Mortal Heart (His Fair Assassin 3)

I try to smile, but my lips will not obey. “Precisely. The first ten years of my life were one long test, a never-ending trial during which I had to be ever sharp and ever vigilant.

“That’s when I first began listening at doors—in the hopes that I could catch some hint or warning of what I was to be subjected to, and thus prepare myself. It is also, I suspect, why I became so very good at reading people, then doing what they wanted before they even asked. I had so few tools for survival. I had to use everything at my disposal.” The abbess’s words—obedient and biddable—still sting. “They are not traits I am proud of, but they did allow me to survive.

“Sister Etienne—for that was what she was called before she became the abbess—was the one bright spot in my life. She was my champion when I was young. Always saving me a bit of bread when I had been forced to go without supper. Letting me out of the wine cellar earlier than my punishments called for. Only now, with the knowledge that she was—is—my mother, can I understand how she must have suffered along with me.”

“No.” Sybella shoves to her feet and begins pacing the room. Her face is so fierce and holds such rage that I fear she would strike the abbess dead if she were in the room with us. “She did not suffer like you did—not even close, for there was nothing preventing her from taking you and fleeing in the middle of the night, which is what she should have done.”

“Perhaps she was afraid they would come after us? We have all heard stories of how they send the hellequin to punish disobedient novitiates. Mayhap she simply thought those tales were true.”

“So what brought this all to a boil?” Ismae’s voice is gentle, a calming counterweight to Sybella’s anger.

“It was a new punishment the Dragonette devised.” I do not tell them I was punished because she caught me one day leaving small offerings for Mortain at the doorway to his realm or that she heard me chatting with him in spite of my continued promises to her that I no longer believed I had really seen him.

“It was a cilice, a small silver chain into which sharp thorns had been affixed, meant to be worn around the skin at my waist.” I still remember the shame I felt as she lifted the skirt of my gown, exposing my lower body, and slipped the chain around my waist. Remember the bite of pain of each thorn as it pierced my flesh.

Ismae’s hand flies up to her lips. My own hand drifts to my stomach, and the scars that still encircle it. “It festered and grew foul, so that I was sent to the infirmary. Sister Serafina was the one who tended to me, her hands gentle and her manner calm. But I think she must have told Sister Etienne, for she found out, and soon after that, she and I had one of our special outings. We were to have a picnic and collect wildflowers. While we were out, we also gathered some mushrooms for the convent stew pot.

“Only, they were poisonous. She had told me they were safe, which is the only reason I picked them. But they were poisonous, and she let me pick them, and somehow she got them past the cook and slipped them into the pot. Three nuns died that evening, then Sister Magdelena, the old poisons mistress, killed herself, thinking it was she who had made the error.

“She used me to poison them.” Even now, the enormity of that betrayal forces all the air from my lungs and I feel as if I will never be able to draw a full breath again.

Suddenly, Ismae is at my side, taking my hands in hers, chafing them. Sybella’s arm snakes around my shoulders and she pulls me close to her. “No,” she whispers fiercely. “Don’t you dare think you had anything to do with that. It was not you, not even a little bit, it was all her.”

I close my eyes and bask in the solace they offer. “I know it with my mind, but my heart—my heart is still bruised and sick with it.”

Sybella gives my shoulders once last squeeze—so hard it is almost painful—then begins pacing again. “I shall kill her,” she says at last. “Clearly, she does not deserve to live. Clearly, she is not serving Mortain or even the convent—”

“But is she marqued?” Ismae asks quietly. “For unless a marque has appeared in the last hour, or exists under her gown, I have not seen it.”

Sybella’s face grows white with frustration, then she tosses her head. “It doesn’t matter. I shall kill her anyway.” And though she does not mean it—at least, I do not think she does—her saying it brings me great comfort. I take a deep breath and let myself feel the absence of the weight of all the secrets I have been carrying.

Well, not all the secrets. “There is more,” I offer shyly.

Sybella gapes at me, looking so comical that I must tamp down a desire to laugh. “More?” she says.

“I also have a lover.”

Sybella stares at me a long moment, then whoops out a laugh while Ismae has a turn at gaping at me. “I thought so, but then you said nothing, so I was uncertain.”

A smile catches at my lips. “I knew that if anyone could guess, it would be you.”

“But when have you had time to take a lover?” Ismae asks. “And where?” She looks around the room we have shared as if searching for signs of our stolen moments.

