Prince and Assassin (Perilous Courts Book 1) by Tavia Lark

Author:Tavia Lark
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2022-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

❧

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Whisper

Whisper wakes slowly into a haze of darkness and muffled voices. Everything is such a nauseous blur that he can only be awake now; his dreams are all too sharp these days. His head throbs worse than when Father uses his phylactery. The Silaisan blood mage relied more on force than finesse to drag Whisper under.

Opening his eyes reveals nothing. Whisper closes his eyes again, listening, until his head stops spinning and the distant voices coalesce into words.

“I didn’t sign on to kill anyone. I just wanted to teach him a lesson.” The voice is familiar.

A stranger answers with a harsh laugh. A man. “What the fuck did you expect?”

Another stranger. A woman. “Cyril wanted to question him, but Cyril isn’t here, so we’re calling the shots.”

Cyril. The blood mage? Whisper fixes the name in his mind.

He opens his eyes again and this time makes out faint light across the room. A rickety staircase leads from the floor above to this musty cellar. Curled on his side, with his arms bound behind him and his feet bound together, Whisper’s entire body hurts. He doesn’t remember all of these bruises.

Some relief winds its way through his aching body. They’re still speaking as if Whisper was the target, which means Julien is safe back in the castle right now. All Whisper has to do is free himself and escape.

He takes a deep breath, testing his ribs and muscles for anything worse than bruises. No fractures this time. His abductors were gentler than they could have been.

“All right,” says the familiar voice. Prewitt, Whisper finally recognizes. The guard who hates Draskorans. “Do what you want.”

“Good man,” the man says, as the woman starts to laugh. “Good man.”

Whisper doesn’t feel anything when Prewitt’s body thuds to the floor overhead. From the sound of things, Prewitt got himself into this mess, and Whisper doesn’t have the leisure for sympathy right now. He needs to escape before he joins Prewitt in death.

Prewitt and Brom, and the other Langley he killed at the castle. Their blood is still tacky against Whisper’s arms, and Whisper guesses he wasn’t unconscious for long.

Drying blood flakes off as he works his wrists in the rope, twisting and prying. His captors didn’t tighten the rope again after he fell unconscious. Scraping his wrists raw against the coarse rope, he manages to pull free.

Something clinks.

Whisper grabs his broken bracelet from the floor. The leather’s coming undone, revealing one of the gemstones. He shoves it into a pocket.

Next are his ankles—but when he tries sitting up, the world spins black. Nausea washes through him. He’s on the ground again without remembering falling. Turning his face against the dusty ground, Whisper wills the cold stone to sharpen his wits.

He misses the stupid dream he was living in just hours ago. Dancing under starlight. Leaning into warmth. Pretending he deserves to be courted like that.

Movement from upstairs. A shadow in the dim light from the cellar door. Whisper swears silently and scoots towards the door-side wall—if he can take the man by surprise—

Thunder crashes through the building above.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.