The forest breathed.
It was quiet in the way it only got when something dangerous was already inside it.
The tree branches slightly covered the daylight and broke the dazzling sun into scattered pieces of gold that fell like glowing light to the ground below.
Birds had gone silent.
Even the wind had learned better than to move carelessly here.
Nyxara didn’t rush.
She never rushed.
Rushing was for people who hadn’t planned well enough, and she had been planning since before most people in the woods had woken up that morning.
She stepped carefully over tangled roots and fallen branches, her dark cloak brushing softly against the ground.
Lord Caevyn Aldric could be seen standing near the old stone well at the edge of the woods.
Heavy.
Grey at the temples.
She had counted seven guards on the outer.
Four of them, she’d handled hours ago, a little something slipped into the water they shared at midday.
They were sleeping the dreamless sleep she had gifted them with a vial of colourless liquid.
The remaining three she had simply avoided because killing them wasn’t necessary.
Lord Caevyn Aldric didn’t know she was there yet.
She watched him from afar behind a tree, light slipped through the trees above, catching briefly against the ivory half mask covering the lower half of her face.
She noticed the two exits.
East and west.
Horses tied near the east.
He’d run that way when the time came.
They always did.
She stepped out of the trees.
One of the guards saw her first.
His eyes widened.
”Who…”
Nyxara’s sword struck him before he could finish.
He dropped instantly.
The second guard shouted and reached for his weapon, but Nyxara was already moving fast.
Her sword went through his ribs before he could fully draw his sword.
Lord Aldric stumbled backward in horror.
”You…”
His voice cracked badly.
He reached for his guards again.
By the time he remembered he didn’t have any left standing, she was already close.
He drew his sword out.
He didn’t hesitate, didn’t beg, just drew steel and came at her.
Their swords clashes against each as the sound of steel clashing together could be heard.
He was stronger than she expected, not trained, but desperate.
She avoided the first swing and let the force of it carry past her, stepped in further, hit him hard in the ribs.
He went down.
Then he got back up.
She respected that, a little.
They went back and forth four times before his arm started slowing.
When it did she disarmed him with a clean twist of her wrist, sent his blade spinning into the bushes, and she was already two steps back before he could reach for her.
He was breathing hard.
She wasn’t.
”It’s done,” she said.
Her voice was quiet and even.
“Make your peace.”
Nyxara crouched to meet his gaze as he was already kneeling, she opened the small lacquered bag at her side.
Inside rested neat rows of pale sweets dusted lightly with sugar.
She picked one up carefully.
Lord Aldric looked confused.
Then terrified.
”No…”
She pressed the sweet into his mouth before he could finish speaking.
Not long enough, Lord Aldric held his throat as though he was struggling for his breathe.
He tried to crawl away afterward and made it three steps before collapsing into the dirt.
Silence returned to the woods.
Nyxara was cleaning her blade when she heard it.
Not footsteps.
She’d have heard those long before they became a problem.
She heard a particular kind of silence, the kind that meant someone nearby was controlling their breathing on purpose.
Someone was watching.
Someone trained.
She stood slowly and turned around.
He was standing at the tree across the forest edge.
Tall, elegant looking, has a shiny black hair which were held up nicely and was untouched by the wind moving through the woods.
A pair of silver gray eyes, dark clothes, a crest on his armour.
Young, not much older than her probably.
He was standing with the kind of posture that came from years of carrying a sword like it was simply part of the body.
She read him quickly the way she read everything.
His sword was already drawn, held low at his side, which told her immediately that he was not performing.
Performers held their weapons high where they could be seen.
What she noticed most was his eyes.
They were completely still.
Fixed on her and not moving, not giving anything away.
She’d looked into a lot of eyes over the years.
Most people showed her something; fear or anger, His showed her nothing.
There was a difference.
Then the wind shifted.
Something warm reached her through the cold forest air.
Cinnamon and cedar spice.
Rich, warm, almost sweet.
The scent clung faintly to him, strangely at odds with the blade in his hand and the danger in his posture.
She noticed it for half a second longer than she should have.
Careful, she thought to be.
She didn’t think that often.
”Wrong side of the woods,” he said.
She tilted her head slightly.
“And you are far from wherever it is you belong.”
”I go where I am needed.”
”As do I.” She glanced once at the lord’s crumpled form behind her, then back to him.
“My work here’s done. Step aside.”
”I’m afraid,” he said, beginning to move, “that I cannot do that.”
He was fast.
She’d expected fast.
The stillness had told her that, but his first strike pushed her back two full steps before she regained her balance, and that hadn’t happened in a long time.
