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There was no sign of an Inetian caravan.
A worn path ran back from the village toward the mountain, where Cassandra could see a jagged opening gashed into the rock. Two orbs of enchanted fire marked the entrance. A cave. The first sign that this wasn’t an ordinary settlement.
She slunk farther along the ridge line, careful to keep enough distance that even if someone happened to look up, they wouldn’t be able to see her. A woman in a gray robe made her way into the cave entrance. A small child came out and scampered into one of the thatch-roof huts.
Cassandra was deciding whether to move closer or wait until nightfall to gain access to the cave when three men emerged. One was dressed in the gray of the chanter enclave, his hair a shock of white, his skin almost translucently pale, like the people of the Alliance in the south. But the other two were not, their skin and hair showing a deep brown beside the much paler chanter. Cassandra took a quick breath and moved closer to listen.
“We were told we would see results sooner than this,” one of the men was saying to the chanter. He was tall and broad with bronze skin and thick black hair, and Cassandra could make out a scar that ran from his jaw down beneath his tunic. His accent was unmistakably Inetian.
The chanter shook his head. “You were not promised anything beyond access to our knowledge. The rate at which your men learn is beyond my power to control. And besides, we haven’t seen anything of which we were promised in—”
“His eminence does not break his promises!” the Inetian cut in.
His eminence? Cassandra’s brows drew together. The Inetian emperor was always addressed as His Majesty.
“He better not,” the chanter said, and Cassandra could feel a pulse of power crackle in the air. The Inetian took a wary step back. “I don’t allow people who don’t keep their promises to live.”
Cassandra’s brows drew together. What promises? Were the chanters teaching the Inetians their magic? That was a wholly terrifying thought on its own, but what could the Inetians have possibly promised in return to reach that kind of agreement?
A twig snapped in the bracken to her right, and she froze. The tread had been too heavy, too broad, to be a hare or a mountain goat. She reached for the knife at her belt, her heart thundering in her throat, and waited for the sound to come again.
There was another snap, and this time, Cassandra could make out a figure in the trees draped in a nondescript black cloak. The figure was hardly three meters from her. He peered over the ridge for a moment, just as Cassandra had, then stepped back, turned his head, and looked directly at her.
Cassandra moved before the figure could. In one swift motion, she kicked for his knees and dropped him. The figure grunted as he crashed to the ground—a clearly masculine sound—and Cassandra was on him in an instant. He grunted again as she shoved her knee in his kidney and pressed her knife roughly against his throat.
The figure stilled, and for a moment, all Cassandra could hear was the sound of their breathing in the stillness of the afternoon.
A beat passed as her eyes struggled to focus on his face, and then the figure chuckled—a low, melodious sound—and an all too familiar voice breathed against her cheek, “Why, Cass. I missed you too.”
Heat flooded her body in a tidal wave. Arphaxad Ilin Serra lay on the forest floor beneath her, his dark eyes twinkling up at her with maddening amusement. And her knife was pressed to his throat.
“You!” she sputtered before she could stop herself. “What are you doing here?”
His grin widened. “I have you to thank for my presence here. If you hadn’t found that letter for me—”
She pressed the knife more sharply against his throat, and he hissed. She leaned in and gave him her sweetest smile. “It might be prudent for you to remember that I’m the one with the knife to your throat.”
Arphaxad grunted, and she thought she could feel him tense, as if ready to spring. She shoved her knee into his kidney again, and he grunted but lay back.
“You’re in rare form today,” he wheezed. That damn glint of arrogance was still in his eyes. As if he knew something she didn’t.
“I’ll ask you again,” she said softly. “What are you doing here?”
His mouth curved in that all-too-familiar grin. “I wager it’s the same thing you are.” He paused, as if shoring himself for what he was about to say. “And if you let me up, I’ll tell you about it.”
She almost laughed out loud. Let him up? He had to be kidding. “Oh, sure. I’m just supposed to trust you.” He was the one she could never get the best of. The one who always managed to slip through her fingers. She was not about to allow that to happen again. Not when she had him here, beneath her, at knife point.
Even if they were in his territory, miles from the Rendran capital. It would take an impossible act of will for her to get him back to the queen in one piece, without allowing him to escape. She supposed she could subdue him long enough to slip his grasp. But then there was the Inetian presence in the chanter enclave to worry about. And she needed more information. Frustration rose in her gut. This was starting to feel all too familiar—they had been here too many times before, and every time, he’d taken something from her.
He didn’t break her gaze. “Look at it as a trade of sorts, Cass. I’m as in the dark as you are about this. And if Ineti wants something to do with the Sorothi chanters and their earth magic—well, it’s not a good sign for either Rendra or Medira.” He paused and shifted beneath her again. He was warm where their bodies made contact, and suddenly she was sharply aware of everywhere his body pressed against hers. A strange shiver zipped through her.
It had been a long time since he’d been stupid enough to let her knock him down like this. Not since five years ago, when she’d stumbled on the elusive Mediran agent Andre hadn’t been able to pin down for the last few years of his career. He’d been slipping along the roof of the Rendran palace, dressed, not as innocuously as he seemed to think, as a footman. She’d gotten close enough to get a good look at his face, to take in his annoyingly handsome jaw and aquiline nose, his olive skin tanned from time spent in the sparring yard, and then he had promptly slipped her grasp.
Annoyance at the memory, at him, at herself, flared through her now, and she kneed him in the kidney again, then got to her feet, careful to keep the knife at his throat. She was not going to allow him to slip away again.
Arphaxad grunted, then scrambled into a sitting position. His hair was longer than when she had last seen him, curling around his ears, and there was a dark line of stubble at his jaw. His tunic was black and well-fitting, devoid of any mark that might tie him to his king.
For a moment as they watched each other in the midafternoon sun, he looked haggard, tired in a way she had never seen him before. But a moment later, that smirk was back, his annoyingly impenetrable mask slamming back down in place.
