Page 16

The Attempted Assassination

N iko

I never should have gone to sleep but my head was killing me.

From experience, I know the best cure for a migraine is to sleep it off.

And it works until the moment I jerk awake.

It feels like something, or someone, tears me from my sleep, claws streaking down my spine.

It’s a soundless alarm, a pulse of magik not my own. It’s not a dream or a vision. It’s her.

Cassandra.

I throw on my tunic and sword belt, my heart hammering in my chest. The air in the room is off. Wrong. The wards on the window are frayed and faint. Almost like ... I push my palm to the wall and speak the activation rune.

Nothing.

The protective barrier should’ve flared blue, but it doesn’t. Fucking hell! The palace wards are down.

I’m running before I finish the thought. I move down the eastern corridor and past the sleeping guards who are too still, unmoving and unnatural. A spell or maybe poison. Maybe even something worse.

The smell of copper hits me as I round the corner and then the silence breaks. A sharp crack sounds, like magik ripping through stone.

“ Niko !” Cassandra screams my name, fear coating the single word.

I round the last corner to see the door to her chambers shatter outward, a blast of violet magik blasting the frame into jagged shards.

I never should have left her alone. It’s a ridiculous tradition for us not to see each other before the ceremony. But it was the only tradition she wanted to keep from the human ceremony, and I couldn’t say no to her.

And now she is alone and in trouble. But at least she’s awake and she is fighting.

Inside, I see him—Josef. He’s cloaked in Quietus shadows, his dagger raised, as his mouth whispers some cursed incantation.

And then I see her, my beautiful Cassandra, barefoot and bleeding from her forearm, but alive.

Her power is coiled around her like a storm in waiting, gathering power by the minute.

Josef turns, just as I charge. Our blades clash midair, Fae steel to poisoned iron.

“You snake,” I snarl, driving him back.

He smiles. “Still too late, Your Highness.” The words drip with venom.

He throws a shadow spell that burns through the wall behind me. I duck, roll, and come up swinging. But he’s fast, faster than I remember, but he’s never fought like a man with something to lose. Because he’s never had anything worth protecting.

I do.

Cassandra doesn’t scream because she is not afraid. She’s already summoning the shard, calling the threefold magik into her palm. The magik glows, pulses, and wraps around her.

“Don’t let him speak,” she says, her voice tight with command. “The next incantation will sever the tether.”

Josef laughs and says the first word of a death curse. But she’s faster. Cassandra flings the shard. It screams through the air and slams into his chest. Josef howls in pain before collapsing to the ground in a writhing mess.

I watch in fascination as light erupts from the wound. But it’s not just light, it’s aether. The combined magik of all three realms, drawn from her blood, from the prophecy, and from something older.

Josef vanishes in a burst of ash and flame. He’s gone, dead, just like that.

Silence crashes down around us. We’re both panting from the fight and her arm is still bleeding. I cross to her in three long strides, pressing her to my chest and burying my face in her hair. I breathe her in and feel her tremble in my grasp.

“It’s okay. You’re safe,” I whisper. “You’re safe now.”

But she pulls back, her hand trembling in mine.

“No,” she says. “I’m not safe. He almost did it.

He almost killed me. And if he had, everything would’ve broken.

” She lifts her eyes to mine, fierce, wide, and shining.

“No more waiting, Niko,” she says. “We need to do the ceremony. We can’t let this delay the ceremony any longer. ”

“We won’t,” I assure her. “But you’re sleeping with me tonight.”

“I can handle that.”