She adjusted, balanced her weight onto her back foot, and met his second swing with her sword angled to avoid rather than block.
Steel clashes together between the trees.
Birds that had returned to the trees fled again.
He kept pressing.
She kept moving.
He pressed harder.
He’s not testing me, she realized after the fourth exchange.
He already knows what I can do.
That made him more dangerous.
They went back and forth through the woods.
She kept trying to make space, he kept refusing to give it.
He didn’t waste movement.
Every strike was aimed to end, not to impress anyone.
Yet somewhere between one exchange and the next, their movements began to fall into an almost unnatural rhythm.
Her blade moved, his own answered.
She turned, he followed.
She stepped back, he stepped forward.
For several breaths, it stopped feeling like two people trying to kill each other and became something dangerously close to a dance.
Their movements fit too easily.
She found herself almost enjoying it.
Almost.
The eleventh exchange.
She acted too slow and then his forearm was at her throat and her back hit the rough oak tree behind her, she was pinned, nowhere to go.
She felt it, all of it.
The weight of his arm, the position, the fact that there was no clean way out of this.
He was close.
Too close.
The warmth of his body reached her through the layers of her clothing, and that same scent of cinnamon and cedar spice surrounded her again, stronger now that there was nowhere for it to escape.
Her heartbeat stumbled once.
Hard.
She frowned beneath her mask.
Adrenaline.
Nothing more.
And then she laughed.
She hadn’t planned to.
It just came out; short and real, with something almost like amusement in it.
He went still.
”Quite strong,” she said, her voice slightly breathless, conversational, as though they were simply two people who had run into each other on a road somewhere.
“You nearly had me worried.”
Silence.
”You’re not afraid,” he said.
”I’m always afraid.” She met his eyes without blinking.
“I just don’t find it useful.”
Something moved in his expression.
Not warmth exactly.
Then he let her go.
Stepped back.
Kept his sword up.
Still watching her.
she straightened against the oak, rolled her shoulder and looked at him with a calm curiosity she didn’t bother hiding.
”You’re bleeding,” she said, pointing at a thin cut along his jaw from a branch during their fight.
”So are you.”
She glanced down.
Her left forearm where he’d grabbed her.
His sword had caught her skin before in their fight and opened it a little.
She hadn’t noticed.
She looked back up.
The air between them had changed somehow.
Still tense but different.
Strange.
He watched her.
She watched him too.
”You fight well,” she said, after a while.
His eyes stayed on hers a moment longer than necessary.
”You laughed when you were losing,” he replied.
“Either you’re foolish or you weren’t actually losing.”
”What do you think?”
”I think,” he said carefully, “that I don’t know yet.”
She almost smiled at that.
He couldn’t see it under the mask but something in her eyes probably shifted anyway.
He reached for the water carrier at his hip.
Looked at her for a moment.
Then held it out.
She looked at the water carrier.
Then at him.
She took it.
Drank.
Handed it back.
Their fingers brushed.
It was nothing.
Barely a touch.
Yet she noticed it.
She hated that she noticed it.
He drank too, watching her the whole time.
The light through the leaves moved slowly.
”You have somewhere to be,” he said.
”Always.”
She reached into the bag at her side.
she took out two sweets and held one out on her open palm toward him.
”For a worthy opponent,” she said simply.
He looked at the sweet.
Then at her eyes.
She didn’t blink.
He took it.
Put it in his mouth.
She watched him chew.
Watched him swallow.
And then she smiled again, and this time something in her smile was different.
Colder.
More honest.
”You shouldn’t have trusted me,” she said softly.
He went very still.
”What?”
”Quarter hour, maybe less.” Her voice didn’t change.
“Your chest first. Then your jaw. Then your legs.” She was already stepping back, away from the oak tree, away from him, her voice remaining perfectly calm.
“You will feel it within the quarter hour. A tightening in the chest first. Then the jaw. Then your legs will stop obeying you.”
His hand moved toward his sword.
”You are welcome to try,” she said.
He took one step toward her and his leg buckled.
He caught himself against the oak tree where she had stood before, one hand gripping the tree, jaw tight, forcing himself upright stubbornly.
She paused, watching him.
His legs were giving out and his chest was starting to seize and he was staring at her through all of it with those same still eyes.
Not begging.
Not breaking.
Just watching her.
Her chest tightened strangely in response.
Something moved through it that she didn’t have a word for.
She turned away.
”Jerusha,” she said, raising her voice slightly as she walked.
