The assassin stomped his foot.
"Pansy puss. What kind of girl move is that?" Caillen threw his arm up and punched him in the throat.
The assassin wheezed.
Caillen snapped his wrist so hard, he felt the bone break in his grip. The knife hit the marble with a thud as the assassin cried out in pain. Kicking it toward his father, he flipped the assassin onto his back and pinned him to the floor. The assassin tried to squirm or punch out of his hold, but it was one Caillen had used many times on Kasen.
No one could break out of it.
Well, maybe Nykyrian. But thankfully this asshole wasn't as lethal.
His father called for security over the intercom.
Caillen grimaced at his father's compassion. "Be easier if you let me kill him."
The assassin continued to struggle against him like a dying fish trying to get back into water. Caillen held him fast.
Coughing to clear his bruised throat, his father shook his head. "I want the pleasure of seeing him executed."
And he'd rather have the pleasure of gutting the bastard on the ground like a pig. "You know if he has a League contract on you, you can't do that. But if I kill him before we find out about it, it's legal. You sure you don't want me to slip and accidentally plunge my knife into him a few dozen times?"
"While I admire your planned accident, son, I'd rather interrogate him."
Caillen heard a muffled pop two seconds before the assassin started convulsing. "Shit!" He shot to his feet and grabbed his father, then pulled him out of the room.
"What's going on?"
Holding his breath, Caillen didn't answer until they were outside and the door was shut tight. "Suicide cap. I don't know if it's airborne or strictly ingested. Either way, he's dead and we don't need to inhale it until someone not us does a hazmat analysis."
Security guards came running down the hall, but Caillen stopped them from entering. "You need a hazmat expert to go in there. The perp just offed himself with a cap."
The captain nodded before he pulled his people back and notified his superior. Then the captain met his father's gaze. "Do I need to call for a medic for you, Your Majesty?"
"I'm fine." His father clapped Caillen on the back. "Thanks to my son. How did you know I was being attacked?"
He didn't answer what to him was a rhetoricuestion. "My question to you is why didn't your security know about it?"
His father straightened his robes with an imperial tug. "For an obvious reason, I don't have cameras in my bedroom. It's the only dark area of the palace."
Flaky excuse in his book. Better a porn video for the guards than a dark area that left his father open to assassination. But what did he know? "Shouldn't they have seen him in the hallway?"
His father offered him an indulgent smile. "Of all people, I think you know how easy things like this happen. Those who want in will find a way."
Caillen ground his teeth at his father's lackadaisical tone. "You're awfully ambivalent over it."
"Hazard of my business. Since the moment I took the throne, I've had attempt after attempt on my life. You get used to it after a while."
He would argue that, but in his life and business it was so common that like his father he only found it odd when someone wasn't trying to kill him.
His father met his gaze. "You were incredible, by the way. Where did you learn to fight like that?"
"Three older sisters who kept wanting to put dresses on me and paint my nails. Since I couldn't outrun them, I had to learn to outfight them and unfortunately for me, they don't hit like girls. If that's not bad enough, they all fight dirty too."
His father laughed. "Thank you."
He shrugged the gratitude away. "You saved my life, it's only fair I save yours."
Evzen fell silent at those words that cut him deep inside. It wasn't what he wanted to hear from his son. He wanted to hear Caillen say that he'd saved him because he loved him.
Just once.
He's a man and a tough one at that. Men like Caillen didn't admit to tender feelings for anyone. He understood that, but the father in him who remembered holding his son as a newborn was desperate to have his son accept him.
It's a fool's dream. He knew it and yet he couldn't stop the ache inside that yearned for a relationship he feared would never happen. If he could only lay hands on the ones who'd deprived him of seeing his son grow up. Of being there when Caillen had needed him.
He wanted blood over the gulf that separated them.
Caillen still didn't accept him as family. Not really. His sisters were the only ones he admitted to. Damn you bastards for taking him from me.
But at least he had his son now. Though it wasn't the close, tight relationship he desired, Caillen was still here. For the time being, he wasn't running for the door and so he would accept that and hope for a time when Caillen felt like this was his home too.
And that he his father, not a Dagan smuggler.
Darling and Maris came rushing up to them.
"What happened?" Darling asked as soon as he stopped by Caillen's side.
Caillen's answer was short and clipped. "Assassin." Nothing more than that was needed to explain the commotion.
Darling let out a sound of exasperation. "League?"
Caillen shook his head. "He had on civs, but he carried a League weapon--don't know if it was a trophy or he was a contractor. As soon as they clear the room, I'll have them run the DNA and see if we can find out if he was solo or attached and if there was a contract issued."
Maris scanned Caillen's body with a worried frown. "Are both of you all right?"
Caillen scowled. "I am so offended that you'd even ask that question. I'm sorry but if third-rate shit like that can take me out, I deserve to die."
Maris scoffed at his righteous indignation. "Forgive me for questioning your fighting prowess. However, I do remember having to pull you out--"
"I was drunk."
"And you were bleeding all over my new shoes."
