Orin Kaelen woke with the faint gray of dawn creeping through the shutter slats, the air in the rented room still cool from night's breath. He lay still for a moment, eyes open, listening. Below, the inn stirred—the clatter of a bucket, murmur of voices, the scrape of a stool across planks. Ordinary sounds, harmless. He exhaled, rolled from the bed, and felt the ache of sleep slip from his body. Today would not be spent in idleness. Today he would sharpen himself.
He reached for the black bundle folded neatly at the chair's back. Cloth soft, worn thin where the seams rubbed, yet serviceable. He dressed with practiced ease: the dark tunic and trousers that clung close to muscle, the soft boots designed to kiss wood and stone with silence, the leather belt with pouches aligned for balance. Last came the hooded cowl and the thin veil of mesh that shaded his face without smothering breath. In that garb he became faceless, not quite man, not quite shadow—only intent.
The narrow window creaked when he shoved it wide. A draft of city air rolled in, ripe with smoke, bread, and horse piss. He climbed onto the sill and crouched, fingertips brushing the stone frame. A last glance at the empty room. Then he pushed off and landed on the ledge below without so much as a thud.
Orin ascended the side of the inn like it was a ladder built for him alone. Fingers wedged between stones, boots pressed against cracks. Higher and higher, until he hauled himself onto the slanted roof. He stood, straightened, and filled his lungs. The city sprawled out in shadow and rising sun—rows of tiled roofs, chimneys coughing smoke, the distant cry of a hawker already at work.
He ran.
His strides devoured the rooftop, each footfall placed with calculation. He landed on the balls of his feet, rolled with his momentum, and sprung again, flowing like a second pulse above the waking streets. The city beneath had yet to notice him. A boy herding goats paused and looked up, mouth ajar, then hurried along without shouting. An old woman at her window blinked, crossed herself, and shut the shutter. No alarm was raised. To most, he was a trick of light, a shadow misplaced.
The rhythm built in him: leap, land, vault. Muscles warmed and loosened, lungs filled, heart thrummed steady. He vaulted a narrow gap between roofs, touched down, pivoted, then ran on. His mind emptied of thought until there was only movement. He was a blade honed on whetstone, testing edge against the air.
After half an hour of this ritual, he angled toward the northern quarter. There, beyond the fishmongers and potters, lay a row of derelict warehouses—abandoned by merchants years ago, but far from unused. He knew what nested there.
Thieves.
The secret hoard of the street-brotherhood, a place meant to be whispered of only in coded breath. Orin had known of it for months. Not through rumor, but through the meticulous gathering of shadows: a tail followed here, a whispered bribe there, the careful watching of who carried burdens into those crumbling doors and came out lighter. An assassin's trade was half blades, half eyes. He had both.
He slipped down from the rooftops into an alley that stank of mildew. The warehouse loomed ahead, its door chained but not locked. Orin pressed his shoulder against a cracked shutter, slid inside, and landed amid stacks of broken crates.
The hoard gleamed in the half-dark. Coins heaped in sacks, goblets and jewelry piled like trinkets on forgotten shelves, rolls of fabric dyed rich crimson. He crouched, lips quirking. Such care they took to guard their gold, only to keep it in a ruin a fox could break into.
He selected a handful. A silver-chased goblet small enough to tuck under his arm. A string of pearls coiled like a serpent in his palm. They vanished into his tunic, hidden against his ribs. He could have taken more. He could have robbed them blind. That was not the point.
The point was exercise.
He strode toward the front door, shoulders squared, pace deliberate. He undid the bar with a clang and pushed the wood wide.
The thieves outside froze. Four men, lean and sharp-eyed, blades at hips, cloaks draped to hide weapons. They had been muttering over maps and tokens, plans for another night's plunder. Now they stared.
Orin lifted the goblet into the sun, let it flash bright, then slid it back beneath his tunic. Their eyes went wide.
"Stop him!" one barked.
He ran.
The thieves bolted after him, cursing, their boots slapping the cobbles. Exactly what he wanted. A laugh caught in his throat but never left his lips. His body moved faster than thought. Down narrow lanes, over barrels, across open squares where market stalls were only beginning to stir.