“The apothecary beneath the East Bridge. Tell him Nyxara sent you.”
She did not look back.
She didn’t wait to hear if he answered.
Just like that she vanished into the woods.
***
The raven found her before nightfall.
Veythorn’s seal.
Two words.
*Come immediately.*
She read it once.
Turned it over.
Read it again.
Then she went, because she always went, even when something in her stomach already knew it was going to be bad.
—
Veythorn’s hall was carved from black stone and lit by candle lights that had burned low and orange, casting everything in the colour of old blood.
the hall smells of cold air and old iron.
The other disciples lined the walls when she walked in.
They parted for her without being asked.
She didn’t look at any of them.
The great doors closed behind her.
She lowered her head into a light bow.
Veythorn remained seated in the shadows, his face half-hidden by the candlelight.
Without a word, he flicked an envelope across the floor toward her.
It stopped at her feet.
Nyxara looked down at it, one brow lifting slightly.
She bent and picked it up.
The paper was expensive.
The seal was unfamiliar.
Palace wax.
She studied it for a moment before looking back at him.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
Veythorn’s expression remained unreadable.
“The Crown Prince is selecting a bride.”
Nyxara’s fingers tightened slightly around the envelope.
“And what does that have to do with me?”
His eyes settled on hers.
“You’re participating.”
The words came flat.
Cold.
Dangerous.
Nyxara’s jaw tightened.
From outside, the sound of an argument could be heard.
Moments later, the door burst open.
When it did, the disciples saw her and lowered their gazes, none of them said anything.
None of them were stupid enough to say anything.
The way she had carried her shoulders said enough.
The stillness.
Different from before, tighter, like something had been pulled in a direction it didn’t want to go.
Yet one person did not lower his gaze.
Azrael Ravenshade of Jerusha.
He was tall, lean, in his dark assassin robes, he stood near the archway in silence, arms folded loosely across his chest.
Unlike the others, he watched her carefully.
Concern rested quietly in his expression than fear.
She walked through the hall and out of the iron door, The sound of her boots echoed against the floor through the corridor, her dark cloak moved behind her as she walked fast.
she stood in the open courtyard with the night sky overhead and her hands still at her sides.
Her master’s words sat in her chest like a swallowed stone.
*Of all the places in all the kingdoms across all the years of her service…This?*
She breathed in slowly
Somewhere far off, a crown prince was lying against the ancient oak tree, his jaw fighting against the arsenic moving through his blood, probably still trying to get up from the ground in the woods, staring at the space in the trees where she had disappeared.
She thought of his eyes for one second.
Then, annoyingly, she remembered the warmth of him against her at the oak.
The cinnamon and cedar lingering in the cold air.
The strange rhythm their blades had fallen into.
She pushed the thoughts aside, she had work to do.
***
Three weeks later, the road to Azgareth shone in the late afternoon heat.
The carriage was lacquered white and trimmed with silver.
A thing of deliberate beauty, built to be noticed.
Four horses, all pale grey, moved in unhurried unison along the stone road that wound toward the great palace gates.
Behind it, two more carriages followed, the princesses chattering in low, excited voices about the towers they could see above them and the stories they had heard about the Crown Prince of Azgareth.
At the palace gates, a herald stepped forward and unrolled his parchment.
”Presenting Her Royal Highness, Princess Elyndra Ivor of Velmora.” he had called.
She came down the carriage steps the way a princess would.
One gloved hand resting lightly on the footman’s arm.
Unhurried.
Calm.
Her gown was deep blue, embroidered at the cuffs in silver thread.
Her hair was dressed high and threaded with small pearl pins.
Her eyes were light, a pale grey-green that caught the afternoon sun.
She looked at the palace ahead of her with a mild, pleasant expression.
She noticed the guards at the gate; their spacing, positioning, the gap on the left side near the stone pillar.
She looked at the courtiers on the steps, who stood close to whom, who was watching her arrival and who was watching the road behind her.
She measured the towers.
Then her eyes moved to the group at the top of the entrance steps and for just a moment.
Just one, something in her face shifted.
So small you’d have missed it if you weren’t looking for it.
A young man stood at the centre of the group.
Dark clothes even in a court attire.
His posture were still.
Weight even on both feet.
Right hand resting near but not on the sword at his hip.
His eyes were already on her.
Completely still.
Still enough to make her chest tighten before she could stop it.
She didn’t know who he might be.
But she knew surely it must be the crown prince.
Princess Elyndra smiled at him, her smile pleasant mild and then walked up the steps toward the palace as she was stopped.
Hello!
Very first chapter!
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