Call of Brindelier (Keepers of the Wellsprings Book 3) Read Free Page A

I would have ended you in there. I don’t need an accomplice, nor do I want one. You will do as you’re told.” His voice deepens. “Go in there and change. Now.” His face is so close to mine that his bloody spit peppers my face when he talks. I press my mouth closed and wrinkle my nose and look right into his one good eye.
    “You don’t scare me,” I say with surprisingly more courage than I feel, even as he presses so hard that my shoulders feel like the bones will snap. “I nearly won that fight.”
    “That wasn’t a fight, it was a demonstration,” he smirks. “And nearly won is the same as dead in my book. You’re sloppy. A street brawler. I’ve seen it before. Too cocky for your own good. It’ll get you killed.”
    “You didn’t kill me,” I say defiantly. He presses closer.
    “Only because I was under orders not to,” his good eye flashes with a crazed hunger that makes me look away. I focus on the leather patch. I wonder what’s underneath it.
    “You don’t scare me,” I repeat, more for my own benefit than for his.
    “I should,” he sneers. “Don’t you know who I am?”
    I shake my head.
    “Good,” he growls. “That means I do my job well. How many famous assassins have you heard of? Not a single one worth his salt.” He shoves me toward the door. “Now, do as you’re told or Quenson will hear of it.”
    “I can’t,” I rub my sore shoulders. “These are my clothes. Sybel changed them with a spell.”
    His fist flies faster than I can react. It hits the door jamb next to my head with a such a force that the carved wood splinters and cracks.
    “Sorcerers,” he hisses a curse through clenched teeth. “Damn showoffs. Let’s go, then. We’ll find you something on the way. You can’t go back to Cerion wearing that. It doesn’t fit with the plan.”
    “What is the plan?” I ask as I trail behind him through the corridors.
    “Tib,” he replies, stalking ahead.
    “Tib?”
    “You lure him, I bag him,” Dub says simply, and his words thrill me. It won’t be easy, but I’m glad he’s the target. Tib’s been on his high horse for long enough. He’s got it coming.



Chapter Two: Promises
    Azi
Two Days Earlier
 
    “Twenty-ninth Midsummer?” Rian suggests.
    I stroke his hair, deep in thought as he rests his head in my lap and gazes up at me. It’s been two years since we defeated Jacek. Two years since Rian stood beside the golden pool and bent his knee to ask me to be his bride. I try to imagine myself on our wedding day, dressed in finery, standing before the entire kingdom, promising to be his forever. The notion is as abstract as ever. I feel as though I’m imagining someone else instead. Being a wife always seemed like such a distant prospect and yet here I am, looking into Rian’s hazel eyes, certain that he’s the only one I’ll ever love. He wants to move from imagining to planning. I should want it, too.
    A sunbeam dances through the leaves above and splashes across his neatly trimmed beard. He looks far more Mage-like with it. More handsome, if that’s even possible.
    “Are you really keeping this?” I ask as I tickle his coarse chin hair with my fingers.
    “Are you really changing the subject again?” Rian smirks up at me and covers my hand with his.
    “You can’t answer a question with a question,” I tease, smiling through the pang in my heart at the reminder of Flitt’s question game.
    Rian laughs and starts to sit up, but I push him down gently, kiss him, and try not to think about Flitt. It’s too perfect here in the forest park outside of the castle walls, where we’ve hidden ourselves since mid-morning in the shadiest grove, on the greenest patch of grass. We don’t get many moments like this anymore, just the two of us, quiet together.
    “You’re heavy on the distraction tactics today, Azi,” he murmurs between kisses. I sigh. He’s right. I can’t avoid the subject forever, and I don’t mean to.
    “The twenty-ninth?” I