"Thief!" one of them bellowed, irony dripping from his tongue.
Orin vaulted a cart laden with apples. The merchant shouted, waving fists, as apples spilled in a rolling tide. Orin never slowed. The thieves stumbled through the mess, loosing foul words into the air.
He cut through an alley no wider than his shoulders, leapt a stack of firewood, and bounded up a wall by placing foot against brick, then hand, then foot again. He grabbed the edge of a low roof, swung up, and was airborne once more.
The thieves followed, scrambling, cursing. One slipped and nearly fell, but the others dragged him up. Orin glanced back and saw their rage burning, their chests heaving. They could run, yes, but not like him. Not with the same grace. His stride was calculation, his landings a rhythm. He wasted nothing.
From roof to roof he flew, cloak streaming, veil clinging to his breath. The city opened before him in a rolling canvas of red tiles and gray smoke. Birds startled into flight as he surged past. His body sang with exertion, a hymn of muscle and bone.
The thieves persisted longer than he expected. Grit, he granted them that. Yet their steps grew heavy, their leaps clumsy. He widened the gap with every bound, until they trailed half a rooftop behind, panting, their curses ragged.
At last he paused on the edge of a roof that overlooked a narrow square. He drew the pearls from his tunic and let them fall. They glimmered as they dropped, striking the stones with a clatter.
The thieves skidded to a halt, stared, then scrambled down to snatch the treasure. Greed outstripped fury. They clutched the pearls, held them aloft, jeering, and forgot him.
Orin was gone before they thought to look. He slipped down a stairwell between chimneys, pressed himself flat against shadow, and vanished into the folds of the city.
From his hiding place he watched them search the rooftops, puzzled, muttering. They cursed the air, but not him, for he was already myth.
He exhaled. Sweat dampened his collar, and his chest rose steady. The smile that touched his lips was rare and fleeting, yet real. Exercise achieved. Edge tested. He was still sharp.
He walked on, the city swallowing him whole.
***
The veil came off once he was certain the chase was behind him. Orin slipped it down, folding the thin mesh into his belt pouch. The morning sun brushed his face, painting the sweat sheen on his skin, and he exhaled, shoulders loosening. He could not parade through the streets with his assassin's visage bare for all to see—it would invite questions, suspicion, perhaps recognition from the wrong set of eyes. Better to blend.
Fortunately, the cut of his garb—dark tunic, close trousers, boots worn but unremarkable—fit well enough with the city's throng. Half the mercenaries, dockmen, and caravan guards wore similar. The belt pouches, the hood lying slack behind his neck, the manner in which he moved—these were details only the sharpest eyes would mark. To most, he was another wanderer among thousands.
He walked without hurry, allowing himself the rare indulgence of simply being among the people. The city stretched vast around him: avenues thrumming with carts, narrow alleys stinking of rotting cabbage, high towers of pale stone where banners snapped in the morning wind. Merchants shouted wares from every corner—fish gutted fresh, dyed wool stacked in bolts, herbs bundled in fragrant knots. The cries mingled with the clang of smiths, the bray of donkeys, the laughter of children weaving between stalls.
Orin let it sink into him, the chaos and color, the chorus of life. He had haunted cities all his days, yet there was always something to marvel at if he allowed himself to look. Here a minstrel with a lute of carved ash wood, playing not for coin but for the pleasure of hearing strings sing. There a pair of priests daubing ash on foreheads, murmuring blessings over passersby who barely slowed. A cart piled high with figs collapsed under its own weight, and the seller wailed as children darted in to snatch fruit with sticky fingers.
And in the midst of that—he saw her.
She appeared not like lightning, sudden and blinding, but like dawn when one realizes night has slipped away. Toffee-hued skin glowed in the sun's light, smooth as polished bronze. Her hair was a cascade of black silk, falling past her shoulders, gleaming like water at dusk. Dark almond eyes, wide and watchful, turned now and then upon the market stalls with a quiet curiosity. She carried herself with poise, taller than many women, near his own height yet not quite, moving with the grace of one accustomed to freedom rather than burden.
