“You look terrible.”

  Risens tightened his grip on the blade as the haute voice, dripping with judgment and outsized self-importance, barked as he appeared through the assassin’s ingress.

  Fendri, the King’s personal steward and confidant, stood, hands on his hips, glaring with an expression of unconstrained disgust.

  “And you’re late,” he sneered. His voice, arrogant and nasally, was made worse by the bushy mustache that sat upon his upper lip and corners of his mouth like an asp. And his tone often carried the same venom.

  “Perhaps His Majesty would be better served accomplishing the tasks himself,” he continued. “He’d likely complete them with far less delay and without the undue commotion. Do you even attempt discretion?”

  Risens was an assassin. He killed without remorse or second thought—as he was tasked. He was well aware that his moral compass held no distinct points. He was purpose-driven, following orders from the King himself. His method and means, while detestable to most, were in defense of a just cause. In defense of the very realm itself. The peace of Halthome was stained with the blood of traitors and rebels alike.

  There was no sense in counting the lives abated at his hands, though they had all been part of the job. He took no pleasure, felt no remorse as the sparks of life were snuffed out like a candle’s flame—flickering one moment, evaporating into smoke the next. Never before had he wanted to kill an individual so fiercely as he did Fendri. For countless times, he pondered the thousands of ways he could make the man suffer. The desire was potent; he could feel it calling him, urging him onward with every fiber of his being. Every moment spent in his nettlesome presence only served to inflame the desire until it threatened to consume him from within. Risens often wondered if the irritating man spent his days lying in wait, purely to pester him. He seemed to have an uncanny sense of knowing exactly where he would be and when.

  It was neither his self-control nor restraint that kept his blades from burying themselves to their hilts in the man’s eye sockets. If not for the explicit decree of the King, Fendri would have suffered years ago. King Lathrenon left no question or ambiguity as to the veracity of his edict: no harm would befall the man by his act or blades. He was protecting him as if he were the King himself.

  Risens had never puzzled over the forceful nature of the missive. It was not his place to question or doubt the direct orders of His Excellency, King of Halthome, so the man’s life would be preserved.

  What it didn’t require was that he needed to speak to or respect the man in any way, shape, or form. There had never been any love lost between the two. From Risens’ earliest memories, the arrogance and spite had merely been a staple of his loathsome and tragic personality. It had remained sharply consistent throughout the years as the man’s body grew soft with age and further bloated with self-worth. Curiously, Fendri appeared to have no fear. Not of Risens nor of harm or death. Perhaps it was the knowledge of his enduring protection that fueled his hubris, though the man seemed to revel in his denigration the most.

  Risens dipped his shoulder slightly, hammering it into the steward as he pushed past without a word. His hands remained on his blades, white knuckled from the strain of the constant pressure.

  “In what brothel were you off carousing?” Fendri demanded after a gasp at the physical affront. “Perhaps you visited them all for how long you’ve made His Majesty tarry in wait. He now meets in the throne room with others who have the decency to respect his time.”

  Paying no mind to the stream of insults that flowed in his wake, Risens stalked forward, his pace steady and focused. Time was a limited quantity. The ravings of a petulant servant rolled off him like water from feathered wings. If he desired to survive to see the morning, speed was his ally.

  He approached another door crafted of solid metal. The chamber beyond was simple, scarcely adorned with images that unsurprisingly depicted the avian symbol of the realm. A pair of thin leather armored suits were worn curiously by a pair of mannequins, one on either side of the exit leading to the hallway beyond. Each wore a long black cloak much like his.

  The thin, flexible gear was the choice of assassins like him as it allowed the flexibility and dexterity required. It was surprisingly resistant to indirect slashes, though it would do little to deflect a direct stab or an arrow’s deadly flight. Thankfully, war hammers and maces were sluggish to strike, and his training taught them to avoid such attacks with relative ease. Should their speed betray them, the armor would offer no protection to a crushing blow, and the resulting damage would be devastating.

  Both suits were marred with deep gouges and scratches where blades had raked across their surface. The black cloaks, much like his, fared no better, bearing unmistakable signs of battle. The scarred breastplate on the left was marked with a wide stain, a ring that spread around a trio of punctures over the heart; the cloak was tattered and worn. The one on the right had a few scratches from blades, though the leather was brittle and flaky. The cloak was charred, with one side almost entirely consumed by fire.

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  The silent monuments stood as testaments to the hazards of his profession. A potent reminder that stealth was paramount. That his skills were not to be taken for granted. Risens bowed his head in reverence as he stalked by. He had known the man, Vagon, who’d died—while Risens was yet a child—within the armor on the left. He remembered his original tutor well.

