He lived just off the Row in a sprawling townhouse that she had visited before and adored. She’d thought very fondly about taking up residence within this place at one point.
“Hello, Ellerby. Are you home? It’s me, Kerrigan.”
No one answered. In fact, it was eerily quiet.
“Kerrigan,” Fordham said softly. He pointed to a side table by the front door. A stack of letters sat unopened, tied together with a bow, as if they were all going to have to be sent on elsewhere. “I don’t think anyone is home… at all.”
She frowned. That made no sense. Had Ellerby gone back to Elsiande? He’d talked fondly of his home, but he’d never made it seem like he preferred the stuffy anti-magic south to a life in the city. He only went back on rare occasions. She could count the number of times in the last year on one hand. Without a dragon, travel was perilous. Most people only did it for large events or trade.
“You seem good with clues,” she told Fordham. “Could you…” She waved her hand at the letters.
“You want me to go through his mail?”
“Does that offend your princeling sensibilities?”
He scoffed, “You are a wicked little thing.”
She couldn’t help herself, she smiled.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to look around.” And then Kerrigan tiptoed through Ellerby’s house.
The tiptoeing ended up being pointless. It was truly deserted. Not a soul in sight. It didn’t look like anyone had even been inside to clean or tend to anything, except the mail. There were even dirty plates in the kitchen. Ashes in the fireplaces. The beds were unmade. The dressers had been thrown open, all the clothes were gone, and it looked like someone had left in a serious hurry.
Why in the gods’ name would he have rushed out of town so fast?
Kerrigan crossed her arms and looked around in confusion. Something was wrong here. She could feel it all the way through her body. A tingling sensation, like if she just looked, she would find all the answers. But it didn’t make sense. She had no answers.
In fact, it was even more frustrating than just assuming Ellerby had changed his mind. Because if he had changed his mind, then he’d run out of town in a hurry after he did it.
She was about to walk back down the stairs to see if Fordham had found anything when she heard a faint creak of the wood floor.
“Hello?” she asked uncertainly.
And then a shadow surged out of the darkness, brandishing an all-too-familiar knife.
Kerrigan saw the knife coming toward her, just as it had in her vision, and everything slowed to a crawl. She had thought that it had to do with the tournament, but it had come to this moment.
All of Kerrigan’s carefully honed instincts clicked into place from years of training in the House of Dragons, coupled with the last year in the Dragon Ring. She should have been frightened. Even terrified. Instead, she kicked into high gear, dodging the edge of the knife. The tip of it barely grazed her arm. Still, she hissed and pulled back from the shadow.
She didn’t know who this person was, but they were fast and clearly ruthless. How they’d gotten into Ellerby’s home without her knowing was a mystery. Not to mention, they were cleverly disguised—dressed head to toe in black fighting garb with a black mask obscuring most of their facial features. They were just a nameless, faceless monster.
“What do you want?” Kerrigan spat at the person.
But they didn’t respond. They just moved in quick, like a viper, and struck. Kerrigan pulled up her magic in time, trying to block their approach, but the person sliced right through her shield, as if it were made of butter.
Kerrigan faltered at that, letting her guard down for one painful second. And then the person was in her space, thrusting the dagger toward her. Kerrigan tried to twist out of the way of the weapon, but she was too slow and the knife plunged through her shoulder.
She cried out in shock and pain. While she’d averted a killing blow, searing pain still coursed through her body, and she saw double as the agony wrecked her, disabling her reflexes. The assassin became a blur. She could hardly concentrate on them. She’d been beaten to within an inch of her life. She should have been able to process through a little stab through the shoulder, but somehow, she just couldn’t. She had blocked out the memory of that pain so thoroughly that this blindsided her.
Then, to her horror, the person did something worse.
They wrenched the knife out of her shoulder.
She saw black. Thought she was going to pass out. Gods, she couldn’t just collapse. This was what she had trained for.
“Who… are you?” Kerrigan croaked as she watched her own death loom before her eyes.
“No one,” the throaty, female voice said before bringing the blade back down to end it all.
24
The Assassin
A wave of dark power flooded the bedroom, and both Kerrigan and her assailant were blasted off their feet. Kerrigan collided with Ellerby’s bed. Her head hit the metal post with a resounding clang. She groaned and tried to focus on what was happening in front of her. The assassin had landed in front of the balcony doors, her blade flung wide. With the light from the fading sun, Kerrigan could see that the girl was younger than she had appeared in shadow. And to Kerrigan’s surprise, the girl was already getting to her feet, leaning down in a crouch, and glaring at who had just attacked her.
“I’ve come to finish what I started,” the girl hissed at them. “You will not stop me.”
“Won’t I?” a sinister voice growled back.
It took Kerrigan’s addled brain a second to realize what had happened. That Fordham stood in the doorway, wreathed in a full black cloak of darkness, the same incredible shadow that had made his grand entrance in the arena. Kerrigan blinked, momentarily mesmerized by it. She didn’t know if it was just her mind playing tricks on her. She hadn’t thought of that darkness since that day, certainly hadn’t thought of how he could use it against his enemies.
Scales.
“Finish what you started?” Kerrigan croaked.
“The boy was in my way,” the girl hissed, tugging her dark hood over her face.
Kerrigan’s heart broke into a million pieces. This was Lyam’s killer. She had been right. It hadn’t been some accidental murder. The assassin had been for her, and Lyam had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Fordham lashed out with a rope of flame this time, a tendril of red that slashed around the girl’s leg and dragged her back to the ground. Beneath the mask, her eyes widened in alarm and a flash of pain. But she didn’t even cry out. As if fire was no match for her. She easily maneuvered away, and as soon as she was free, she wrenched open the balcony doors and slipped outside.
Fordham flung himself after her. But in the span of a few heartbeats, the girl had already scaled the far wall and disappeared out the back.
He came back inside, cursing vividly. “Who the hell was that?”
“Lyam’s killer,” Kerrigan croaked as she tried to get to her feet.
Then, the memory of all her pain came crashing back down around her and she fell back in a heap on the floor once more.
“Gods, you’re injured,” he said, crouching before her.