The second time Galon Miar came through her window, Marla was expecting him. She was sitting at her dressing table, fully dressed this time, brushing out her hair. It didn’t need brushing, but it gave her something to do with her hands while she waited.
As soon as she heard the window open, she looked up and watched him in the mirror, climbing through her window. He turned and closed it carefully behind him before acknowledging her presence.
“Your highness.”
“Do you have some sort of problem with using a door, Galon?”
“How come you never call the guards when I sneak through your window? By the way, you’re starting to make a habit of that,” he said, walking up behind her.
“Not calling the guards?”
“Calling me by my first name.”
She turned to face him directly. “That’s only because I’m too much of a lady to call you a lowlife gutter-scum to your face. You’ve been to see Alija, I take it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And how did she take the news all her dreams are about to come true?”
“Pretty much how you’d expect her to take it. She wanted to know if I was sleeping with you.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Not yet.”
Marla couldn’t help herself. She laughed out loud. “You’re an optimist, Galon. I’ll grant you that much.”
“You will accept my offer eventually, your highness. Remember, there’s still the issue of your agreement with the Assassins’ Guild to take care of.”
“I could walk down to the Slave Quarter and find some abandoned child on the street tonight, legally adopt him tomorrow and then hand him over to the Assassins’ Guild the day after, Galon. Your plan isn’t nearly so clever as you think it is.”
“Don’t get too excited about your clever little plan to circumvent guild law, your highness,” he warned. “I’m the one responsible for deciding when you’ve fulfilled your obligation to the guild. Trust me, you could adopt every homeless child in Greenharbour and it won’t be good enough for me.”
“So now you’re telling me which child it has to be? And conveniently it’s one you fathered?” She shook her head. “It would seem in the matter of honour, you really are your father’s son.”
The insult didn’t seem to faze him. “Actually, I’m not my father’s son at all. My real father was another slave, a court’esa. My mother told Ronan Dell I was his son to protect me from him. Pretty smart move for a terrified thirteen-year-old girl, when you think about it. It saved her any further suffering at his hands and it had the added bonus of setting me free. A slave’s bastard grows up to be a slave, you know. But a highborn bastard … that’s a whole different pile of horse dung. Highborn bastards are looked after. Fed. Clothed. Well educated. Almost treated like real people. I was probably the only child to ever walk the halls of Ronan Dell’s palace without fear.”
“I was told your mother died giving birth.”
“She did. But my father lived to the ripe old age of thirty-six,” he replied. “He was a linguist. A damn good one, too. Ronan Dell’s wealth came from precious metals. His family had mines all over Hythria and interests in more than a few other countries, as well. He did a lot of business with the Fardohnyans and even the Medalonians and Kariens so he kept my father around as an interpreter. Until Alija Eaglespike sent her henchmen through Ronan Dell’s palace on a killing spree, that is. I found him out in the courtyard, you know. He’d just been sitting there in the sun, reading a book, when some Dregian thug sneaked up on him and cleaved his head in two from behind.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
He shrugged. “No reason you should. And I’m not telling you this to get your sympathy. I mention it only so you don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m anything like that monster you mistakenly believe gave me life. The massacre at Ronan Dell’s palace took place over twenty-five years ago. I’ve pretty much come to terms with it.”
“Yet you want me to believe you’re still burning with the need for vengeance?”
“I’m burning with a need, your highness,” he agreed, squatting down in front of her to brush the hair gently from her face. “But right now, it’s not vengeance.”
She ignored his unsubtle hint and pushed his hand away impatiently. “On consideration, your guild’s vengeance for reneging on an agreement might be slightly less harrowing than the reaction of my children, were I to tell them my next husband was going to be an assassin.”
Galon smiled and stood up again. “So you have been considering my offer?”
“Only when I feel the need for a bit of light entertainment.”
“But you are considering it,” he pointed out. He was awfully close. Perhaps because he knew how much it unsettled her. “That’s a step in the right direction.”
“You’ve met my stepson, Rodja, and my daughter, Kalan, but you’ve never met my other sons, have you?”
