Reign of Darkness (The Prince's Assassin #2) - Ariana Nash Page 0,11

back to King Amir. How does that sound, butcher?”

Couldn’t he see the fire? Wasn’t it burning his skin? His eyes streamed, his face flushed with heat and sweat, but he leered at Niko as though there was no fire. Perhaps in his madness, all he cared about was following Amir’s orders.

Niko’s scrabbling fingers wrapped around his sword’s handle, and he thrust the sword into Scar’s waist, plunging it through, beneath his ribs, and out his other side. Scar’s hold still clamped hard and his smile stayed. Didn’t the bastard know he had a sword in his middle?! Then his manic grin stuttered, his body reacting to the blade through his guts. Blood bubbled from his lips. Finally, his grip on Niko’s throat eased.

Niko yanked the blade free and kicked the man backward, straight into a wall of flame. Fire rushed up his clothes, devouring him and his screams in seconds.

Blistering heat scorched Niko’s arms and face. He rolled onto his front, staying low, beneath the smoke, and crawled forward—sword in hand—toward the doorway.

Guards waited outside. One lunged, grabbed him by the arm, and hauled him away from the cottage. They’d burned his cottage, his home, the only damn thing he’d had left in this wretched world. Rage and dismay flipped into a state far more deadly.

Niko dropped his sword, lurched off his back foot, tackled the guard to the ground, clamped his head in both hands, and slammed his skull down, feeling it crack like an egg. The guard’s bladder let go, wetting Niko’s thigh.

Instinct pulled him back, made him turn at just the right time to duck a blade’s swing. Niko punched the bastard in his weight-bearing knee. Bone popped, snapping into an odd angle, and the man screamed as he went down. It required no thought to take the guard’s shortsword and slash open his throat. He knew, like he’d known at the front, that he had to kill or be killed. And killing came so damn easily.

Too soon, the guards stopped coming. Niko stood in the street, watching his life burn, while Amir’s palace guards lay bloody and motionless at his feet.

Fire roared from his cottage, spewing from windows and spiraling from the roof, spitting hot embers into the night sky.

His home burned like the palace.

Amir would pay for this.

They’d all fucking pay for this.

He switched the stolen shortsword to his right hand, grabbed a second fallen blade and walked away from the flames toward a horse brought by the guards. Mounting up, he dug his heels in, kicked the animal into a screaming gallop, and doubled down, racing along the same road Vasili had taken hours before.

Chapter 5

He rode hard through the night and into the day, exhausting the horse until it plodded into the industrial town of Tinken. Dusk had pulled the smoke from the mining stacks down into Tinken’s streets, cloaking Niko’s arrival.

He hadn’t been sure, at first, whether to come at all. Oh, Amir had burned his cottage, but the destruction at the hands of the Cavilles had begun long before that. It had all begun in the Stag and Horn with a prince offering him a bag of coin. From that moment on, Vasili had toyed with him like he wasn’t a man, like he was a dog. A beaten dog, just as Amir had called him.

The burning of the cottage had been the last damned lash of the whip.

Niko was going to remind Vasili how he was very much alone now, in a world that would kill him for the poison in his blood.

Vasili would be in Tinken, because the fucking prince knew Niko would come. Just like he knew Niko would return to the palace eventually. He just didn’t know Niko was coming with a rage in his heart as hot as the fire that had taken his home.

He dismounted outside the inn they’d visited all those months ago and shoved through the door inside, finding it as packed as usual. Nobody noticed the blades he’d tied to his back or the blood and smoke about his clothes. Adrian spotted Niko’s approach, narrowed his eyes, and leaned over the bar. “No trouble now, eh? What do you want?”

“The man I came here with before—”

“Upstairs, first door on the right. If you kill him, you clean it up.”

Niko’s smile couldn’t have been the sanest of smiles, given how Adrian recoiled.

The door to Vasili’s room opened, unlocked. But the prince wasn’t inside. His grey cloak was tossed over the chair, so he