Reign of Darkness (The Prince's Assassin #2) - Ariana Nash Page 0,71

Vasili was still the prick who had beaten and manipulated Niko every day since they’d met, but that wasn’t new. He’d lied and used people. He was dangerous and vicious, sly and callous. None of that was new. Vasili was still the man he’d always said he was. The mistake had been Niko’s, in trying to make him out to be something he wasn’t. Just because he had a glimmer of kindness in him, that didn’t make him worthy of any part of Niko’s heart.

“I need you.” Vasili stood at the top of the gangplank, looking a wreck in his sodden clothes and knotted hair. “I can win this war, but I need you beside me to do it.”

“You have Yasir.”

“Yasir isn’t you.”

“The way you do things—”

“Is the only way.”

“No.” Niko retraced his steps up the plank and met Vasili face-to-face again, this time with the prince standing on higher ground, the way onto the ship barred through him. “You have been through terrible things, Vasili. Things that would change any man. Your past has made you who you are. You can’t see another way, but there always is one. It may not be the easiest or the most obvious, but it’s there.”

“If I can’t see your way, Nikolas, how can I follow it without you?”

“I don’t know if I can find it in me to care.” He turned away, and this time when he walked down the plank, there were no words strong enough to stop him. “I’m done with you, with the Cavilles, with the flame, with all of it. I’m fucking done with you.”

“Nikolas.”

“No, Vasili.”

“Nikolas! You can’t walk away from me!”

He walked away from Walla’s Heart, away from the merchant captain, and away from the prince who was too far lost to darkness to save. Whatever happened now, Niko’s part in it was over. He was done being his master’s dog.

Chapter 23

The Yazdans took him in, asking few questions about Vasili, because—as he was learning—Yazdans looked after their own. Seran’s vibrant atmosphere had faded some since the two attacks on its beloved family, but within a few weeks, and with the help of the Yazdans coffers, life quickly returned to its vibrant normalcy. The Caville King, last seen at the shah’s funeral, had not resurfaced, but the Yazdans were recruiting those who could wield a blade, or wanted to learn. Niko, at Roksana’s suggestion, fell into the role of recruitment and training and focused on that instead of the lingering threats circling the city and his own thoughts.

News from Loreen was scarce and unreliable, passed by word of mouth via traders. The city was on its knees, the palace in ruins, law and order non-existent.

Elves would claim it soon, if they hadn’t already.

Loreen’s people had begun to load their life-long belongings onto carts and make their way south. But, as Niko had discovered earlier in the year, the passage was rough and marauders rife.

As summer faded into autumn, Niko created patrols as far north as he dared send the men, often joining them himself, policing the main road so the few Loreen’s who made the trek had safe passage to settle.

Nobody had heard from or seen the Walla’s Heart in months, not since the ship had left the docks with a minimal crew on the night of the funeral massacre. A massacre blamed on the Cavilles and poison. Technically, true.

Vasili was out there, plotting.

Amir was biding his time.

Elves would be watching.

And Seran had become the hot, noisy, colorful center of it all.

Perhaps the new war would pass Niko by? He tried not to think of it when he visited the docks and spent the nights among the workers, like he tried not to think of Vasili or Yasir after drinking too much wine and fucking around with a few willing partners. He tried not to think of Lady Maria and what might have become of her, or his loyalty to the griffin, of his honor as a soldier to always fight for what was right and not turn his back on defending Loreen.

He’d been burned too many times.

The blacksmith from Loreen, a lord’s bastard son, the Yazdan boy—that man was a different person to the man he’d now become in Seran. Nikolas Yazdan, master at arms for the grieving but formidable Yazdan family. Not better than he was before, not that, but he was getting by. Even if it felt like a charade.

Until the note came. His name written in Vasili’s free-flowing handwriting and the paper smelling