Igniting Darkness (His Fair Assassin 5)

“Very well.” She forces the words between her lips as if they were thorns.

“Surely it does not have to hurt so very much to accept it.”

She reaches out and grabs my arm, nearly causing my elbow to knock over the bucket. “I do not have time to coat my words in sugar and honey so they are easier for you to swallow. Two young girls’ lives hang in the balance. Will you help me or not?”

I do not pull away, but stare into her eyes, which are dark with fear, but not for herself. “Do you know where your sisters are?”

“No.”

“You’re lying.”

She lifts one slender shoulder. “I may be willing to trust you with my life, but not with theirs. Not yet, anyway.”

Fair enough. “It doesn’t matter. What needs to be done?”

“There is someone I must kill.”

At her words, a faint thrill runs through me. The convent’s work. “Who?”

“The lawyer Simon de Fremin. But it cannot look as if I have done so, for they know I am an assassin. And I do not have the king’s protection.”

“So you want me to kill him for you?” I try not to let my excitement show in my voice.

The look she gives me is one she might give a besotted fool. “To be clear, I will do the killing. I would not ask that of you. But I need help with access, supplies. A plan.”

I nod, waiting for her to continue.

“Fremin was sent by my brother to abduct my sisters. He has been given orders to take possession of them by fair means or foul. He is desperate. Furthermore, since the king knows you are an assassin too, we should avoid implicating you in the death as well. His fondness will only protect you so much.”

“Fondness is not the word you are looking for,” I mutter. “Fondness was booted out the palace door once I told him of the convent and my involvement with it.”

“Then why is he still summoning you?”

“Punishment. Humiliation. Loneliness. He wishes for us to go back to the way we were before I told him. So, tell me of this brother of yours who would kill a lawyer for acceding to an order from the king.”

Her face grows stark and drawn. “If you cross a d’Albret, you pay with your life.”

I take in her delicate features, her beauty. Even with her apparent lethalness I cannot believe she is related. “Is your brother named Pierre, by any chance?”

She grows unnaturally still. “Do you know him?”

I grimace. “Unfortunately, I have had occasion to meet him.” I remember his horses nearly running down the children in the road, the test he put Maraud through before we left the city of Angoulême, and the small army he sent after us. “The good news is that I believe every word that you say. You do not need to convince me. You said your sisters were safely gone. What power does the lawyer still have over them?”

Her hands ball in her skirts. “He has deduced that I had them removed from the palace. Since only he and I are interested in them, it was inevitable that he would figure it out. This recently discovered body hands him one more weapon in making his case to the king.”

I hold my tongue, afraid that if I speak, she will stop sharing her secrets.

“If I am absolved of this murder, I am certain Fremin will tell the king the man was sent by my brother and that I killed him. It will be too much proof for the king to ignore. He will have to act.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Why?” She tilts her head. “Why would you risk the king’s favor to help?”

“Because if not for me, they—you—would not be in danger now. Besides, it is Mortain’s work, after all.”

She is silent a long moment. “No.” She returns to the window. “It is not.”

Disbelief scuttles along my spine. “You wish to kill outside Mortain’s grace?”

A smile that feels more like despair flashes briefly, then it is gone. “Mortain’s marques do not align so conveniently with our own wishes.”

And of course, that is true.

She looks away, staring at something outside. “Actually, that is not the whole truth. The nature of Mortain’s marques has changed some—”

A sharp rap on the door interrupts her words. We barely have time to stop our tongues from moving before the regent herself strides in, head held at an imperious angle, face white with anger.

I am much quicker to curtsy than Sybella, desperately wishing to hide my face. “Madame Regent,” Sybella drawls. Her voice holds a note of challenge I do not understand—until I realize that she is doing it for me. To keep the regent’s attention on herself. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

The regent lifts her hand to shoo me out of the room. Even though my head is down and she normally acts as if servants are invisible, as I scuttle to the door, her haughty gaze flicks over me. Her hand freezes in midair. “Genevieve?”

Sybella momentarily forgotten, she takes three steps closer to where I hover by the door. “What are you doing here?” Her voice is a low thrum of anger. “You were told—warned—to stay away from this woman.”

I bob another curtsy and keep my eyes downcast. “Madame, she is not a leper. There is no—”

“You know nothing.”

I open my mouth even as my brain scrambles for some clever excuse. Behind the regent, Sybella gives a sharp shake of her head, and my mouth snaps shut.

“Go,” the regent says. “Wait for me in your chambers.”

“Very well, Madame.” Her gaze sweeps from my head down to my feet, taking in my maid’s garb. Desperate to remove myself before her clever brain can catch up, I quit the room.

* * *

In the hallway, I force my movements to a casualness I do not feel, as if I am naught but a servant on her rounds. I saunter past the two guards at Sybella’s door and into the room next to hers. Once inside, I hurry to the adjoining wall.

“How do you know each other?” the regent asks.

“I introduced myself shortly after she arrived at court, nearly a week ago. She h

ad not seen me in a few days and came to see if I was ill or in need of anything.”

“How kind of her.” Even through the thick stone, the regent’s voice is as tart as an unripe quince. “Although that does not quite explain why she is in servant’s garb.”

Rutting hell. She has begun to piece the puzzle together. Sybella diverts her. “You wished to see me?”

“Not really, but I bring you a message. The king has declared that the cause of death for the body that was found was accidental. You have been absolved of all charges.”

For a moment, elation fills me. The king followed the evidence. It quickly fades when I realize that Sybella will have no choice but to kill Fremin now.

But she will not have to do it alone.

* * *

Moments later, when my door bursts open without so much as a knock, I am sitting by the fire, stitching my embroidery. The regent wastes no time with preamble. “What were you doing in Lady Sybella’s room?”

“I hadn’t seen her since the first day she introduced herself and worried she was unwell. The queen has been ill, after all.”

“You went to check on her even after I forbade you to?”

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “Forbade, Madame? I had thought it was a warning not to socialize with her, not a command to ignore simple Christian courtesy.”

She takes a step closer. “You were dressed as a maidservant.”

I stare at her, wide-eyed. “I have only two gowns, including the one you secured for me. I did not want to risk ruining either of those if she was ill.”

“Only two gowns? I wonder if that is true.” She strides abruptly from me to my travel bag and begins rifling through the contents. I try to tamp down my racing pulse and force myself to watch her calmly. Not finding anything of interest there, she goes to the bed to toss back the covers, then throws aside the pillows. When that yields up nothing, she casts her gimlet gaze on the rest of the room.

“May I ask what you are looking for, Madame? I assure you I have not stolen anything.”

“Only my trust.”

I carefully set the embroidery hoop down in my lap to give her my full attention. “That was never my intent, my lady.”