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“No questions,Lady, unless you are willing to answer some in return,”Ryker replied sharply.

Scarlett rolled her eyes but said, “Fine. I have not always lived in this District. I came to live with Lord Tyndell and his family a year ago. And before you can ask, where I lived before, that is not up for discussion.”

Ryker studied her. She could see so many questions swirling in his golden eyes, but he didn’t ask. Instead, staring across the room, he said, “If you truly desire to be properly trained, I am willing to do so, but it requires more than swinging swords in a galley a couple evenings a week. You can decide how intense you would like your training to be.”

“I know what training is required to be properly trained,” she snapped back. She pushed down the images of training in the Fellowship, her sisters by her side, enduring the same brutal methods. Broken bones. Bruises and cuts and learning to fight around pain.

“Then you know it will not be enjoyable.” The violence that flickered in his golden eyes sparked something deep in her soul. Something she had not felt in a long time.

“Why?” was Scarlett’s answer. “Why would you offer to train me like that when you spend the better part of your day training men?”

He shrugged slightly and said, “Because where I am from, females fight alongside males on the battlefields. Because those men in your king’s armies are not more skilled than you are. You could likely best many of them outside of the elite group that I train. Because you deserve the choice of something else if that is what you desire.”

Scarlett was silent for a moment. A choice. Something she was rarely gifted. Everything about her life seemed to already be decided for her, had always been someone else’s decision. Someone else’s plan. So she found herself saying, “Yes. I would like that very much.” Not because she wanted to get information from him, but because she truly wanted to choose this for herself.

Ryker merely gave her a feral, sarcastic grin and said, “Remember you said that when you are meeting me to run at dawn.”

CHAPTER 4

SCARLETT

It was shortly before sunrise as Scarlett crept along the walls of the manor’s grounds. It wasn’t her first time sneaking in and out of the manor, and it wouldn’t be her last. She had been trained for covertness, secrecy, and death after all. Although Nuri had always been the stealthiest.

Nuri Halloway was a different sort of nobility. She was the adopted daughter of the Assassin Lord. An orphan on the streets like Cassius, the Assassin Lord had found her at the age of four, scooped her up, and taken her to his home. His daughter not by blood, but by choice. She had been trained as an elite killer right alongside Scarlett. They were taught to move among the shadows with such stealth you didn’t see them unless they wanted to be seen. Her gift of stealth, however, was how she came to be called Death’s Shadow. She stalked every one of her father’s targets and even some of the other assassins’ and thieves’ targets at the Fellowship. If Nuri was watching you, it was likely your death was near. She was feared almost more than the assassins themselves because you never knew when death would show up, only that it was indeed coming. The dread became more unbearable than the actual death…unless she was accompanied by her two sisters.When the Wraiths of Death were all dispatched on one target, they begged for death by the end.

Many knew Nuri’s name. Few knew she was Death’s Shadow. It was kept hidden, like many secrets of the Black Syndicate. Scarlett had interacted with the Lord of the Assassins nearly every day, but she’d never once seen his face and knew none of his features. He always wore a hood, but she knew her mother had known him well. While he ran the Fellowship, her mother had run the healer’s compound in the Black Syndicate.

There was the Syndicate, full of thriving merchants and businesses, and then there was the Black Syndicate, full of much darker merchants and businesses. A kingdom in and of itself. The Black Syndicate held everything from crime lords and brothels to thieves and mercenaries. Why her mother had chosen to set up shop in the Black Syndicate District, Scarlett did not know. She was the most-skilled healer in the kingdom, perhaps in all the kingdoms, and people came from neighboring lands just to see her. She was often called away in the middle of the night to the Fellowship to attend someone who had returned from a mission where something had gone wrong. The Fellowship was directly across from the compound, and messengers were constantly going between the two.

At the age of six, Scarlett’s mother had turned her over to the Assassin Lord to learn “how to defend herself,” and another healer’s daughter of the same age had joined her along with Nuri. What had come of that was the creation of a nightmare made flesh. The three girls had bonded during hours of brutal training. The three girls grew to love each other in the darkness. The three girls formed the bond of sisters. They pushed each other harder than anyone else, even their trainers, and they were loyal to each other above all else.

When Scarlett’s mother had been killed, the rumor was spread that she had been killed as well. That had been the plan, according to the assassin she had watched take her mother apart. Cassius, of course, had been the one to find her. She was snuck into the Fellowship where she was kept hidden for seven years. The girls had continued to train just as intensely and were sent out on missions,and because no one knew who the Wraiths of Death were, no one was any the wiser that she was, in fact, alive.

Since coming to live at the Tyndell manor, however, the most she ever seemed to use her stealth training was to sneak out on occasion to exercise with Nuri and to get herself and Tava out to attend various activities. Her favorites were the parties by the Pier that went well into the night, full of dancing and food and wine. Nights when she could forget the mess her life had become and just exist for a few hours without the weight of her world pressing in on her.

She smiled at the thought of the memory of the last party she’d attended at the Pier. It had been the first scorching hot night of the summer. She’d spent more time by the sea than in the actual venue. Although she’d gotten plenty of dancing in too; when Mikale hadn’t been hovering over her incessantly. Drake had finally distracted him long enough for her to slip out into the stifling heat. She had walked among the waves washing up on the shore. A quiet moment of peace among the busyness of…whatever it was she did any more. She used to have a purpose. Even if it was a dark one. Now?

“It’s awfully early to be in the gardens, isn’t it?” came a silky voice from beside her.

“Dammit, Nuri!” Scarlett hissed, her hand going to her heart. She may have trained with Nuri, but the other girl was still more covert and thoroughly enjoyed slipping in and out of the shadows to everyone’s great annoyance.

Nuri laughed quietly, her footsteps as silent as Scarlett’s were along the path. “Whereareyou going so early?”

Scarlett glanced out of the corner of her eye at her friend. The girl’s hair was braided down her back, her scimitars at her waist as usual, and a bow slung across her back. She was entirely in black, her hood down. She looked tired, as if she’d been up all night. She probably had been. She’d likely been stalking someone for a job.

“I’m meeting Ryker for training.”

Nuri’s eyebrows shot up. “Ryker? Who’s that?”

“He’s a Captain in the king’s armies,” Scarlett said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He trains an elite group of soldiers.I’ve never seen anyone fight like him, Nuri. He knocked me on my ass in less than two minutes. I asked him to train me.”

“Whatever for? You were trained by some of the most lethal men in the kingdom.”

“His fighting style is different. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“So it makes his training better?” Nuri asked curiously.

“No,” Scarlett said, contemplating. “I said his fighting style was different, not necessarily superior. We can always grow. We can always learn.”