Page 87 of A Crown of Tears and Treason
A shiver skittered down my spine. I leaped from my chair and turned.
Zandyr was leaning his strong body against the frame and watching me fret with an easy smile, so different from the sharp grins he used to throw my way.
“Why would an assassin slit someone’s throat?” I asked, ignoring the tight coil in my belly at seeing him again.
He’d witnessed me breaking down over my parents’ deaths and had comforted me through it, the last thing I wanted was to appear weak. Again.
His mighty brows rose. “In a curious mood, are we?”
“Allie says there have been more murders like that in the last few years. And…that’s–that’s how my parents were killed. From what I could see.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. It was a small wonder the pages in this library hadn’t been stained with my tears, but crying wouldn’t help me avenge their deaths. “One cut throat was an emergency. Two–”
“Is a pattern,” Zandyr said slowly. “It could also be a coincidence.”
“What if it’s not?”
He pushed himself away from the door frame in one fluid motion, and placed a black package onto the table, his eyes not straying from mine. “I vaguely remember one Clan doing it. The Quoriliths. They dissipated centuries ago in petty squabbles and incompetence, though they say you can still find a temple or two of theirs wasting away in the swamplands. They slit their traitors’ throats in lavish ceremonies so they would never be able to speak their betrayal in the afterlife.”
“My parents weren’t traitors.” Or part of whatever the Quoriliths had been.
“They did keep secrets.”
“One. Me. And I’m out.”
“Then their assassins wanted to eliminate a threat quickly.”
Allie had thought the same. Perhaps I was searching for answers in the wrong place, but… “I want to dig into this.”
“Do it. I’ll ask my spies to look into these murders The Huntress mentioned.” Zandyr nodded solemnly at me. “Has Adara taught you how to defend your throat?”
I flexed my fists, freshly bruised and bandaged. When I hadn’t been reading, I was getting tossed on my ass by Adara or pushed to my limits by Allie. But the blue tendrils were still stubbornly absent. “We’re getting there.”
“Show me.”
I blinked at him. “You? The sword-wielding–”
He detached his mighty blade and set it down next to the package, the blood in the hilt swirling around in a lazy loop.
“–armor-wearing–”
He huffed a laugh and quickly divested himself of his armor, the capsules of blood winking in the dim light. Zandyr rolled up the sleeves of his black shirt, molded tightly to his strong body. I caught a peek of the dragon tattoo’s teeth digging into the edges of his neck, and the hard shape of his sculpted chest muscles. There was also a scar near his heart, barely visible.
I struggled with my next words. “–warrior who can magic his way into unbelievable speed?”
“I can’t do magic.” He grinned, but it was warm now. Inviting. “Yet.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What did we say about not lying to each other?”
“It’s the truth. And partially why I came here tonight.”
“Because I’m such a master at it and you want me to teach you?”
He bit the inside of his cheek as his eyes slowly roamed over me. “I have no doubt you’ll master magic better than me in the future. Protectorate cares more about power than the Blood Brotherhood. Why do you think we’re better at fighting?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but after my wedding, I really couldn’t. The Blood Brotherhood Elite had been an unstoppable force.
“Because, dear menace, we only get to learn the secret of our magic once our blood hears The Calling. Which happens only when we have something to lose, never before. A partner, a vulnerable child, a kingdom worth defending. So we won’t use it without caution. Until then, we are defenseless if we don’t train. And I have trained every day of my life, much to my childhood tutors’ dismay.”
My chest tightened. “And now that I’m here and you officially have a partner, you can get Your Calling.”