  Moving into the hall beyond, he increased his pace. The walk from the secret entrance to the throne room was not lengthy, though he knew his limited time was running out with every passing step. Without slowing, he hastened past several doorways that lined the corridor walls. He was intimately familiar with each, one being his private quarters and the others housing the training rooms of his ill-spent youth. Aside from his trainers—all masters in stealth and the various lethal arts—few others ever entered this wing.

  His current irksome shadow was, unfortunately, the only one beside him who frequented the area.

  Risens lengthened his strides, putting on speed as he moved through the hidden passage. Ahead, the pathway would enter a series of forks, each leading to specific locations within the castle. Making a right at the first intersection, he was dismayed to hear Fendri’s persistent keening, heavy breathing, and solid footsteps still thumping behind him. Shifting to the left at the next fork, the structure of the passage changed. To this point, the walls and ceiling had been constructed of stone. Though the floor tiles remained the same coarse gray stone, the remainder was carved from a rich, dark wood. For some reason, paintings depicting a myriad of different subjects and scenes graced the hallway at evenly spaced intervals, though he wondered for whose benefit they had been hung. He cared little for the art. Perhaps they had simply run out of room in storage and needed a place to hang them. To one whose life was his work, the decorations were immaterial.

  The persistent string of insults, though still flowing, had lost their theatrical zeal as they approached the secret entrance to the throne room. From insulting banter, they became forceful and angry as Risens ignored the steward entirely. This only served to incense him even more.

  The hallways came to an abrupt end.

  “As I’ve said,” Fendri protested, his voice increasing in pitch with his anger, “King Lathrenon is currently in meeting. You will not ignore me, whelp.”

  Risens tensed as the heavy hand of the King’s steward seized his shoulder. Risens wheeled on his obnoxious shadow, lifting his body from the ground with one hand, and slamming him into the wooden wall of the hall behind him hard enough to steal his breath and unsettle the perfect leveling of the paintings on either side. The words stopped in Fendri’s mouth as the dagger in Risens’ other hand dimpled the skin of his throat, just hard enough for him to feel, yet gentle enough to not break the skin. His face was flushed red from the pace and the high dudgeon he’d worked himself into. It now blanched to a pasty, sickening white.

  “I do not answer to you, nor were my orders to give you my report,” Risens snapped, though he kept his voice low. “Until the King changes that, there is nothing I have to say to you. Now, if you will, you are delaying my return to His Excellency.”

  He released the steward. Fendri crumpled to the ground with an aggrieved gasp as the strength of his legs failed him.

  Risens’ blade had returned to his sheath before his body settled to the floor. “Make yourself useful as the servant you are. The paintings are crooked. Fix them.”

  Risens grinned at the silence of Fendri’s reply. He returned his attention to the passage before him, allowing the expression to linger for only a moment before mentally steeling himself for the task at hand. The small measure of retribution against his perpetual tormentor was wholly satisfying. He’d neither physically harmed nor murdered the annoying man, so the King’s command had been upheld. There were thankfully no missives given about not threatening him.

  When his back had fully turned to the steward, he let his hand rise to his chest, brushing the still-warm section of tunic. His hands continued upward, making a nonchalant rub against his chin, confirming that the mask was still concealed. The bright symbol in the corner of his vision shifted to another shape as he tracked its movement.

  He needed to hurry.

  The right edge of the wall that blocked his passage concealed a latch, triggered when one particular stone was aggravated. He gave it a gentle push and swept through the threshold as the door swung silently inward.

  The chamber he found himself in couldn’t have been more disproportionate to the hallway he had just departed. The regal opulence of the throne room was stunning. Gold inlays, trim, and gilded filigree radiated a warm glow in the light of the chandeliers. At the same time, the precious green jewel that adorned much of the furniture sparkled, giving off multi-hued pinpoints of light that dotted the stone floor. The vaulted ceilings were suspended by eight colossal fluted pillars spaced at equal distances apart, meeting the walls at pitched angles. Dominating the space between them, grand stained glass windows stretched from floor to ceiling, each depicting a solitary frame of the historical ravens coming. Viewed as a whole, they told the whole tale of the ascension of King Adalhard.

  Risens’ boots made no sound against the polished marble floors. A wide avenue bisected the room with padded benches lining each side of the central aisle. Immediately, before the dais steps, a large portion was left clear to provide space for an elaborate image of the raven inlaid into the floor. With details outlined in gold, the black onyx of the design stood out in stark contrast to the white, polished marble.

  Risens slipped undiscovered into the darkness of the shadow behind the pillar nearest to the throne. The secret door closed silently behind him. Less than five meters away, King Lathrenon sat rigid on his throne, his wizened face filled with an impassive expression.