The Queen's Assassin (Queen's Secret #1) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,61

herbs, clay, and fresh water from a mountain spring near the cave and brings it back to set Shadow’s wound. The salve always worked for him; every scrape and cut his father treated with it healed seemingly overnight. It should do the same for Shadow.

Once he mixes it, with Shadow looking on curiously, he has her sit, leaning against the rocky wall. He kneels next to her.

She winces when he touches her arm this time, proving that it does hurt much more than she admits. He’s glad they didn’t try to push on through the night. As soon as he applies the paste, she exhales. “Better already, isn’t it?” he asks her. She nods, eyes closed.

He wraps her arm with some large gunnera leaves and tells her they’ll see how it looks in the morning. She nods again and he takes a seat next to her, leaning his head against the wall. It may be the toll of such a harrowing day, but with the soft moonlight on Shadow’s face, he notices how elegant her features are, the length of her neck, the delicate slope of her cheek; suddenly he’s not sure how he ever thought she was a boy.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he blurts out.

She frowns a bit but keeps her eyes closed. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Accompany me to Montrice.” He thinks maybe he can convince her that leaving is her idea. That would make all of this much easier.

She opens her eyes and turns her head to look at him. “I don’t just want to; I have to. Like I told you, the queen herself ordered me to come with you.”

“Right, I’m to take you on as my apprentice. It’s just . . . I’m not sure you fully comprehend what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Of course I do,” she scoffs.

“Do you? Because it requires quite a sacrifice.” He shifts his body weight and adjusts his legs.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “What sacrifice?”

“You say you want to train as an assassin. Well, this is who I am. It’s all I have.” He stops talking and looks down at his hands. “I don’t have a home or a family. When I’m not working at the smithy as a cover for being in Serrone, I spend most of my time on the road, sleeping outside in the wilderness. To get the work done, I must always pretend to be someone else and sometimes I wonder if I’m getting too good at it. Because there are days when I don’t even remember who I really am. And yet, I know what I am. I am an assassin, a death dealer. I don’t know if I would choose this life if it hadn’t already been chosen for me.”

Shadow is silenced by his sincere tone and sobering words.

“You’d choose to live a life devoted to killing whoever you’re ordered to kill?” He thinks back to how she’d stayed his hand when he’d held a dagger to that soldier’s throat. “A life where your own could end at any moment?”

“I think that’s been established,” Shadow says, motioning around her. “I do, I choose this.” When her gaze meets his, Cal sees the challenge in her eyes.

“What about . . . marriage? Children?”

She shakes her head and looks away from him, crossing her arms across her chest. She shrugs. “Your father had both, didn’t he?”

“And it was a mistake,” Cal says. “One I won’t repeat. Your mother is part of the Guild. Tell me, how often was she around?”

There’s an awkward silence after that. The fire crackles outside the mouth of the cave.

“I don’t intend to get married or have children either,” Shadow says. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to escape.”

Cal turns to her, but she refuses to meet his eyes. There’s a determination in her expression that he’s quickly grown to recognize. “I understand,” he says.

They don’t talk about it any more after that.

* * *

IT ISN’T LONG BEFORE Shadow falls asleep, the events of the day—the past few days—obviously wearing hard on her.