Page 40 of Reckless
It’s not exactly a smooth takedown, and Plague knows Father would raise his brows in that way he always did during training. After all, it was he who taught me to take down a man three times my size, so the sloppiness in which the Enforcer rolled over my shoulder just now would have him shaking his head with that exasperated smile of his.
The prince hits the ground with a trail of curses. I’m on him before my next thundering heartbeat, slipping my last thin blade from my boot. “Did you really think I wouldn’t have another knife on me?” I pant, pressing it to his ribs.
Something sharp bites into my back, and I shudder at the familiar feeling of a blade pricking my spine. I’m getting careless. I haven’t the slightest idea where the weapon came from, or when he pulled it out, and my lack of focus is frightening.
Sorry, Father.
“Did you really think I’d underestimate you after everything you’ve done?” His eyes bore into mine, burning like the unspoken words trying to claw their way up his throat.
“Go on!” The shout surprises me, the words far harsher than I intended them to be. “Say it. Say what I’ve done.”
His chest heaves beneath me. “You killed the king.”
I shake my head at him, my eyes never breaking from the betrayal in his gaze. “Yes. I killed the king. But more importantly, I killed a wicked tyrant. I killed a man who has killed countless. I killed a man who tried to kill me just because power doesn’t run through my veins.” I heave a breath, my teeth bared above him. “But I’m forgetting one other thing. What else did I kill, Prince?”
His throat bobs. “You killed… my father.”
“Yet another thing we have in common,” I breathe. His brows crinkle as I the hover the knife above his stomach. “Should I drive this through your chest like you did my father? That seems only fitting, don’t you think?”
He shakes his head at me, disbelief drenching his features. “Your father…? I didn’t—” His eyes widen slightly with something that resembles realization. “How many years? How many years ago was he killed?”
I refuse to believe he didn’t know whose life he’d taken that night. Refuse to believe he wasn’t deceiving me all these months, tricking me into trusting him after all he’s taken from me. Refuse to believe he didn’t know it was my heart he shattered the night he slid a sword through my father’s.
“Five,” I croak. “In my house.” My words are little more than a whisper. “I watched you kill him.”
He shakes his head at me, horror slipping through the cracks of hismask, the crevices of his crumbling walls. “Paedyn, I—”
It’s the first time he’s said my name, and some pathetic part of me would have liked to hear him say it again. But I don’t even get the chance to hear anything he says after.
“He’s over here!”
A shout that can only belong to an Imperial echoes off the walls, followed by the thundering of a dozen pairs of booted feet. My eyes shoot up toward the sound, finding shadows shifting closer. Then I’m looking at him again. He opens his mouth to say something, but it’s a strangled grunt that slips out instead.
The clean slice to his shoulder buys me a few seconds, and I don’t dare waste a single one.
I’m running again, like I always seem to find myself doing.
And I don’t look back.
CHAPTER 16Kai
A pain in the ass does not even begin to describe this girl.
She has me running through unfamiliar streets, stumbling over uneven cobblestones in the cramped darkness. My hand is coated in blood, pressed to the surprisingly shallow wound she offered as a parting gift.
She had the chance to kill me. More than once.
And yet, for all her talk of slitting my throat, she’s failed to do it multiple times now. Then again, I’ve failed to uphold my promise of burying her own dagger in her back, though I blame that on the strict orders I have to keep her alive.
I’m panting in the Plague-forsaken heat that constantly envelops this city. I turn down an empty street, nearly running into one of my men before I signal for him to turn left while I take right. Even with the thirteen of us split up, she’s managed to evade every one of my men for nearly half an hour.
A pain in the ass is an understatement.
The moon stretches its pale fingers across the city, castingeverything in a dull glow that has done nothing to help find her. If shadows are her friend, then the moon may be her accomplice, with its silver rays streaming through her blood to stain the hair that masks her in moonlight.
I turn another corner, wincing at the wound on my arm. My feet pound against the uneven path like the thoughts racing through my mind. Her words echo in my head, stealing my focus from the streets I should be searching.
“I watched you kill him.”
