Assassin Queen by Chandra Ryan Page B

purpose to me.”
    It was the most painful thing he had ever had to say. But the words hurt less than what he knew he had to do. Before he lost his nerve, he took a steadying breath and then slid his blade through her neck, severing the blood vessel cleanly. When she grabbed at her throat and started thrashing in his arms, the full weight of what he had done crashed into him.
    He had trapped Lilly in a state of frozen torment. The room spun around him as he dropped the struggling mage. His stomach heaved, and unshed tears burned the backs of his eyes. He was going to have to kill Lilly. He had just promised himself that he had the strength to do it. The alternative was unthinkable. But, as he approached her with his dagger, he thought about turning the blade on himself.
    “She was right. I do love you,” he whispered softly. “And I will die along with you. This I swear. But to leave you trapped in the hold of her spell for an eternity is worse than a million deaths.”
    Silverwood coughed and sputtered behind them, and it was all he could do not to turn and thrust the dagger through the woman’s heart. He refused to let her steal from what little time he had left with Lilly, though.
    “I wish there were another way.” As he put the tip of his dagger to Lilly’s chest, his own heart stopped. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t strong enough. Maybe if he just turned the dagger on himself, one of the other men would finish Lilly?
    He shook the weak thought out of his head. Lilly needed him. She needed him to do this. He heard the mage’s last attempts to breathe behind him and had readied himself to plunge his dagger into Lilly’s heart when he heard a faint whimper.
    “No.”
    The word was soft but unmistakable, as was the gentle movement of one of Lilly’s hands as she wrapped her finger around his.
    He dropped the dagger as relief flooded through him. “You’re alive.”
    She stretched her body carefully starting with her neck. “No thanks to you.”
    “But I thought you were trapped. For an eternity.”
    She couldn’t possibly think he would harm her for any other reason.
    “So I heard. Patience isn’t your best virtue. It was a magician’s bluff. As soon as the hag took her last breath, the spell dissipated.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “Maybe. But you could’ve sworn to find the counter spell even if it took your entire life. That’s what the heroes in bards’ tales do.”
    He would have worried if he hadn’t seen the telltale twitch of a smile. She was goading him. Trying to get under his skin. He’d long thought she did it for sport.
    “Ah. But I am no hero. And you are no damsel in distress to sit at home and wait for rescue.”
    “True. If it’s of any comfort, I would’ve killed you as well. If the situation was reversed.”
    “Is that your way of telling me you love me, too?”
    Before she gave her answer, she was caught up in a seizure that made her eyes roll to the back of her head.
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
    Lilly woke up slowly and in more pain than she’d ever experienced in her lifetime.
    “How long was I unconscious? Where am I?”
    Kirin held her tightly in his arms as he ran his hand over her hair. It would have been sweet, if she thought Kirin knew how to do sweet.
    “Still in Silverwood’s quarters. You were only out for a few minutes.”
    His shudder was at odds with his words, however. It was as if her passing out had caused him pain. Maybe he had been speaking the truth when he’d declared himself.
    Her heart sped with hope, but she quickly put a damper on it. This was Kirin. He could have said that just to provoke the mage. Discerning the truth would take longer than she currently had. She had come here with a mission, and she planned on finishing it before the Guard woke up and turned this whole affair into a bloodbath. She sat up, and the room swam before her.
    “My stepfather?”
    “Is in his chambers, I assume.”
    “Then we should finish this before I