Caillen's scowl melted under a smile he was trying to keep hidden as he remembered the event and didn't want to cop to it entirely. "Yeah well, there was ten of them and one drunk me. Actually now that I think about it, I was so flagged, I thought there was twenty of them. My vision was just that screwed up."
His father sighed heavily. "Oh the stories I overhear. I shudder at how many close calls you've had in your life."
Caillen gave him an arch stare. "I wasn't the one who almost had my head pinned to the wall a minute ago."
He was right about that and while Evzen prided himself on being intelligent with his safety and cautious by nature, he realized how much he lacked when compared to the child he'd fathered. Whatever had caused fate to take his son from his side, it had given his boy life skills that could definitely come in handy for an emperor.
Now if he could only train and hone Caillen's civility to the sharp point of his fighting skills he'd have a legendary leader.
Caillen flagged down the hazmat workers as they came to extract the body. He divested the first one to reach him of her mask and gloves, then went to investigate the assassin's remains.
The man was lying right where they'd left him. A greenish cast to his skin let Caillen know the death had been quick and about as painless as it could be. But that wasn't what concerned him.
Kneeling down, he retrieved the League dagger and searched for the assassin's reader. He found it and rose to his feet.
The worker stopphim from leaving. "That's evidence."
He stared down at the woman's peeved glare. "Indeed it is and I'll hand it over after I look through it." He stepped away from her.
She moved to block him again until her boss cleared his throat and shook his head. Her expression furious, she finally let him pass.
Moving out of their way, Caillen turned the reader on and started scanning the open files. They all confirmed his suspicions. Typical hired hack. Nothing really to differentiate him from any of the other scum-suc
king bastards eager to earn a credit at the cost of some poor soul's life. At least not until Caillen bypassed the security on his device and started going through his secure files.
While they searched the body, he isolated himself in a corner to review what their little hemorrhoid had been up to. Typical credit transfers that any butcher would have. Wanted postings where the perp had searched for victims...
Encryption just difficult enough to keep a low-level expert at bay and one interesting nugget he hadn't been expecting.
He stepped out onto the balcony to make a call he didn't want anyone to overhear.
Nykyrian Quiakides picked it up a few seconds later. "I can't imagine what trouble you're in now, Dagan. How many you need for an evac and how covert?"
Caillen snorted at Nyk's dry, thickly accented tone. And for all of his bravado, the last time Caillen had told him he needed an evac, Nyk had told him to suck it up since he'd have started a war to pull him out of the Garvon prison. "Not that kind of trouble."
"Who is she then?"
"That either. Damn, can't I explain before you jump to conclusions?"
Nykyrian let out a dry laugh--something that had never left the former assassin's lips before he'd married a few years ago. "By all means enlighten me. If this isn't about a woman or your ass in jail, I'm definitely intrigued."
Yeah, okay, Nyk had a point. Caillen glanced inside where they were putting the assassin into a body bag. "What is a tirador?"
"Context."
Obviously the word had a multitude of meanings, so Caillen kept the explanation of his circumstances short and sweet. "I have a hitter on the floor with a League dagger who tried to off my father. His reader has him listed as one."
"Listed by whom?"
Only Nykyrian would revert to formal language in such a hostile situation. "Can't read that part--language unknown and the translator is unable to ID it. I'm forwarding it to you now."
Nykyrian paused to read it. "He's a civ-con under League orders acting as an instigator to cause conflict for your father."
"Meaning?"
"Someone wants a war and they want to start it by assassinating your father. League doesn't want it traced back to them, so they hired your stain to try. Bad thing is, he won't be solo. Another will rise to the greed and take the shot."
"Shit."
"Exactly."
Caillen fell silent as he contemplated how many assassins would want to be a million credits richer... yeah... that was one long list. "So what do I do?"
"Duck."
"Tired of the one-word answers, Nyk. I need a course of action here."
"There's nothing to be done, Dagan. You'd have to know who wants the war and why. I can guarantee you that all the stain might--and I use that word with all due sarcasm--have known was who hired him, and that would be a juiceless flunky who would die before he or she talked."
"So in other words, don't bother looking."
"It would be a waste of time."
Easier said than done. Caillen didn't operate that way. "I can't do nothing."
"Fine," Nykyrian said in a strained tone. "I'll look into it, but I can't make any promises. Just because the League gave me amnesty doesn't mean I have friends there." Nykyrian was the only League assassin who'd ever left the corps and lived. The latter being a testament to the man's incredible fighting skills. To this day, the League wasn't happy about it and if not for the fact that Nykyrian was heir to not one, but two, major empires and married to the daughter for a third, he'd still have a death sentence on his head.
Caillen paused as he saw Darling on the other side of the door. He motioned his friend outside where his father was talking, then closed the door so that the others wouldn't overhear his conversation.
Frowning, Darling stood across from him and crossed his arms over his chest.
"What can I do to protect my dad?" Caillen asked Nykyrian.
"Not much. Tiradors are pretty hostile. More than that, they always frame someone for their actions--it's what they're paid to do."
"How do you mean?"