“I’ve seen your eldest son around town on occasion. He likes the taverns, I hear. And the races.”
“Don’t be fooled by his affable manner. Damin could take down a grown man by the time he was twelve.”
The assassin seemed rather amused. “Are you trying to scare me, Marla?”
“I just mention it in passing.”
“You’re not threatening to set your boys on to me, then?”
“The Wolfblades are a ruling family, Galon. By definition that means we delegate.” She rose to her feet and walked across to the window, throwing it open. She took a deep breath of the damp night air, hoping the faint breeze would cool her clammy skin, and then turned to look at him. “People like us hire people like you to do our dirty work.”
He looked at her oddly. “People like us?”
Marla looked down her nose at him. “Feel free to leave the same way you came in, Galon. I’m actually starting to think rather fondly of this window as the tradesmen’s entrance.”
He crossed the room to the window and looked out over the rooftops of the palace. Marla was a tiny bit disappointed. She thought he’d put up more of a fight before she tossed him out.
Finally he turned to look at her. “So, tell me, your highness, do people like you ever spare a thought to what your lifestyle costs people like me?”
Marla rolled her eyes. “Oh, gods, spare me! Just when I thought I had you all figured out, it turns out that at heart you’re really a noble champion of social justice.”
He smiled at the very suggestion. “Not me, your highness. I want in to your world. I’m not interested in tearing it down.”
“Here’s a little tip, then, Galon,” she told him softly, reaching up to pat his face like a mother chastising a spoilt child. “Learn to use the door.”
He caught her wrist and held it fast. No longer in charge of this dangerous exchange, Marla struggled to free it. “Let me go!”
“Here’s a tip for you, your highness,” he breathed, pulling her to him. “People like me don’t pay a whole lot of attention to people like you when they’re behaving like spoilt, condescending little bitches.”
“Get your hands off me!”
“Or you’ll scream?” he asked, pushing her back against the curtains. “You threaten that a lot, your highness, but you never seem to actually do it.”
“I’m warning you …”
“And now I’m really scared, because when people like you warn people like me, we’d better pay attention, hadn’t we?”
“Stop saying that!” she ordered. “You’re completely misinterpreting what I meant.”
“I’m pretty sure I know what you mean, Marla Wolfblade, which begs a rather interesting question.” He held her against the curtains, her wrist held fast, his body pressed against hers. “What does it take, I wonder, for people like me to make people like you scream anyway?”
Bereft of her senses, let alone a comprehensible answer, Marla turned her face away, but all it did was give him unhindered access to the hypersensitive skin just below her ear. His lips trailed fire down her neck, deliberately tormenting, torturously delightful.
“Stop it,” she commanded without conviction.
“Stop what?” he asked, as his lips burned their way across her throat. “This?” He waited and when she didn’t answer, he added with a wicked little smile. “Or this?”
“Galon …” she breathed helplessly.
Her whispered call was all he seemed to be waiting for. He kissed her then, and Marla forgot everything. Galon let go of her wrist and pulled her closer. Marla gripped the curtain and let him, wishing there was some way to make this feeling last forever. This was raw animal lust, pure and simple—the court’esa-trained part of her knew that. That didn’t make the experience any less intense. If anything, it sharpened the need, the hunger. This wasn’t logical, or sensible,
she knew. It was something that only happened on that rare occasion when two people, against all logic and common sense, wanted each other so badly they were prepared to throw caution to the wind and give in to that part of them they normally kept hidden in the darkest recesses of their souls.
When she was younger she might have called it love, but she was older now and far more cynical.
The savagery of her desire shocked Marla a little. She barely noticed when the curtains came crashing down as Galon lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed, didn’t hear the table fall or the vase by the bed shatter to the floor as they bumped it on their way past. Marla was lost completely to her hunger, his touch, oblivious to anything else but her desire …
Until Galon cried out in pain and suddenly slumped on top of her on the bed and Marla looked up to discover her guards standing over them, one of them wiping the blood from the blade he had just used to run Galon Miar through.