

CHAPTER EIGHT

_S
OMETIME IN THE DARKEST HOURS
of the night, the sickness hit. She knew it had to be coming; it always was when she spent too much time in the sun, but even that knowledge didn’t prepare her. Kazia was unable to get out of bed for several days.

Crystali barricaded the door, not letting even the guards in, for which Kazia was grateful. Any excuse not to see Luke was a blessing. The only one allowed in or out was the local physician, to administer liquids and check Kazia every morning. She lived in a painful, blissful isolation, only half-awake, until the fever resided and the haze passed. So she was unaware of the changing atmosphere until she could finally get out of bed, insisting on taking Nakomi on a short, very slow, walk outside.