"I meant what I said. He was there to not only kill your father but to pin the crime on an innocent. You search him, you'll probably find evidence he was going to plant."
"I did search him and found nothing."
Nykyrian paused before he responded. "Then that's a good sign. It means whoever hired your assassin is probably close enough that they wanted to plant the evidence themselves and didn't trust him to do it."
"To protect their identity?"
"Exactly."
Which meant the person who wanted his father dead could easily be one of the people standing on the other side of the glass. Caillen narrowed his gaze at his uncle and the other advisors who surrounded his father.
One of them was a traitor...
He met Darling's gaze that reiterated his own thoughts. "I need proof."
Nykyrian scoffed. "Of all people, you know how hard that is to come by. These people unfortunately aren't stupid."
He was right about that. And Caillen's mind whirled as he tried to think of how best to protect his father. "What language was that note in?"
"Ancient Pralortorian."
No wonder his translator had been useless. It also made him feel better that he hadn't been able to identify it. "What the hell is that?"
"It's a language the Trisani spoke about four hundred years ago." Only Nykyrian would know something that obscure.
"Why would his orders be in a dead language?"
"League protocol. They use dead languages to communicate so that any mundane who happens on their missives won't be able to understand them." Which was no doubt why Nykyrian had been fluent in it. That assassin training came in handy in so many ways.
Caillen sighed. "So it all goes back to the League."
"Not necessarily. The League might have nothing more to do with it than issuing termination orders. Remember, they're corrupt. Anyone who can afford to bribe them could have gotten this done."
"In other words, guard my back."
"Yeah. 'Cause no offense, this is going to get ugly. If I was the hitter, my next crack at your father would be at the summit."
Caillen arched his brow as he looked at Darling and remembered what Darling had said earlier. "What about their security?"
Nykyrian laughed. "Amateur night."
"Darling told me that it was so tight even Syn would get caught."
"He seriously underestimates our Rit. Trust me. Even you could breach it."
Now that was just insulting. "Thanks for that."
"Ah, don't get your feathers knotted. You're one of the best contractors I know. That wasn't meant as a slight. Only saying you could."
Caillen still felt insulted by it. His thoughts went to the summit and how best to protect his father while there. "Are you going to be there?"
"No. Kiara's about to give birth any second. There's nhing this side of hell or the other that could pry me away from being here right now. Sorry."
He couldn't blame Nyk for that either. The man had literally given his life for his wife. "It's all right." He didn't need help when it came to surviving. "Thanks for translating for me. I'll talk to you later."
Nykyrian hung up.
Caillen let out a tired breath as he turned his attention to Darling who'd waited patiently through his call. "What's up?" he asked Darling.
"I found something you missed."
He arched a brow at that. "Pardon? I missed something?"
Darling nodded. "He was transmitting right before he attacked. I routed it back and was able to get a twenty-second loop."
"Okay. What did it say?"
Darling pushed the small transmitter in his hand. A deep, accented voice spoke. "Don't worry, Your Highness. I'll kill your father for you and then you'll be emperor."
The blood faded from Caillen's face. "What the krik..."
"You're the one being framed, Cai. I barely got that out before the guards found it." He dropped it on the
ground, then crushed it beneath his boot heel. "Someone plans to remove both you and your father from the line of succession."
No shit.
The only question was who.
And when.
6
Royal Qillaq Training Arena
"Cover your back!"
Circling her sister in the dirt practice ring inside their oversized stadium, Desideria Denarii barely ducked out of the way before her older sister's sword strike separated her head from her shoulders. She countered the blow with one of her own. One that drove her sister back and into a defensive stance.
And that set Narcissa's temper into overdrive. Shrieking, she went at Desideria with everything she had. But with her furious attack, she unbalanced herself and Desideria disarmed her with one stroke which only made her sister madder as her sword was slung ten feet away from them.
It landed in the dust with a loud clatter.
Throwing her head back and spilling her black hair across her shoulders, Narcissa let loose a fierce battle cry, then charged at her. Desideria barely caught herself before she stabbed her own sister through the heart--that was what she'd been trained to do when someone attacked her and they were stupid enough to leave her an opening. Yet even though it was their warrior's code, she refused to kill Narcissa ing a practice fight.
Even if it meant days of starvation for her.
They'd already buried two sisters from training mishaps. Desideria had no desire to bury a third.
Instead she allowed Narcissa to shove her to the ground where her sister rained blow after blow on her face. Desideria kicked her back, then flipped up to land on her feet. She moved in to retaliate.
"Enough!"
They froze at the shout from their trainer. At six feet in height, Kara was a well-trained soldier. Her short, slicked-back black hair matched Narcissa's and they all shared the same sharp, exotic features and black eyes. Muscular and curvaceous, Kara and her twin sister had once been members of the High Guard for their queen. A queen who just happened to be Desideria's mother and Kara's older sister. Once Desideria and her four sisters had reached a trainable age, Kara had honorably quit the Guard to be their private instructor.
Kara had been merciless to them ever since.
Kill or be killed--that was her aunt's only motto and it was one she strove to drive home to her nieces.