Page 16 of Kept to Kill
He didn’t show it, but Quin was surprised. He’d expected Mal to get the would-be assassin, if he was honest.
‘Who was it?’ he asked in a murmur, unperturbed.
‘A Rat.’
‘They’re getting bolder.’
‘Aye. Heard quite a few were killed last night by a Brother, they say. They’re trying to get your attention. Perhaps they want your protection,’ Bastian drawled, sounding bored and half drunk as usual.
Quin grumbled an inaudible reply as they entered Mal’s tent.
Bastian gave a high-pitched whistle at the sheer amount of weapons Mal had stored in here. The man favored knives, but he had an impressive collection that would put any castle armory to shame.
He was sitting at his table making an arrow when they entered. He didn’t look up as they sat with him, only stabbed the back of Bastian’s hand with the barbed tip when Bastian tried to touch it. Bastian simply licked his hand with a laugh, which made Mal’s eyes promise future pain.
‘Enough,’ Quin ordered. ‘We go north soon and we’re taking the girl,’ he said, his tone brooking no arguments. Best to just get it over with, though he knew at least one of them wouldn’t like it.
He ignored Mal’s surprised and then angry expression and Bastian’s fascinated one.
‘Why?’ Bastian asked.
‘Because she can be useful to us. She’s practically a gift from the gods.’ He grinned at his Brothers’ expressions. He rarely invoked the gods to further his plans. ‘She’s traveling with us to the capital and she is going to quietly and efficiently kill our enemies with that gift of hers with no one the wiser that the Army had anything to do with it.’
‘The north isn’t a place for anyone who’s different at the moment, or so I hear,’ Bastian mused.
‘As long as we get her there to do the deed, I don’t give a fuck what happens to her after. If she’s captured, we’ll silence her before she tells anyone who sent her.’
‘And if she’s not captured?’
Quin shrugged. ‘We may have uses for her afterwards. She’s a powerful weapon, after all. But if we find the tiresome female to be a hindrance, we can rid ourselves of her easily enough before we return to the camp.’
Chapter 5
Lily
She watched the woman who was also, somehow, a Brother from behind her book, sneaking glances here and there while the woman reordered the papers on the desk. Lily was still reeling from what Quin had done to her earlier, but the woman was a welcome distraction. She wondered if she and Quin were lovers. They’d certainly seemed friendly.
She chanced another peek at the beautiful woman dressed in her Brothers’ blacks and the woman’s head whipped around to catch her spying. Lily looked back at her book quickly and the other woman let out a chuckle.
‘Whatever Quin’s said about me, I don’t bite,’ she said with a laugh.
Lily cringed, wondering if she’d said that because she’d heard the Rat had bitten her. Had Quin told everyone what he’d done and how her body had shamelessly responded to his touch as well?
Suddenly the woman was in front of her and Lily tensed, but she didn’t cross the barrier, thank the gods.
‘Did Quin do that?’ she asked, gesturing to Lily’s bruised nose.
Lily shook her head.
‘What’s your name?’ the woman asked.
‘Lily.’
‘Lily.’ She smiled and Lily was surprised at how kind she seemed. ‘I’m Maeve.’
‘Are you a Brother?’ she blurted, putting down the book.
Maeve drew herself up. ‘I am. One of the only females ever to get through the training, although I was bound to my unit before I became a Brother officially, in the end.’