Orin slowed. His chest tightened, though he could not name why. Beauty he had seen before, in taverns and courts alike. Yet this woman seemed carved from something deeper. She stood alone—no handmaid trailing, no guard shadowing. She bartered for spices, tucked packets of saffron and cinnamon into her satchel, and moved on with the quiet certainty of one who belonged.
He knew at once she lived alone. It was there in the way her eyes swept stalls without consulting another, in the careful selection of goods not for a household but for herself alone. Solitary, as he was. That recognition tugged at him.
Orin followed.
Not in the blunt fashion of a drunkard pursuing a skirt, but as shadow attends flame—close enough to feel its heat, far enough to seem apart. He ghosted through the crowd, weaving when she paused, halting when she lingered, always at a distance that felt natural. Each time her head turned, he bent behind a vendor's cart, adjusted his stride, melted into the tide of strangers. She did not see him. She could not.
She bought bread from a baker with flour on his beard, then honeycomb from a thin man with yellowed teeth. She paused at a jeweler's stall, fingering a chain of silver set with garnets, though she left it behind. She spoke little, only enough to barter, her voice soft yet edged with certainty.
Orin memorized every place she touched. The baker. The honey-seller. The jeweler. If he ever wished to find her again, he would know where to begin.
The game of it stirred something boyish in him, something he thought long dead. The thrill of stalking not prey but mystery. The small leaps of his heart when she paused, when she turned slightly, and he ducked just in time to keep her eyes from his. He smiled once—smiled without meaning to—as she scolded a vendor for weighing her cheese falsely, and he, red-faced, gave her more than she had purchased.
Time stretched. The errands wove together like beads on a string. And still he followed.
At last she turned down a quieter lane lined with shaded courtyards. Orin lingered at the corner, watched her vanish into the flow of the street. He could have pursued farther. He did not. He had seen enough.
He leaned against the wall, heart steadying, and let her image brand itself into his mind: toffee skin, black silk hair, almond eyes.
There were thousands upon thousands of souls in this city, yet he knew he could find her again. Always he found what he sought. That was the assassin's way.
He pushed off the wall, tugged his hood low, and walked on. The morning lay before him, full of noise and light, yet beneath it all he carried the imprint of her presence like a secret flame he dared not name.
***
The city's light dimmed as afternoon waned, long shadows stretching from every gable and spire. Orin returned to his inn first, the veil tucked away, the assassin's cowl hung over the back of the chair. For a time, he lay sprawled on his bed, staring at the timber beams above. The exercise had worked his body into a fine hum, yet his mind refused rest. He listened to the muffled life of the inn: laughter drifting up the stairwell, the scrape of tankards, boots on planks. Human noise. It filled the hollow places, but only barely.
Boredom crept in, unwelcome and insistent. He pushed himself upright, restless, and drifted downstairs into the common hall. Men drank and shouted at dice. A lute-player plucked aimless tunes in the corner. Serving girls wove through the crush with jugs of ale sloshing foam. Orin sat in shadow and let the sounds wash over him. For a while it sufficed, but soon even that dulled. He had no contract pressing upon him today, no mark to stalk, no knife to polish in readiness. His body ached for something. His mind wanted more.
The answer, he decided, was pleasure.
The tavern where Lord Halric Deymar had once met him sprang to mind. A raucous place of spilled drink and sin, where assassins like him could blend into the clamor. Halric had sat with him there, their faces bared, speaking of the mage Veynar Khold. That mage was ash and memory now, the job done clean. Yet the tavern remained, full of other hungers.
Orin pulled on his hood, not the veil, and left the inn. The city's night was beginning to breathe awake as he threaded its veins. Braziers burned on corners, the air thick with smoke and roasted meat. Drunken laughter rose from alleys, coins clinked, knives glinted. He knew the paths well, and before long the tavern loomed ahead—its door yawning wide, music and chaos spilling into the street.
Inside, the crush of bodies struck like a wave. Smoke curled in greasy swathes beneath rafters, lit by guttering torches. The floorboards shuddered beneath stamping boots as men gambled at dice and cards, shouting wagers. Serving girls with bodices pulled scandalously low carried jugs, their laughter rough with habit. And everywhere—whores. Painted faces and eager eyes, perched upon laps, whispering lies of devotion in exchange for coin.
