two more drinks. His questions shifted as history bled into personal preferences, and he leaped at every opportunity to turn a seemingly normal answer into a tease. There was something light to him, something genuine that blurred the severity of his role as an assassin. As the leader of Cruor.
He sipped quietly while he rifled for answers to my questions, never once breaking his gaze. And aside from that question about beasts, he never answered incorrectly, no matter how badly I tried to stump him. He was a wealth of knowledge and culture, and as the minutes dripped into hours, my fingers inched closer to his unmoving hand on the table.
He didn’t draw away. Didn’t close the gap, either. But his stare had drifted to that seemingly insurmountable space. Against my better judgment, I wanted him to reach out and claim my hand in his. It didn’t make sense, how much I longed for that simple touch. Just a graze of his fingers. The promise of something more.
Physical. It was purely physical. I was only in it to convince him to give me some blood. Nothing else.
Absolutely nothing else.
“True or false—you can never go back to Hireath.”
The space between our fingers became hot as a forge, and I jerked my hand away. So this, this, was what he was up to. Baiting me into a game to unearth the answers I didn’t want to give. He’d sensed my pain and reluctance to talk about Hireath on the train, and yet here he was. Bringing it up again, wielding insight like a knife between my ribs. A minute ago, he had been something more than a cunning assassin. He’d been warm. Human.
Shame burned my insides. I knew better than this. Hadn’t he used his wits against me already? He was an assassin both in words and weapons. For a moment I had forgotten.
I pushed away from the table, and my chair smacked into the back wall. “Good night.”
Noc blinked, miniscule creases in his forehead momentarily giving the impression of confusion. I knew otherwise. He was craftier than I’d realized. Spinning on my heels, I didn’t give him a chance to speak, and I stormed toward the stairs to feign sleep before he could return.
Eight
Noc
We left early the next morning on five Zeelahs. Judging by Leena’s approving nod, we’d made the right decision in purchasing them over the horses. Not that she would admit it. The only acknowledgment she gave me came in the form of a handful of unnecessary bits as she insisted she pay for her own mare.
Had she been one of my assassins, I would have ordered her to keep her funds. It was my job as guild master to provide basic needs for jobs—food, shelter, and in this case, travel accommodations. Whatever leftover bits remained after the monthly collections rolled in went to the assassins who worked, and their money was theirs to spend.
The oath on my inner wrist simmered. I did what I could to avoid handing bounties out to those who couldn’t stomach the work. Gave them tasks in our home so they could provide for Cruor in another fashion. But sometimes, I didn’t have a choice. Even cooks and gardeners had to get their hands bloody from time to time.
But Leena was none of those things, and so when she’d curled my fingers over a pile of gleaming silver chips, I could only stare in shock. She’d mounted her Zeelah with ease and led her into a canter, leaving me rooted in place to catch Calem’s hushed snickering.
Since that moment, nothing. Save the steady cadence of beating hooves against soft dirt, we rode in silence well into evening. The road to Ortega Key was a constant backdrop of massive moss-ridden trees. The branches of willows, pines, and firs reached above us, threading together through a sea of green leaves and creating a canopy that blocked out the sky.
I hadn’t meant to offend her, but I had, and there was a small knife worming in my gut because of it. A stab of guilt that shouldn’t have been there. Usually, Kost was the only person who could challenge me wit for wit. So when she’d bested me with that beast question, I made it a point to keep going. To learn more. I’d gotten so wrapped up in our game that’d I’d failed to think before asking about her home. Curiosity had blurred the lines of detachment, and I’d gone a step too far. For both