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The answer angered her more than if he had commanded her because he knew she would always choose to turn her blade for him. Fever burned beneath her skin, a familiar hunger that never left for good.
“Why me?”
Lucan looked almost offended. “Do you truly need to ask?”
“Yes.”
Once, she would have expected him to say, Because you are disposable. She was a blade, nothing more. After letting the silence settle between them, Lucan finally replied in a hushed voice, as if admitting to some great sin.
“Because…” He sighed. “…you are the only person in this court I trust to do what needs to be done.”
Elarian stilled at his words. She walked closer to him, stopping just before she could reach out and brush an errant curl from his eyes.
Trust. He trusted her.
And she…welcomed it? Instead of horror, or shame, or even a deep sense of revulsion, she relaxed at the admission that he, too, had become just as entangled in her web as she had his.
“His name is Vaelor Thane,” Lucan continued as if he had not just changed the very rules of their ruthless game.
The name meant nothing to her.
“He has served Aurelion for nearly six centuries,” he said. “Longer than even I have lived. He knows every weakness in every court that still pretends it stands apart from him.”
“Fine.”
Lucan watched her, but she smoothed all emotion from her face. Inside, her pulse stuttered, and her stomach flipped, each breath now threatening to fray her thin resolve.
“Tonight?”
Elarian gazed at him, at the vampire who had chained her. Who had freed her. Who kept asking her to destroy pieces of herself while quietly trying to preserve what remained.
“Yes,” he replied softly.
Her fingers brushed the bandage around her wrist. The place where he had bled her, then touched her with the same hands that ordered her to kill.
“Tonight.” She smiled back, already wondering whether she would dream of his hands at her throat as she took another life.
The abandoned prayer alcove smelled of dust, old incense, and rain.
Once, moonlight had poured through the fractured dome overhead. Worshipers knelt where cracked marble now lay scattered beneath dust and broken stone. They had offered prayers to gods who listened then, voices lifted toward the sky through the vaulted windows.
Now, only silence worshiped here.
Elarian stood within the shadow of a fractured pillar, one hand resting lightly upon the poisoned dagger hidden beneath her sleeve. Through the ruined arches, she watched the corridor beyond—every muscle loose, every breath measured. She had hidden in places like this since childhood. Forgotten shrines. Abandoned keeps. Hollow trees. The dead always made excellent company.
Lucan had left her only moments ago.
“Wait until he passes me.”
Simple instructions. She had carried out more complicated assassinations before reaching adulthood. Waiting had never frightened her; patience was the first companion every assassin learned.
Tonight…
She found herself listening to the fading sound of Lucan's footsteps, chest tightening when she finally heard nothing at all. Humiliation bloomed behind it. When had silence begun to feel different after he left? The last time she stood beneath this broken dome, she had imagined driving a blade through his throat as his hands wandered over her body.
Trust.
The word would not leave her alone.
