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  I regretted the alcohol fogging my thoughts, although it did have its perks. Some things I never considered when sober, and crashing a bride’s party neared the top of the list. Running before the banquet’s conclusion came a close second.

  By escaping the mayoral palace, I could get a head start on everyone. The thought of betraying Todd left a bitter taste in my mouth. I liked him. I wanted to count him as a friend—a real friend, something I hadn’t dared to have before.

  But above all, I valued my freedom. The chains of responsibility closed in around me. Gentry Adams knew who I was. He knew what I did. Todd did, too.

  The mayor wanted to legitimize me and continue my reign of bloodshed and violence. Within the banquet halls, the laugher and talk of those enjoying the party cut deep. I didn’t belong in the open, dressed in finery meant for a woman like Blossom.

  I belonged in the shadows, unseen and unknown.

  My thoughts sobered me up, and I longed for another drink to chase them away.

  “Jesse?” The concern in Blossom’s voice anchored me to reality, and I stared into the tigress’s eyes. “What are you thinking?”

  If I continued with my fledging idea, I could disappear. If I took Blossom with me, at least to the city limits, she could fulfill my bargain with the mayor through her experiences. Success or failure meant nothing to me, as long as I could escape the pressure building in my chest.

  Too many knew who I was and what I had done, and the only way I knew to survive was to put one foot in front of the other, change my name—or at least part of it—and keep moving beyond the reach of those who wanted to control my life or take it.

  “We could play a game.”

  “A game? You’re drunk, Jesse.”

  “Not quite there yet, unfortunately. Anyway, that’s beside the point.”

  Blossom’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s bust out of this joint. See if we can get out through security. Go into the city. Find a bar. Have some beer.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “No, and I’m not drunk enough yet. This is like the precursor to being drunk. Tipsy.” I huffed. “If I don’t get some fresh air, I’m going to stab someone with my shoes. At least that way, they’d be good for something other than making my feet hurt.”

  “You aren’t comfortable here, are you?”

  I gave the hem of my gown a kick. The pleasant, swaying buzz of intoxication had faded too fast, and I blamed my liking of beer for my resistance to the alcohol. “What am I supposed to do here? I wear jeans, behave more like a man than a woman most days, and the longest relationship I’ve had with anyone or anything has been with my sword.”

  “You’ve known Todd a long time. Years, from my understanding?”

  “On and off, here and there. I stick around a few months, do work for him and other guild masters, and wander off again. I had a house in Detroit once. Figured out really quick I don’t like staying in one place for too long.”

  “Gabriel would not be happy if we left.”

  “There is that,” I conceded. “Drunk ideas are not usually good ideas.”

  “There’s also the issue of the sedatives. Todd and Cleo would flip their tops if we disappeared.”

  “No, I’ll disappear. You’ll return and tell your father exactly how you got out and show him the flaws in his security. Getting in and getting out are opposite sides of the same coin.”

  “You mean to leave?”

  “I don’t belong here.” My certainty of it hurt. I thrived as a nameless face, a bodyguard among many, with my sword the only expectation anyone had for me. “I don’t want to do what they want me to do. I don’t want to be who they want me to be. I made a mistake, speaking that name where someone might hear.” I hesitated. “Or not a mistake at all. I’m tired, Blossom.”

  Blossom sucked in a breath, and her eyes widened. “But what about Todd?”

  “What about him?”

  “He cares for you.”

  The truth hurt, and my throat tightened from the emotions coiling in my chest like a serpent poised to strike. How could something like having a friend hurt so much? People knew my name, and because they did, I would die—sooner than later. “He’s my friend.”

  Blossom tilted her head to the side, watching me with shadowed eyes. The moment understanding struck her, she sucked in a breath. “You would rather hurt him now than have him suffer through your death should you stay. And being what you are, probably at your own hand.”

  “I’m not a very good friend,” I confessed. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to live. But, too many people here know who I am—what I am. Elsewhere…”

  “Elsewhere, you have a chance to disappear, to get out of the business. Start a new life.” Blossom paused, and her sigh swept out, long and gusty. “Tell me, then. Why did you tell someone your name?”

  I thought of the tall, dark, and handsome man from Miami, his open amusement, and the pleasantness of his company. “I thought if I could be anyone else, I’d probably like someone like him. I thought I’d do something else with my mark rather than leave another body cooling in death. I think I thought, maybe, just maybe, I could be something I’m not.”

  “Then let’s make a deal.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You and me. We’ll see if we can break out of here. Tonight. You’ll take me across the city. Somewhere distinct. Somewhere I haven’t been. Somewhere I can get proof I’ve been there. You’ll make sure I make it back here, as far as the gates, before dawn. Then, you leave.”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  “A little taste of freedom. A chance to watch you work. Maybe I’ll try to hunt you down myself, just to see if I can. Maybe I want to, because I’d like to think I could be your friend, too. You’re not enjoying yourself here, however much it pains me to admit it. I see a party. You see threats, and a lot of them. You spent the entire party looking to see who might be out to hurt someone and wondering who might want to hurt—or worse, cage—you. Am I right?”

