“An unavoidable complication,” Daphne grumbles, pressing the gray cloak into Cliona’s hands and putting on the white cloak herself. She takes the mirror from Cliona and looks around the corner while Cliona dons the gray cloak.
“The way you say that almost makes it sound like a compliment,” Bairre says, but Daphne waves for him to be quiet. There, in the mirror’s reflection, she sees the fair-haired man leaving the chapel. The other workers cluster together, talking about lunch plans and laughing, but the man is on his own. He doesn’t seem to know any of the others at all.
“Come on,” she says, tucking the mirror into her pocket. “He’s on the move.”
* * *
—
It is alarmingly easy to slip past the castle guards amid the exodus of servants. Daphne supposes she understands why—no one expects the three of them to be leaving the grounds voluntarily. Under normal circumstances, the lax security might bother her, but just now she’s grateful for it.
As she, Bairre, and Cliona follow the assassin at a safe distance, she realizes how much easier it would be to avoid notice if she were alone, but still there is a part of her that is grateful she isn’t.
“Cliona, you have a weapon,” she says—a statement, not a question.
Cliona shoots her a grin and rolls up the long sleeve of her gown, displaying a slim dagger strapped to her inner left forearm.
It takes Daphne an extra few seconds to unsheathe hers from their hiding places in her boot and at her thigh, and she makes a mental note to ask Cliona where she bought that arm strap. When she passes one of the daggers to Bairre, he frowns.
“You just…carry daggers with you?” he asks.
He doesn’t ask Cliona about hers, Daphne notes.
“Someone is trying to kill me,” she tells him, though that’s only half of the truth.
Most of the servants cling to the walkway that leads into the village, but the assassin meanders off alone toward the woods on the outskirts of the castle grounds. Daphne holds up a hand, indicating for Cliona and Bairre to wait.
“Let him get ahead enough that he won’t see us,” she says. The grounds are covered in a fresh sheet of snow, so they’ll be able to follow his footsteps.
“I still don’t like this,” Bairre mutters.
“Then leave,” Daphne says.
He grumbles something unintelligible under his breath, but he makes no move to walk away, and Daphne finds she’s glad. She takes his hand, and though they are both wearing gloves, she suddenly feels a little warmer.
“Trust me,” she says, and as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she hates herself for them. Because he shouldn’t trust her, and neither should Cliona. Sooner or later, she will have to betray them, but today at least they are on the same side.
“I think he’s gone far enough,” Cliona says, and Daphne pulls her hand from Bairre’s.
It’s easy to find the assassin’s boot tracks in the freshly fallen snow, and the three of them fall into their roles without discussion—Daphne following the tracks while Cliona listens for any sounds that don’t belong; Bairre keeps his dagger drawn and his eyes roaming around them, looking for the slightest hint of a threat. Bairre is used to hunting, Daphne reminds herself; of course he knows how to track. And she’s given up being surprised by Cliona’s abilities. They continue like this for half an hour, until Daphne stops short.
“What’s wrong?” Cliona asks.
Daphne doesn’t answer at first. She drops to a crouch beside the boot prints and touches the edge of one with her gloved finger.
“These are different boots,” she says, frowning. “They’re a size bigger than the ones we’ve been following, and the heel shape is entirely different.”
“Wait, here are some more,” Cliona says, looking down. “But they’re too small.”
“There’s more here, too,” Bairre says.
Panic settles over Daphne an instant before the first arrow sails through the air, clipping Cliona’s shoulder. To the other girl’s credit, she is already turning toward the archer, dagger in hand, and barely flinches at the impact before throwing the dagger. A second later, a man screams.
“Careful, there are more,” Daphne calls to her as Cliona slips into the woods to retrieve her dagger.
As though they were awaiting a sign, men begin to spill out of the shadows of the trees around them—Daphne counts six as she inches toward Bairre until they stand back to back, blades at the ready. The assassin she recognized from the castle is there, and when her eyes fall on him, he smiles.
“And here I thought it would be more difficult to lure you into a trap, Princess,” he calls to her. “I do wish you hadn’t brought friends, but alas—I was paid to kill only you. Though I suppose I can add a couple more bodies to the bill. My employer has deep pockets.”
The man’s eyes move to Bairre, then narrow. “Where did the other girl go?” he asks, looking around at his men—and they are his men, Daphne realizes. They look at him, waiting for instructions. One of them shrugs and glances away. “Murtag hit her, I thought.”
The man frowns. “Find—” but he doesn’t get the chance to finish his order. He crumples to the ground, revealing Cliona behind him, her dagger gripped tightly in her hand, now dripping blood. Her eyes meet Daphne’s, and she nods once before all chaos breaks loose.
Daphne isn’t sure what to expect of Bairre, has never seen him lift a weapon apart from the bow, but as soon as the first assassin comes toward him, Bairre reacts with a quick jab between the ribs before taking advantage of the man’s surprise to grab his blade and turn it back on the man, slicing across his throat.
Daphne wishes she could watch him longer—there is something almost artistic about how simply he dispatched the man—but another assassin is walking toward her, raising a pistol in shaking hands—she knows right away he hasn’t shot anyone before, so she uses the second of hesitation to knock the pistol from his grip with a jab of her elbow and bury her dagger in his stomach, to the hilt.
When she straightens up, she sees Bairre looking at her with the same shock and admiration she felt toward him just seconds ago. If we make it through this, she thinks, we’ll have a lot to talk about.
Three men remain, and two of them converge on Cliona, while the third starts toward Bairre.
“Go,” Bairre tells Daphne, raising his dagger again and nodding toward Cliona. Daphne doesn’t hesitate, stopping only to grab the pistol from the snowy ground. It’s already cocked, so she aims and fires, the bullet catching one of the assassins in the chest while Cliona slits the other one’s throat. She turns just in time to see the last assassin fall to the ground, Bairre standing over him with the bloody dagger, breathing hard.
All three of them are standing, she notes, doing a quick inventory. Cliona’s shoulder is bleeding from the arrow wound, Bairre has a gash on his leg that will likely need stitches, and she distantly notes that someone stabbed her in the stomach at one point, though she barely feels it and the wound doesn’t seem terribly deep.