“You have not asked me who,” I point out.

“I’m not sure we can bear to learn of it,” Ismae says faintly.

“He is a hellequin.” They both stare at me, struck beyond speech. “Or so I thought. Until I learned that he was only masquerading as one. It is actually Death Himself whom I have taken to my bed.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

BOTH ARE SPEECHLESS for a long moment. Then Sybella huffs out a sigh and runs her hand through her hair. Ismae simply continues to stare. “Is this a jest of some sort?” she asks weakly.

“No, it is the truth.” Then I tell them of the night Isabeau died and the small boon I asked of the hellequin, and how that in turn led to me learning his true identity.

“But—but he is our father,” Ismae says.

My heart sinks as I realize I was right; this has the power to cause a divide between us, a divide that the revelation of my parentage did not. “Your father,” I point out. “Not mine.”

“The duchess came within a handbreadth of marrying my father,” Sybella reminds Ismae. “And I did not think any less of her for it.” Sybella’s voice is calm and free of any judgment. Of course, with her own family’s twisted past, she would have the easiest time understanding.

A new wave of horror crosses Ismae’s face. “Are you going to marry Death?”

“Marry him?” My laughter is tinged with mania.

Sybella’s face softens with sympathy. “Do you carry his child?”

“No!” My hands drift to my stomach. “At least, I do not think so.” Indeed, I had not even considered that, although clearly that is at the heart of his relationship with women.

“I’m sorry, Annith.” Ismae gets up from the bed to stand in front of the fire. She puts her hands out toward the flames, as if they have grown cold suddenly. “It just feels so . . .”

“Overwhelming?” I offer.

“Yes, but also unbelievable. Twisted. Like some cautionary tale of long ago. I feel like a snake must when he has accidentally swallowed a goat and is struggling to digest it.”

Sybella stares past Ismae into the flames. “I am beginning to think that love itself is never wrong. It is what love can drive people to do that is the problem. And this particular love is far less misplaced than some,” she says dryly. “Besides”—her voice turns thoughtful, as if she is considering all the complex knots that must be untangled—“I am certain that the rules governing human hearts do not govern how the gods may love. We have only to think of the old tales to know that. Even better,” she adds with a twinkle, “consider how furious the abbess will be.”

That surprises a laugh out of me, and she joins in. Ismae does not, but she does smile, which gives me hope. Sybella reaches out and pinches her cheek. “Do not be such an old wart. Does it not make perfect sense that our beloved Saint Annith has captured Death’s heart? Who else among us could have done so?”

I roll my eyes. “Afte

r all that I have told you, you should realize just how poor a fit the title of saint is when applied to me.”

Her face grows serious once more, filling with sincerity. “I think you deserve it now more than ever,” she says.

I let her words wash over me, as healing as one of Sister Serafina’s balms. “Thank you,” I whisper, unable to stop the tears that spring to my eyes.

“Oh no. Do not start leaking. Ismae, come over here and hug her so we can all pretend it never happened and get on with our lives.”

Ismae’s gaze meets mine as she moves away from the fire. “Of course I am amazed and admiring of all that you have been through.” When she reaches me she wraps her arms around me and holds me close. “As you say, it is all just a little overwhelming.”

“Thank you,” I whisper. As long as I know they are still my friends, as long as I know that our connection cannot be broken, I shall be fine.

Once they leave to see to their other duties, I go to stand before the fire, feeling once again as if I have been completely upended and remade anew, when in truth, I have barely caught my breath from the first time my life shattered before my eyes.

But this—this is different. This is no shattering, but rather some great knitting together of the broken pieces into a stronger whole.

I feel cleansed, not only of sin—but of artifice. I am stripped down to nothing but my raw self. As uncomfortable as it makes me feel, there is freedom in it as well, for there is no place left for others’ expectations and desires of me to hide. The worst things that I could have ever imagined have happened.

I turn and stare at my saddlebag, tossed carelessly in the corner. Slowly, I cross the room and kneel beside it. I reach in, down to the very bottom of the pack with the crumbs of hardened cheese, and retrieve the small calfskin-bound journal that I took from the abbess’s office: the Dragonette’s accounting of me, my childhood, of all the things she did to me, and all the ways I failed and showed my weakness. I have not read all of it, but I do not have to. I lived it. I remember. But I am not that child anymore. My younger self served me well, as well as any child in her circumstances could have. But I have new strengths and skills that I can rely on.