  There was no point in denying the truth. I shrugged. “You’re right.”

  “Is there anything in your suite you can’t live without?”

  I grimaced at the thought of leaving a pulsing Starfall stone for Todd to deal with. Then again, if anyone could handle such a stone appropriately, it’d be him. “No.”

  Where I meant to go, I’d never need a tattoo kit, poisons, and the other tools of an assassin ever again.

  Blossom smiled. “Then why don’t I take you on a tour of the palace?” She spoke loud enough those in the hall could hear her. One of the men with the peacock raised his hand in an acknowledgement of her words, and I recognized the feathered mask he wore as belonging to Gabriel.

  Linking her arm with mine, Blossom pulled me towards the doors. “My room first. Then you can show me what you can do.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  At my suggestion, Blossom took a long, convoluted route to her room. While my memories of the place were old and hazy, I remembered enough of the mayoral palace’s layout to chart a path to the perimeter walls. Just as when I had murdered the prior mayor, the windows were open and unbarred. It’d be trivial to slip outside, even in a frilly dress.

  The numbers of guards hadn’t changed, either, something I found absurd with so many people going in and out of the palace. While some of the guests, like Todd, stayed in residence, many weren’t. The guards didn’t pay anyone any attention as people came and went.

  “Amateurs,” I growled under my breath.

  “That doesn’t sound promising for security.”

  “Blossom, there are at least a hundred people wandering around wearing masks. All we’d have to do is change clothes, switch masks, and we could walk right out of here without anyone being the wiser.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. We walk right out. If we behave like we’re supposed to be leaving, no one will think we’re supposed to be staying, assuming we get to your room
s and out before most of the guests head home for the night.” The truth annoyed me; when I had killed Mayor Longfellow’s predecessor, it’d taken a little bit more effort to get in and out.

  “I want to see that. If you had this sort of chance back then, you would have taken it, right?”

  “Definitely,” I confirmed.

  “It’s that simple? Change clothes, swap masks, walk out the door? Just like that. No sneaking required?”

  “It’s that simple. I had to use stealth before, but there wasn’t a big party going on.”

  “That’s rather terrifying.”

  She understood. Blossom understood the risks, the real danger she—and everyone else—was in if someone decided to wipe out a lot of influential people. What little I could see of her face paled.

  “Shifters think their noses are foolproof. Mystics believe they can detect anything with their magic. If I had brought my kit with me, I could have poisoned everyone in that room.”

  A chill ran through me. For enough money, I probably would have, too. For the right reasons, I would have left hundreds of bodies cooling on the marble floor.

  Everyone had a price. I was no different, and the thought sickened me.

  “You’ve killed a lot of people, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you regret what you have done?”

  “Yes. No. Both. Those I killed deserved their deaths.”

  “Could they not have atoned with their lives? Done more good than ill?”

  I grimaced. Such thoughts led assassins to their ends via suicide and other merciful ways out of a life too filled with death and violence. “The women the previous mayor held were trapped in mating bonds created against their will. What of them? Their freedom was bound to his life. Imagine their situation for a moment. You love Gabriel, don’t you?”

  “I do,” she answered in a growl.

  “Imagine you have a run in with a wolf—one who can force mark a mate with a single bite. He attacks and has his teeth on your throat before Gabriel can claim you as his. You love Gabriel, but you’re now bound to the wolf. The previous mayor had several women thus bound. His death was the price for their freedom. Could his life atone for that?” I growled, too, and the sound rumbled in my throat and chest.

  “No.”

  “I killed him for that reason. Could others have redeemed themselves? Don’t ask me that, Blossom. The weight of my sins are already heavier than theirs.”

  “How much guilt can one person carry before they break?”

  “Too much.”

  “Do you think leaving will really help?”

  “My life has a value. Right now, it’s half a million dollars. Tomorrow, it may be more, it may be less. I don’t want to wake up thinking, ‘Who do I have to kill today?’ I told a man my name. I shouldn’t have, but maybe, subconsciously, I hoped he’d give me the out I needed. I guess it worked.” Bitterness gave my voice an edge. “I tattooed him in golden ink.”

  Blossom hissed. “And what does that tattoo mean?”

  “His life is mine. Mine to keep. Mine to take. Mine to guard. A warning to other assassins. I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it. Impulse, I suppose. He wanted something. I wanted something. Maybe I meant it as a challenge, some sort of game we could play together.” I slowed, staring down the hallway without really seeing anything. “I was stupid.”

  “You were lonely.”

  I stiffened, glancing at Blossom out of the corner of my eye. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lifting up her hand, she held up two fingers. “I mean this.”

  “A peace symbol?”

  “No, you dunce. Your friends. That’s how many you think you have, right? Me and Todd. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I like Cleo, even if he’s a sneaky jackass and drugged me.”

  Blossom held up a third finger and waited.

  “Okay, fine. I don’t have a lot of friends.”

  “From my understanding of the situation, you didn’t even think you had one until someone dropped a massive bounty on your living head.”

