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He hadn’t even been fully standing when she had leapt to her feet and hit him as hard as she could in the face. Her hand throbbed and stung, but an angry red mark, to her satisfaction, marred the side of his face (and had turned black and blue the following day). He stared at her in shock as she snarled back at him, her voice vicious, “If you ever touch me like that again, I will gut you.”

She had picked up her dropped sword then and turned to face him in the ring.

“I’d like to see you try,” had been his only reply, with a challenging gleam in his eyes. “Your first kill is always the hardest.”

“Who says I’ve never killed anyone?” she had sneered.

Ryker had straightened at her words. “Have you?”

“No questions. Remember, Captain?” she’d replied sweetly.

That had been the end of it. There hadn’t been any other instances of randomly frozen exploding trees,and for that she was grateful, but she had spent time in the library looking for any information on such a phenomenon. She’d found nothing.

The rest of her time had been spent trying to find information on her target, but there was nothing anywhere. She didn’t know who he was, let alone how she was supposed to track him down. She had snuck out into seedy taverns and gone to high teas, subtly asking about him, but no one had ever heard of him. It had been nearly a month since she had gotten the assignment. She suspected the Assassin Lord would be checking on her progress any day. Making him nearly impossible to find was obviously part of the game he was playing.

As they’d agreed, Ryker and Scarlett ended every training session, offering something up about themselves. Sometimes it was silly, meaningless things. The day he’d tackled her and made her continue training, he had shared some tale about the first time he’d been punished in his own training as a new soldier. She had shared that her favorite color was purple as she walked out of the training barracks, and that hadn’t even been true. Her favorite color was a deep shade of red. Ryker had called her a wicked brat, to which she had merely thrown a vulgar gesture over her shoulder and continued on her way without a backward glance.

Now they sat on the floor against the far wall of the training galley, drinking from their water skins. He’d had a meeting that morning of some sort, and they hadn’t been able to meet, so they had trained tonight instead. She was panting slightly from their last round. Ryker, as usual, seemed barely winded. She could feel his eyes on her, as if wanting to ask her something, but not sure if he should.

“What?” she demanded, turning to face him.

“I am debating.” He hesitated before saying, “If tonight you would let me ask you a question rather than volunteer information.”

Scarlett studied him hard. His dark hair curled slightly at his neck from the sweat of the sparring. His golden eyes seemed muted, as if they should be brighter. “I suppose as long as I’m afforded the same courtesy. And if it’s too personal, I have the right to decline.”

Ryker nodded in silent agreement, then said, “Tell me about the tonic you take every night. What is it for? What does it do?”

Scarlett was a little taken aback. Of all the questions he could ask, he wanted to know about her ailment? She had expected a question about her mother or Cassius or who had trained her previously. She had expected a question about anything other than this. Ryker was quiet, waiting for her to either say no or start talking.

“You want to know about that? Why?”

“Because where I am from, I have access to some of the most gifted and skilled Healers in all the lands. Maybe I can send word, and they can help.”

Scarlett was speechless for a long moment before saying, “Careful, Captain, or it will seem as if you actually care.”

Ryker gave her a pointed glare. “I only care that I am not wasting my time training someone who is never going to be able to use it.”

“I spent the first nine years of my life in a healer’s compound. If they couldn’t figure it out, no one can,” Scarlett replied with a sigh.

“Healers here are very different from the Healers I have access to,” Ryker said carefully.

“I’m fairly certain that the healersIhave access to are the best in all three kingdoms,” she replied dryly. When Ryker said nothing, she brought her eyes to his, studying him hard, before letting out a long breath and saying, “My mother was the most skilled healer in all of Windonelle. She was sought out by the poor and nobility alike, and people came from the other kingdoms to see her. I assure you, if she couldn’t figure it out, it is not something that can be done.”

“Your mother was a healer?” he asked. His tone was contemplative, as if he were trying to solve a riddle.

Shit. That wasn’t something she’d particularly wanted to share with him, but she couldn’t exactly take it back now.

Scarlett let out another sigh and said, “I’ve been taking a nightly tonic for as long as I can remember. My mother mixed the tonic for me every night. I can remember sitting on a stool in the kitchen watching her add the various herbs and elixirs. I take it at almost the same time every night, and it makes me tired. One night when I was six,she let me skip my tonic. There was a huge celebration going on in the city, for what I don’t remember, but there was going to be fireworks. I begged her to let me stay up and see them. My closest friends were going, and I wanted to go too. She finally relented.

“The fireworks were beautiful. Everything a six-year-old would expect them to be and more. Brilliant explosions of reds and golds and purples filled the sky. They went on for nearly two hours. It was in the finale when I started to not feel well. My vision became blurry. I vomited. My mother scooped me up, and I remember her exclaiming how hot I was. I was burning up but not with a typical fever. I felt like my insides were on fire, and I felt like the dark night was literally swallowing me up.”

Scarlett was staring straight ahead. She could still see the panic in her mother’s eyes as she raced them back to the compound. “I don’t remember how we got back to the compound. I’m assuming she found a horse. It felt like we were there in a matter of seconds. I was in and out of consciousness as she forced a different tonic down my throat. I slept for two days straight before I awoke and was completely fine. She made me swear I would never miss my tonic again unless it was absolutely necessary. Then she gave me emergency vials of the tonic she made me drink that night to take should I ever not be able to take the tonic. After she died, the successor High Healer at the compound I had lived in took over making my tonics. She still does. It is delivered to the manor every night.”

Ryker had his arms resting on his bent knees. His hands were lightly clasped as he stared at the floor. Scarlett sat cross-legged beside him, a few tears escaping down her cheeks. She hastily brushed them aside, wiping her damp fingers on her pants. She rarely spoke of her mother.

“Have you ever not taken it since then? Is the reaction always the same?” he asked quietly, still looking at the floor.

“The blurry vision and vomiting and losing consciousness, yes. Now that I am older, I do sometimes skip the tonic if I desire to partake in nighttime activities, or when I have…other things to tend to. But I do so knowing I will sleep for the next few days because I will need to take the emergency vial before dawn or become violently ill.The emergency tonic puts me into a deep sleep for my body to recover or something. I don’t remember much, to be honest. One time I vomited water as if I’d been drowning.”