Page 51 of Heartless Enemy

This was a kitchen.

Men and women wearing white aprons milled about inside. Chopping vegetables, whisking batter, kneading dough, stirring various ingredients in sizzling frying pans or bubbling pots.

This was acrowdedkitchen.

Tearing my gaze from the people inside, I glanced up and down the length of the wall we were currently standing at. If we wanted to get inside, we would have to do it from here. Because in all the other places, guards were meandering through the garden.

I turned back to the window, trying to calculate a way we could get in through one of these windows and make it across the kitchen without being spotted by the staff.

It was impossible.

There were simply too many of them, and they were spread out across the entire room.

From across the window, Levi was watching me instead of the kitchen. I could feel his gaze. Feel the question in it.

“To get through, we would have to kill them,” Levi said at last, his tone neutral. “They’ll see us when we slip inside, and if we let them live, they will raise the alarm straight away.”

Uneasiness slithered through my stomach like a cold snake.

Biting my lip, I kept my eyes on the men and women inside. Orange firelight danced over their features. Some brows were furrowed in concentration as they focused on what they were doing. Others chatted and laughed with each other while completing their tasks.

Even through the glass, I could hear the clanking of pots and the bursts of laughter. And I swore that I could almost feel the warmth from the ovens too.

“No.”

The moment the word was out of my mouth, I felt a sense of relief. It was as if the world around me finally stopped spinning, as if I finally stopped falling, and I once more found myself on solid ground.

A surprised laugh slipped past my lips.

Saying that one word had felt like the most natural thing in the world. In hindsight, I realized that it had never even been any question about it at all. Because the answer had always been and would always be no.

“No,” I repeated. Turning, I faced Levi head on while that steady sense of calm settled inside me. “This is where I draw the line. No civilians. I refuse to kill or hurt innocent people who are just doing their job. I don’t care if they work for someone as despicable as Christian White. His sins are not theirs.”

To my complete astonishment, Levi smiled.

“Good,” he said.

Drawing back slightly, I blinked at him in surprise. “What?”

I had expected him to be annoyed. Or at least frustrated. We were up against the clock, because we had to find the healer and get him out before it got so dark that we wouldn’t be able to ride back through the forest. So I had assumed that Levi would sigh exasperatedly at my sudden insistence on a moral line.

“Because if we had killed them, it would’ve been noticed quickly,” Levi elaborated. “And then White, or at least his guards, would’ve known that we were here before we could even find the healer. Let alone make it out again.”

For a few seconds, I just stared back at him while my mind tried to process his words. When I still couldn’t figure out what he was doing, I blurted out, “Then why didn’t you say that from the start?”

“Because all dark mages need to figure out their own limits. And the only way to do that is to be faced with situations where you have to make choices like these.” He nodded towards the people inside the kitchen. “I don’t like killing civilians either and avoid involving them at all whenever I can. While Callan, for example, doesn’t feel strongly one way or the other about it. He doesn’t go out of his way to kill them, but he also has no qualms about doing it if it helps him accomplish his mission.”

“Callan Blackwell?” I raised my eyebrows. “The guy who betrayed you and faked his death?”

Levi blinked and then shook his head, as if remembering that he wasn’t supposed to still talk about Callan. Then he cleared his throat. “Anyway, now you know whereyoustand. No civilians.”

A smile spread across my lips as I repeated, “No civilians.”

He nodded.

With that settled, I felt much better as I turned back towards the castle and scanned the walls and windows around us. We still needed a way in. But we only had this blind spot, so that meant that we had to find something else to use.

“Do you think you could create another one of those massive metal steps?” I asked.

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