AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Arphaxad moved in front of her as she guided him through the garden, his knife still at his back, his face unreadable beneath his mask in the darkness. She could hear his breathing in the stillness of the night, imagine him running through scenarios to get himself out of this. The rest of the court was either attending the ball, reveling in the midsummer night, or asleep.
They reached the edge of the palace quickly—too quickly. The Mediran capital stretched out below them, whitewashed villas descending toward smaller, wooden structures the farther from the palace one went. The faint orange glow of hundreds of bonfires dotted the edge of Lake Enterra as the people of Medira celebrated the longest day of the year. White-capped mountains glimmered in the distance, marking the border with Rendra at the center of the peninsula.
Cassandra was struck by the familiarity of it all. She could picture the bonfires taking place now across Rendra too. She could imagine people singing the folksongs of her childhood and holding contests to see who could jump the farthest across the flames. She could envision her queen laughing with her closest advisors as they drank sweet wine from Trenta, the night air bringing with it the promise of a good harvest.
Something twisted in Cassandra’s chest. The two lands weren’t so different after all.
“So, what now?” Arphaxad asked.
Cassandra’s grip tightened on Arphaxad’s knife. The two kingdoms were different enough.
“It’s time for you to sleep,” she said. A heady exhilaration laced with unease thundered through her body. This had all been too easy.
“Sleep?” Arphaxad said, but his words were already slurred. The briar root was already working. He would be out shortly and would wake hours later with a nasty headache. And if all went according to plan, she would be far from the Mediran palace.
“Well, gooood,” he said, stumbling suddenly. “Briar root, right? How . . . did . . . you . . . ?”
“The ring on my hand,” she said. “It’s laced with briar root.” She blinked. Why had she said that? She never revealed that kind of information, not to him of all people. She never gave away her secrets.
He laughed suddenly, too loudly. “Well, you’ve got briar root too. It’s . . . in . . . the knife handle.”
Cassandra blinked again, her vision suddenly swimming. Briar root. In the knife. He had known she would go for the knife. Frustration surged in her gut, tinged with a grudging admiration. Why could she never get the best of him?
She was so sleepy. It had been ages since she’d last slept, she was sure of it. She could take a little nap now, right? Just briefly. Arphaxad would sleep too. Then she could bring him to the rendezvous point and take the Mediran king’s greatest asset back to Rendra. That had been part of the plan, surely? Had she been supposed to see him at all? Or had there been something else she was supposed to get for the queen? She couldn’t remember anymore.
She slumped to the ground, her head suddenly pounding. It took her a moment to realize that Arphaxad was on the ground beside her too.
Damn.
“I think . . . we can call this . . . a draw,” she heard him say. His voice sounded distant, so far away.
“Is there ever . . . a draw . . . in what we do?” she managed around her thickening tongue.
“No,” he said. “But somehow . . . you’re the only one . . . I can’t get the best of.”
She might have laughed at that if she weren't so tired.
Her world swam and then went black.
Chapter 2
“That was incredibly, stupidly reckless.”
There was frost in the Rendran queen’s voice. Cassandra kept her eyes on the obsidian and quartz patterning the floor of the throne room, a sour mixture of shame and frustration tinging the back of her throat.
“Think what would have happened if you had been captured,” the queen continued, her tone clipped and regal. “The queen’s shadow tossed in a Mediran prison. How would that have looked to the Alliance? To Ineti? Or to any of the other powers on our border?”
Cassandra fought the urge to snap out a retort in her defense. She had been somewhat reckless, sure, but she’d had a plan. And she hadn’t been captured in the end. It had all just ended...stupidly.
When she’d been late to the rendezvous point, Tomas, the captain of the queen’s guard who had been her second on the mission, had come to find her. He’d said she’d been slumped near the road outside the palace, stripped of her weapons. Annoyance had slid through her. Outside the palace. Not in it.
And he had been nowhere to be seen.
Cassandra had seethed the entire way back to Rendra. He had let her go. But why? Was this just another part of his game? Another thing he could use to laugh at her?
“You may rise, shadow,” the queen said.
Cassandra straightened from the deep curtsy she’d been holding. The queen’s face was a mask of sternness and propriety. Her dark, graying hair was swept back from her cheeks, giving her face a heightened, regal angularity. She was seated in a tall throne made of woven metal and inlaid with lapis lazuli that had been the seat of the kings and queens of Rendra for hundreds of years. Her gown of deep blue was fastened with tiny gold buttons to the neck, and Cassandra could see lines around her mouth that hadn’t been there even a few months before.
