The Price of Hate by Kyle Alexander Romines

Author:Kyle Alexander Romines [Romines, Kyle Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-24T22:00:00+00:00

My gaze lingers on the castle, where an array of dazzling blue banners tousle about in the wind. It’s a beautiful day without a cloud in sight. Sunlight bathes the port’s waters in golden light. Autumn leaves fall to earth, where the people of Siren’s Reach traverse city streets in heavy numbers.

Bast and I darken an empty passageway far below the castle. It’s a quiet area. Parishioners across the street come in and out of a temple to the Dagda. Boats at the dock are visible in the distance. A friendly looking guard makes his way down a curved stone staircase and stops to help a blind beggar who fell in the road outside the temple. The guard whistles a lively tune as he continues on his path until I clamp a hand around his mouth and drag him out of view. He slumps over, unconscious after a brief struggle, and I prop him against the wall and cut his throat.

Bast scowls disapprovingly. “You didn’t have to kill him. He was already out.”

I shrug. “He was a guard.”

“He didn’t seem so bad to me.” Bast works to help me remove the guard’s armor.

I stop what I’m doing and give him a hard look. “If you don’t have the stomach for this, you’re in the wrong line of work.” Even so, he has a point. Between the war and the unrest across Ulster, the guards of Siren’s Reach are vigilant. The job needs to be relatively bloodless or there’ll be trouble, and we have enough of that on our hands already. Kade is even more hotheaded than Talon, which doesn’t bode well, and Søren’s never met a fight he’s walked away from. Fortunately, Duke’s keeping an eye on them.

I stash the guard’s body away while Bast dresses in his armor. When he’s finished, we depart the secluded passageway and head down the staircase to join the crowds. Locals and travelers alike push through a busy marketplace where peddlers of many varieties ply their wares. From the way Bast watches children playing games in the shade, it’s likely he’s thinking about his own stolen childhood, but I can’t find it in me to pity him. My father killed my mother in front of me.

We come to an impoverished neighborhood near the docks. Wren grew up in a tavern in the area, and according to Shane, she returns around the same time each week to hold onto a piece of what was her life until a few weeks ago. It’s midday, and the air is unseasonably warm. Gulls squawk overhead while circling the river, and a few drunken sailors stumble about in search of the docks.

“There she is.” I nod at a girl handing out bread to the poor.

Bast stares at her in surprise. “She doesn’t like I thought she would.”

She’s a slip of a girl no more than sixteen. Her hair is a chestnut brown, and a crescent moon shaped birthmark surrounds her left eye. Judging from the way Wren pulls uncomfortably

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