Page 24

If only he knew what she was really like. He wouldn’t be smiling so much then. She was poison wrapped in a pretty package.

Eventually, their agonizingly slow walk through the main street of Novenport resulted in them taking a turn to the left to head for the gates that allowed access to the upper-class quadrant. It was full of low-lying, smooth stone walls, opulent golden rooftops, and immaculately designed gardens large enough to hold fifty regularly sized households within them.

Arrik despised them all. It was everything that was wrong with the kingdom.

He glanced to the sky in the west: they had perhaps an hour left of light before the city descended into darkness. Though the days were warm, it was autumn after all. Once night hit—and it would hit quickly—the city would grow cold and unwelcoming, and even in the nicer parts of Novenport the most unsavory types of people were likely to come out. He wanted to avoid them at all costs. Though he was itching for a fight, the last thing he wanted was to spend more time on this ridiculous job than he had to. His father had sent him along as punishment. Soren knew how much Arrik despised playing guard to the queen who couldn’t keep her hands to herself.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

Flaming red curly hair and a fair face flashed through his mind. Arrik snapped open his eyes and glared ahead. The bloody woman haunted his thoughts at the most inopportune moments.

A prickling along the back of his neck had his eyes narrowing and scanning his surroundings. Someone was watching them.

You spoke too soon and cursed yourself.

They stepped through the gates and movement down a side street informed him that they were being followed. Arrik loosened his sword from its scabbard, exchanging a glance with the captain of Astrid’s personal guard. The man, at the very least, had noticed the movement too, and with a series of signals readied the rest of his guards into action. Within a few cacophonous moments the company of guards had Queen Astrid and her friends corralled together in a group—the better to protect, with his stepmother in the middle—and had prepared for a fight. Only now was Arrik thinking that they really should have insisted on the queen’s carriage having its top installed from the beginning of their journey. It would have been so much harder to attack her within the confined, protected space.

She was a sitting duck for arrows.

Is that such a bad thing?

That wicked thought had his lips twitching, but he tamped it down. Soren would tear apart the world if his queen were murdered. He’d pin it on one of his enemies and wage another costly war.

This was why Arrik hating being allocated to doing such jobs when he didn’t have full control over the situation. One false move and he’d lose everything he’d been working toward.

They proceeded through the upper-class quadrant for almost fifteen minutes in careful, wary silence. Whoever was following them clearly hadn’t wanted to be spotted, and Arrik entertained the notion that they had withdrawn now that their presence was known. His hands clenched the reins, and he scanned the area once more.

No, someone was still following them.

A man launched himself from a golden roof above—using the setting sun behind him to conceal his presence—and landed squarely on Arrik’s back. He grunted, reaching for one of his several daggers.

“Son of a—” the captain of the guard spit out, but Arrik himself stayed silent as he calmly and efficiently rolled the attacker off his back and skewered him to the cobblestones with his spear. The man cursed and pulled on the spear in his shoulder, his face creased in pain.

Arrik jumped from his saddle, yanked the spear from the man, and began scanning for the next attack.

“You move, you die,” he growled at the man he’d wounded.

The man nodded, clutching at his bleeding shoulder.

To his left, several men rushed out from the shadows to keep Astrid’s guards busy. Arrik saw it for what it was: a distraction. He turned on the spot and barely managed to parry the heavy great sword that a man as tall as he was had struck him with.

“What are you doing if not protecting the right?” Arrik spat at the captain of the guard after he disposed of his would-be assassin in a few quick moves. But the captain was currently outnumbered by four men, and all of his guards were dealing with the attack on the right. He huffed out a breath and leaped to the captain’s aid, ensuring at all times that all blades were facing away from Queen Astrid and her now screaming and crying company of idiotic friends.

Ridiculous ninnies.

He should have seen the blade coming that slashed down his left arm. He should have, but like the first assailant this new attacker had used the setting sun to his advantage to sprint toward Arrik unseen. The dagger slashed across Arrik’s bicep, making him deeply regret only wearing a breastplate and no other metal armor, only leather. It had been a long, hot journey to Novenport, and it was supposed to have been a simple—boring—tour.

You were just complaining about being mind-numbingly bored. At least this got your blood pumping.

Arrik’s attacker was no match for his sword. Only after he had dispatched him did Arrik finish helping out the captain with his opponents, then finish off every attacker. Even then, men who tried to flee he shot down, one by one, with his bow and arrow.

Wren would have dispatched them all from above before they could have dealt a single blow against me,Arrik thought despite himself, as he heaved in a breath and counted the queen’s retinue to confirm that they had not lost a single member of her party.She and her dragon would have obliterated them all.

Except Arrik had ordered her dragon shot from the sky, and Wren was on the run from him. He was the monster of the story, not her.

“Continue on,” Arrik ordered, his bad mood turned thunderous in the wake of the blood and flesh strewn across the street and the cut on his arm. He didn’t give a single person an opportunity to rebuke him, though it was clear Queen Astrid’s guards wanted to stop and tend to the injuries some of them had sustained. But he had no patience for the fools. If it hadn’t been for himself and the captain—the only decent fighter in the queen’s retinue—likely everyone would have died. This attack could have cost Arrik everything because of their incompetence.

It unnerved Arrik to no end how easy it was for things to fall apart when he didn’t have his own men beside them. But more than that: the attack on them had clearly been coordinated.Planned.