Queene Of Light. Jennifer Armintrout

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СКАЧАТЬ his strange hat with the light atop it and held it away when Malachi lifted his arm to shade his eyes.

      “Holy shit.” The man sniffed, wiped his nose on his forearm. He looked up and down the tunnel, as if guilty of some crime he’d not yet committed. “What the hell are you?”

      Too fatigued, too ambivalent to bother answering, Malachi looked away.

      “Right. Okay.” The hat clattered against the ledge, and the man muttered as he seemed to be looking for something. Malachi did not care, as long as he left him to die in peace, and soon.

      The sting of something piercing his arm caught him by surprise. He looked from the syringe in the man’s hand to the slightly apologetic expression on his face.

      “Listen, buddy, this is really for the best,” he said, wiping the needle on his shirt before returning it to a pocket. Malachi’s vision faded. His stomach churned. And then he knew no more.

      Three

      The training room of the Assassins’ Guild was deserted. No one would come to practice or spar at this hour, which was exactly why Ayla had retreated there. The night guard, a retired Assassin, grumbled when she’d roused him to open the door, but she’d not apologized. She needed time to meditate on her failure in the Darkworld, time to formulate the answers to the questions she knew she would face. A more intelligent Assassin would think of a quick lie to cover such shame, but Ayla had no talent for lies. She became tangled in and tripped over even the most simple falsehoods.

      No, she would probe the root of what had gone wrong, find that answer for herself before Garret or, Gods help her, the Guild Master, sought it and she looked a fool.

      Or an incompetent Assassin, which she assured herself she was not. Beneath the high cement pillars of the training room she moved across the rough floor, wielding a simple wooden staff as she moved through her forms. She would start with the easiest weapons and move to the most demanding, working all night if she had to in order to punish herself for her ineptitude and prove she was better than the weakness she’d displayed in dealing with the Darkling.

      The Darkling. How was it that now, when he was almost certainly dead, victim of some insidious predator of the Darkworld, he haunted her? Her shoulder still ached from his punishing hold. She would find a healer in the morning, not Guild employed so there would be no questions. She would find time to slip away to the Strip before she was required to report to the Guild Master.

      She closed her eyes, spinning the staff from hand to hand, reveling in the bite of it against her palms. It had been five years since she’d entered Guild training and first used the clumsy, cumbersome weapon. Her hands had blistered and bled, but she’d endured. Now, her calluses had faded, pampered by the leather grips of her more elegant daggers.

      She was pampered. That was the root of the problem. She’d lost touch with what it was like to be an Assassin for the Queene of the Faery Quarter. Perhaps she should use a staff more often, to toughen herself up.

      No, it was not just her fighting. It was her lack of opportunity to fight. Every morning she would wait hopefully on her bunk until Garret came, somber-faced and shaking his head. The Queene did not fancy Humans, he’d explained once, and Ayla should not expect many assignments to pass her way. It was whispered that Cedric, the Guild Master, was one of Mabb’s many consorts and would bend to her every whim, even if that whim prejudiced him against the Assassins in his charge.

      It was with the Guild Master’s smug face in mind that Ayla whirled through the bow staff forms. But as always, she could not remain angry at him. Her rage was irrational, turning instead to Garret, her mentor. He should defend her. He should demand that his sister lift the ban against Ayla, however it may have come to pass, and procure her better and more frequent assignments. It was his responsibility, after all, and she was his only charge.

      No, Garret was far more content to let Mabb do as she pleased, coddling her and venerating her as if she were a Goddess rather than a mere ruler. As he wished to coddle Ayla, turning her from a hardened Assassin into a soft and willing mate. Judging from the way she’d faltered tonight, his strategy was effective.

      As if called by her venomous thoughts, Garret strode through the arched double doors. The night watchman called something after him, certainly not complimentary, but it was swallowed up by the clanging shut of the doors and Garret’s heavy boots thudding across the floors. For a moment, Ayla expected anger and had to rearrange his sharp features in her mind to resemble the anguish painted on his face.

      “When did you return? I have been ill with worry!” His robes flapped behind him as he hurried to her side.

      In the guise of fixing her braid, Ayla quickly unbound her hair, letting it fall over the mark on her crushed shoulder like a flame-colored veil. “I have only just returned.”

      It was then he became angry, his brow creasing below the antennae that flattened against his dark curls like the ears of a maddened cat. “And you did not come straight to me? You have been gone two days longer than the assignment called for—”

      “I was to abandon the trail?” she interjected, setting one end of the staff against the ground as she drew herself up straighter.

      “You were to follow the instructions I gave you!” He grabbed her by the arms, dangerously close to the place where the Darkling had left his mark.

      She did not fear him, though she feared his discovery of her bruises and the questions they would provoke. Glaring at him with her coldest expression, the one she’d practiced on countless victims as they’d begged her for mercy, she bit out, “I must finish my exercises.”

      His expression softened and he released her. She knew it pained him to show anger. It made him unattractive. “I apologize. I am merely fatigued. Mabb sent a squadron out to search for you, but they were unable to penetrate the Darkworld border. I feared you were lost.”

      She turned away, dragging the staff to the weapons rack. Mabb’s troops could have easily breached the border of the Darkworld. Unlike the heavily guarded entrances to the Lightworld, the tunnels leading into their enemies’ territory were defenseless. But she would not risk threatening the denizens of the Darkworld with her troops, possibly starting a war. Certainly not over Ayla, who Mabb strongly disliked.

      Ayla reached for a broadsword, though her muscles screamed from overuse and her brain begged for sleep. More training, more time to think, that was what she needed.

      “Ayla, please,” Garret soothed, his footsteps indicating his approach. “You are tired. We can train tomorrow, but now I would like you to sleep. Stay with me tonight. I can take you to Sanctuary in the morning.”

      Sanctuary. The word held such a sweet promise of rest and spiritual calm. She could meditate at Sanctuary, bathe in the pools, be renewed.

      Be free of the memory of the Darkling.

      The very thought of him steeled her resolve to keep working. “I will go to Sanctuary in the morning. Alone.” As I will sleep alone tonight, she added silently.

      Garret gave a heavy sigh. “As you wish it.”

      She watched him as he left, his slender form disguised by his voluminous Guild robes. His wings lay at his back, transparent as water, swirled with gossamer color like oil polluting a puddle. He was much admired by the ladies at Court, as Ayla had seen on the occasions when she’d gone to the Palace to make her reports. To have the attention of the Queene’s СКАЧАТЬ