Page 5 of The Princess Tied

She was giving up. Those words and the hint of a glistening drop of a tear in her eyes did not fool him.

“I am sorry.”

“He told me you were in love with him, even though the contract was at first nothing more than words on paper, and a way for you to gain the throne.” She had to marry to ascend, everyone knew this. “That you would allow him a place beside you.”

“Yes.” She didn’t look anywhere but at the distant mountains, where they rimmed the sky, beyond the dullness of the harbor waters.

He thought she had swallowed then. Not sadness, it could not be that. Soulless bitch.

“True love does not give up after a day.”

“I am a princess, with great powers, but I cannot order my soldiers beyond our borders without permission from other countries, or there will be war. I cannot.”

“I see.” And he eyed the harbor too, and the palace surrounding this balcony, the many walls that intertangled and humped each other, climbed over each other. This strange architectural maze of a palace had grown like a tree grows roots. Haphazardly. “I see.”

He left her as soon as was polite—okay a bit before that. He wasn’t one for long, weird conversations.

Outside the gates, Ruff joined him again, sniffing his knee as the creature tended to do.

“What do you think, Ruff? Is this a time for dangerous interventions?”

Ruff twitched his nose.

“Yes. Yes, I agree. You are correct.” John tapped his sword hilt, then catalogued his hidden assortment of daggers, garroting wire, and poisons. “Yes, we should.”

That night, having purchased and arranged horses, then left them concealed in the nearby forest, he scaled the palace walls. Using his memory of the various intersections and climbable parts to guide him, he reached her balcony and slipped open the door latch with his blade.

He woke Princess Po with a knife to her throat, saying, “Come with me if you wish to live.” And he was pretty certain he could do this—keep her alive. Killing a princess was not what he should be doing tonight.

The bed had sunk only a little beneath his weight. He could tell it was a good-quality mattress and so any blood on it would likely wash out.

Alive, man. Remember?

She blinked up at him.

“You’ll have to do better than that. What makes you think that will convince me?”

The answer threw him, nevertheless the spiel he’d rehearsed came forth.

“Why do I threaten you? Because you and my brother were supposed to be suffering from True…” He finally lost track of the spiel and added querulously, “Because I am a perfect killer.”

“Perfect?” Her crescent-shaped scarlet eyebrows rose.

The moon had slipped light through the balcony window, and he could see her, all of her, in that diaphanous gown which revealed more nipple than a princess should show to…

John swallowed. “Yes. I can sense creatures, and I kill without guilt.”

“Show me.”

“What? Now?”

She nodded.

What the? “The rat on the ceiling cornice.”

“There is a rat? In my bedroom?” So indignant.

He drew a second dagger and flung it sideways and at an upward angle without looking. A squeak sounded and ceased. “There was, yes. It is dead.”