  Maybe I killed people with my sword, but Blossom’s blade, forged with words, pierced far deeper than any weapon ever could. “I’m not supposed to have friends. I’m supposed to do my job and leave it at that. I’m not supposed to like Paulus, I’m not supposed to like Adrian, or Danielle, or Marie. I’m not supposed to be friends with anyone.” I spat the words, but the wounds she had inflicted bled deep within.

  “Why not?”

  “I am what I am. I’m not supposed to like them, because one day, I might have to kill them. That’s all I am right now, a killer.”

  “And that’s not what you want to be.”

  “Right.”

  “What about that man you marked?”

  “What about him?”

  “You tattooed him. Doesn’t that mean he’s your responsibility?”

  I dismissed her concerns with a wave of my hand. “I don’t even know who he is. It was a stupid mistake on my part. I’m not going to do anything about him. He can probably get it removed or covered if he wants. Maybe it’ll protect him. Maybe it’ll make people ask him questions if they discover it. Once the redness goes away, it won’t show easily; he had a nice tan.”

  He had had a nice everything, and in the moment, it had made me grateful I’d chosen to become a woman rather than a man.

  Life would have been so much different if I had chosen otherwise. Oddly, I couldn’t imagine what life would be within the Blade Clan as a proper man. The memories of my time with my clan escaped me, leaving me with fragments, often consisting of smells. The stinging heat of melting metal from the forge, the stench of sweat from learning to fight with a sword, and the acrid bite of quenched metal filled my nose.

  “Would you stay if the bounty disappeared?”

  I shook my head. “No. Too many people know.”

  Blossom nodded, and in silence, she guided me to a set of rooms deep within the palace, opening the door to let me in. “I understand. We’re not quite the same size, but I have a few dresses that will work well enough. I have some casual attire that should be a decent fit. You can smuggle them out in a large purse. Will that do?”

  “It will.”

  “Good. Let’s get to work.”

  It took less than twenty minutes to get changed and fill a purse with the basics I needed to make a run for it. I protested when Blossom dropped a large roll of cash among the clothes, but she silenced me with a growl.

  “You’re taking it. Consider it your fee for showing me Charlotte. That should be enough to get you somewhere and get yourself set up. The rest is up to you.”

  I stammered a thanks. There was nothing else I could do.

  We left the mayoral palace without a single soul stopping us, walking out with the other stragglers leaving the party. I kept quiet, allowing myself to slouch and adopt the amble of someone far too tired for their own good. Without any prompting, Blossom mimicked me.

  For me, freedom was somewhere far from Charlotte. The mayor’s daughter found it on the street circling the crater, away from the watchful eye of guards or her father.

  “I can’t believe that worked.”

  “Don’t even think of turning around and gaping at the palace. That’s a good way to get caught.” I gestured down one of the roads leading deeper in the city. “Getting in is more complicated than getting out more often than not. I made use of the supply shipments to get in. With a palace this large, there are a lot of people needed to move things. Drivers for the horses, manpower to move the crates. Lots of ways out, especially if you know how to swim. You can take the tunnels, jump out a window, or if the timing is right, walk out the front doors with no one caring. There are empty rooms rarely checked.”

  “Like the one you were found in.”

  “Yes.”

  “It can’t be that simple.”

  “When you don’t have mystics powering communication devices, no cameras,
and few guards, it is that easy. The guards have no way to communicate with each other. There’s no way to cover every inch of the palace. No cameras—no one and no way to power them, not without convincing mystics it’s important enough to waste their precious magic on it.” I held out my hands, my palms facing the sky. “What did you expect?”

  “A sense of security,” the mayor’s daughter muttered.

  “Make your own security.”

  Neither one of us said anything, and in unspoken agreement, I guided Blossom through Charlotte so she might see life beyond the confines of her father’s gentle, sheltered world.

  It took us three hours to walk to a tiny cafe on the outskirts of the city, a place operated by an old pair of first generation shifters. While Blossom sipped coffee, her expression bemused, I selected a coffee mug from the store’s limited supply of merchandise and purchased it.

  When I sat it in front of her, she stared at it before frowning at me.

  “Proof you escaped from your father’s clutches. You won’t find them anywhere other than here. That meets your requirement to prove you got out without being seen, right?” The mug didn’t look like much, dark blue with a yellow moon painted on its side. In neat lettering, the cafe’s name circled the store’s logo. “Be careful when you wash it, or the paint will wear off.”

  “I’ve never had coffee before,” the tigress confessed. “I knew it was expensive, but I never realized how expensive.”

  I found it interesting someone like her, with her family’s wealth and prestige, had never had coffee and thought it expensive. “It’s worth the ten bucks every rare now and again.”

  “It’s bitter.”

  “Rather like life.” I sank onto the chair across from her and took a sip of mine. “Someone’s probably noticed you’re gone, you know.”

  “That thought had crossed my mind.”

  “That means they know I’m gone, too. They probably think we’ve run away together.”

  “Or got dreadfully lost in the palace. That happened to me once. It took the guards almost six hours to find me.”