Reign of Darkness (The Prince's Assassin #2) - Ariana Nash Page 0,4

get off the palace grounds. Take to the road. In the chaos, you’ll go unnoticed.”

“Amir has poisoned everyone against me.” Vasili threw the words at him, as though this were his fault. “Adamo is all I have left.” His voice cracked.

That sudden, lonely confession had Niko choking on words he dared not speak. Words of comfort that did not belong with Vasili. Words of safety and protection that Niko had no right thinking. Whatever the prince was or had been or might have been, that had all ended before anything had begun. Niko owed him nothing. His service to Vasili Caville was over. But the prince clearly needed help, and as much as Niko’s head told him to abandon the bastard, some other part of him couldn’t do it.

He could help him escape Loreen. He could do that. But no more. Vasili’s troubles were not Niko’s fight.

“I have a horse,” Niko said. “I rode him here. He’ll return to the forge. You can take him and leave Loreen.” There wasn’t anywhere in Loreen where Vasili wouldn’t be recognized. His only choice was to flee the city. If it cost Niko a horse to get Vasili out of his life, so be it. “The guards won’t look for you at my forge, not for a few days.”

Bitterness twisted Vasili’s thin smile. “Very well, Nikolas. Take me to your home.”

Chapter 3

Vasili’s hooded cloak hid him among the stream of people fleeing the palace. A passing farmer took pity on them, probably due to Niko’s hacking cough, and offered a ride on his hay cart. The rattling cart made Niko cough harder, earning him another furious scowl from Vasili.

Thankfully, the ride was short. Niko’s cottage and forge took up a corner position along Trenlake’s dirt street, among other recently rebuilt houses. The farmer dropped them outside and headed toward his fields to collect his cows for milking. Red skies behind the forge cottage spoke of dawn approaching. Unlike the red skies behind them, which signaled what would surely be the end of Vasili’s home.

Embers still throbbed in Niko’s cottage fireplace grate. Inside was warm and dark and safe, and he’d never been more grateful to be home than he was in that moment. Assuming Vasili loomed behind him, he grabbed a few pieces of kindling and stoked the fire back to life.

Once the fire was roaring again, Niko glanced to confirm Vasili was still present. He’d been so damned quiet, he might have disappeared. If only he were that simple to be rid of.

Vasili had removed his scorched cloak, draped it over the back of the chair at the table, and reclined in Niko’s favorite armchair. He almost looked to be sleeping. His eye was closed, his chest rising, hands resting on the chair’s arms. The whitening fingertips gave him away. He held onto that chair like it was his lifeline. Vasili didn’t sleep.

In the soft, shifting firelight, all Vasili’s sharp angles had lost their edges. Soot blackened his cheek and chin. He looked like that chair was his last sanctuary. Vasili Caville looked disarmingly vulnerable.

A tickle in Niko’s throat erupted his coughing all over again. He hacked and wheezed and dropped to his ass in front of the fire, leveling each breath until his lungs settled.

Vasili opened his eye and watched him from the armchair. Deep lines set into the corners of his mouth. He stared at the fire like he despised it.

Vasili Caville was furious.

Niko might have cared if his jaw and gut didn’t throb from the guard’s beating and his heart didn’t ache from the fact he’d escaped the bastard seated opposite him for a year, but it hadn’t been long enough. He’d need a whole lifetime to get over Vasili and what that palace had done to him. Now, Vasili was sitting in his favorite chair, in his cottage, in his life all over again, and he’d hardly changed at all.

He’d tell him to leave.

Tomorrow.

Until then, he wasn’t sure he could stand to make it up the stairs to his bed. He shuffled backward and rested against a second armchair—this one far less comfortable than the one Vasili had taken—and rested his head back against the seat cushion. He was warm, alive, and safe. And sometimes that was all a man needed to get through the night.

Sunlight poured in through the small cottage windows when he opened his eyes again, and the fire had burned down to ashes.

Niko tried to shift from the floor, but everything ached, making him