Page 137 of The Shadow Fae Rhapsody
“The battle…” I murmur.
“Your plan worked,” Shade says. “The support line has breached the fortress and they’ll conquer it soon. It’s almost over.”
I make another attempt to get up but fail.
“Don’t overexert yourself. Remember your promise to me,” he reminds me.
I look up to meet his gray, stormy eyes.
Yes…I remember that weird, weird promise. How many days was it now?
He must have seen the question in my eyes.
“There is a place deep in the hive city of Tiamat, a dark place devoid of sunlight or joy where our guild keeps traitors and those accused of sedition…” Shade pauses to take in a tight,strained breath. “My mother has been imprisoned there for over fifty years now.”
I swallow dryly at his confession. “Did she end up there because of my father?”
He nods.
I crumble as my heart split clean in half.
“My mother was a Grimsbane, a master assassin, and she betrayed the guild for him,” he says, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Reinhart promised he would come for her. He never did.”
My father is dead, Shade.He can’t come for her anymore.
I raise my trembling hand to touch the cold, demonic mask on his face.
“We’ll pay the guild and get her back,” I promise him, my voice breaking.
Shade laughs a sad, hollow laugh. “That’s not how we pay the debt in our caste. Don’t worry, I’ll buy her release soon.”
I draw my brows together. “How?”
He stares deep into my eyes. “One hundred completed missions in exchange for her freedom.”
The assassin gazes heavenward for a moment.
“This assignment to protect you and the Silverra is my last one. All I have to do is be a good watchdog for three hundred days,” he says, his eyes gleaming and brilliant like I’ve never seen them before. “I’m almost there. Ninety-one days to finish our debt. Ninety-one days until I see my mother.”
His voice is filled with so much hope and yearning that it makes me want to cry.
Shade misses his mother.
“So, you can’t die until then. Do you understand?” The assassin levels me a hard look.
I nod fervently.
He narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t go turning yourself into a candle or putting yourself in harm’s way.”
“I won’t,” I promise.
My eyes feel shiny and I think I’m crying. I’m just too exhausted and physically hurt to feel anything.
The assassin shakes his head, as if realizing he made a mistake. “Fuck… that was unprofessional.”
“No, Shade. Thank you for telling me that,” I say quickly.
Shade still hasn’t answered how he came to know my father, or how he became a summoner, or who my father was to him. I almost ask the gray-haired assassin, but his last reaction to Reinhart Wiolant’s name makes me reconsider. A battlefield is probably not the best time or place to mention that.
