The Queen's Assassin (The Queen's Secret #1)(44)

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he blurts out.

She frowns a bit but keeps her eyes closed. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Accompany me to Montrice.” He thinks maybe he can convince her that leaving is her idea. That would make all of this much easier.

She opens her eyes and turns her head to look at him. “I don’t just want to; I have to. Like I told you, the queen herself ordered me to come with you.”

“Right, I’m to take you on as my apprentice. It’s just . . . I’m not sure you fully comprehend what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Of course I do,” she scoffs.

“Do you? Because it requires quite a sacrifice.” He shifts his body weight and adjusts his legs.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “What sacrifice?”

“You say you want to train as an assassin. Well, this is who I am. It’s all I have.” He stops talking and looks down at his hands. “I don’t have a home or a family. When I’m not working at the smithy as a cover for being in Serrone, I spend most of my time on the road, sleeping outside in the wilderness. To get the work done, I must always pretend to be someone else and sometimes I wonder if I’m getting too good at it. Because there are days when I don’t even remember who I really am. And yet, I know what I am. I am an assassin, a death dealer. I don’t know if I would choose this life if it hadn’t already been chosen for me.”

Shadow is silenced by his sincere tone and sobering words.

“You’d choose to live a life devoted to killing whoever you’re ordered to kill?” He thinks back to how she’d stayed his hand when he’d held a dagger to that soldier’s throat. “A life where your own could end at any moment?”

“I think that’s been established,” Shadow says, motioning around her. “I do, I choose this.” When her gaze meets his, Cal sees the challenge in her eyes.

“What about . . . marriage? Children?”

She shakes her head and looks away from him, crossing her arms across her chest. She shrugs. “Your father had both, didn’t he?”

“And it was a mistake,” Cal says. “One I won’t repeat. Your mother is part of the Guild. Tell me, how often was she around?”

There’s an awkward silence after that. The fire crackles outside the mouth of the cave.

“I don’t intend to get married or have children either,” Shadow says. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to escape.”

Cal turns to her, but she refuses to meet his eyes. There’s a determination in her expression that he’s quickly grown to recognize. “I understand,” he says.

They don’t talk about it any more after that.



* * *





IT ISN’T LONG BEFORE Shadow falls asleep, the events of the day—the past few days—obviously wearing hard on her. Cal spreads his legs out by the dwindling fire. He tries to close his eyes and sleep some himself, but he can’t. His mind is racing.

He’s worried about what will happen when they get to Montrice. It’s not going to be so easy to get rid of Shadow after all. But they need to get there in one piece first. Then he’ll make his final decision.

He’s about to stand when Shadow’s head falls onto his shoulder. He’s still for a moment, wondering what to do. He should get out of the way, move her so she can lie down. He pulls his arm from where it’s stuck between them and places it around her. This way, he can shift to the side and lower her to the floor slowly. But as he begins to move, he finds he’s drawn to her warmth, and a thought occurs to him, unbidden: When was the last time he let someone so close to him? When was the last time he fell asleep next to someone else? And there’s Shadow’s arm to consider too. Maybe it would be best to leave her be and let her lie on him.

He returns to their original position and adjusts his arm to support her injury. He moves slowly, careful not to startle her. Somehow, he doesn’t want her to move away quite yet.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Shadow

I WAKE CURLED UP ON the cave floor. I sit up slowly, expecting to be stiff and sore, but I don’t actually feel too bad. I slept well, considering the conditions, and Cal’s salve is doing wonders.

I find him outside gathering sticks for our fire. I clear my throat. “Good morning.”

Cal’s shaved his scruff and washed himself in the stream, and looks much healthier than the day before, almost like a new person. “There she is, our lady of perpetual sleep!” he says, smiling broadly.

I bristle at the dig, but recall that I lobbed similar ones at him before. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“There’s only so much that salve will do. Sleep will heal that arm faster,” Cal says without looking at me. He works on organizing the sticks. “And I was enjoying the peace and quiet.”

My nostrils flare. “Well then, I’ve given you that. Don’t you think we should get moving? We’ve lost a lot of time already and—”

“It will be awfully hard to play the part of a noblewoman with a gaping wound on your arm,” he says, motioning toward my injury.

It does look pretty bad when I take the leaves off. Aside from the gash, which runs the entire length of my arm and is dark blue and angry-looking, there are bruises on both arms and my legs, and probably elsewhere as well. I can feel sore spots all over my body. But he doesn’t know about those. “How so? I can wear long sleeves.”