Orin moved through the din like a blade through silk, silent, sure. He scanned the room, remembering a face. Lira.
She had been bold the first time, draping herself on his lap without invitation, whispering her name like a dare. He had not taken her then, though her perfume had lingered on his cloak for days. He had filed the name away, sharp and easy to draw.
He found her near the hearth, bent at the waist to whisper in a merchant's ear while her fingers toyed with his beard. She adjusted her bodice as she leaned, breasts lifted high, her gaze wandering—until it caught his. Recognition flashed quick, followed by a smile made of honey and heat. She excused herself from the merchant with a caress of his cheek and crossed the room toward Orin.
"Back again," she purred, voice carrying even through the tavern's roar. "I wondered when you'd find me."
He studied her a heartbeat, then inclined his head. "Buy you a drink?"
Her smile widened. "I never refuse good manners."
They found a table half lost in smoke. He fetched ale for her, darker brew for himself. She drank quickly, licked foam from her lip, and leaned closer. Conversation came easy—not about themselves, never that, but about the world's rot. About how merchants swindled, how lords taxed the marrow out of peasants, how the guilds fought like dogs in the street. Their laughter rose above the clamor more than once, sharp and genuine.
She teased him for his silence, calling him mysterious. He countered with jests at her painted lips, and she laughed harder. There was no talk of who he was, no hint of what she truly sold. For a time, they were simply man and woman, bantering against the backdrop of ruin.
When at last he asked her price for the night, she leaned back, eyes glinting. "For most, I'd ask a purse fat enough to choke a mule. For you?" She touched his cheek, her nails grazing skin. "Handsome as sin, you'll ruin me. I'll take nothing."
He studied her, weighing truth from play. Then he nodded. "Then lead the way."
Her quarters lay two streets over, a cramped chamber above a cobbler's shop. She lit a single candle that threw gold across her cheekbones and beckoned him in. The door shut, the night muffled to silence. Her hands slid to his shoulders, her lips found his, and the candle guttered with the heat of their closeness.
The details blurred into shadow, into breath and warmth. She drew him down upon the bed, whispering words meant only to stoke fire, and he gave himself over. The world receded, all edges softened, until there was only the press of skin, the weight of bodies shifting in rhythm.
Yet even in that, his mind betrayed him.
He saw toffee skin, not painted cheeks. Black silk hair spread across pillows, not dyed curls. Almond eyes meeting his, unguarded, instead of Lira's sly gaze. Again and again, as he moved with her, as her voice rose soft against his ear, the memory of the woman in the market cut through. Unnamed, unknown, and yet sharper than the woman before him.
When it was done, when sweat cooled and Lira curled against his chest with a satisfied hum, Orin stared at the ceiling. Her words of praise, her languid caress—they washed over him like water over stone. His heart lingered elsewhere.
He held her through the night, because she reached for him and he did not care to deny her. Yet his thoughts never left the other, the stranger whose image clung like a mark he could not scrub away.
***
Days passed in a rhythm Orin pretended was routine. He saw Lira again—twice, then thrice. Each time she welcomed him with a smile sharpened by want, each time they shared drink and laughter before tumbling together into warmth. She was skilled, quick with jest, eager to please. Any other man might have found himself lost in her arms, content to let nights blur one into the next.
Orin enjoyed her, yes, yet never fully. Her touch pleased his body, not his spirit. For even in her laughter he saw another smile, softer and rarer. Even in the dim of her chamber, his mind conjured toffee skin gleaming under sun, black silk hair falling loose, almond eyes watching the world with quiet command.
He cursed himself for it. What madness was this? He did not know her name, her station, nor her heart. Yet her image rooted in him like a thorn he could neither pull free nor ignore.
On the fourth night, as Lira slept against him, Orin lay awake. He stared at the rafters and knew: he would find the woman again. Better to face obsession than rot beneath it.
The next morning he returned to the baker's stall. He loitered by the spice-merchant's booth. He drifted near the jeweler's shop where she had fingered the silver chain. Hours stretched. No glimpse.
He came the next day. And the next. Patience was an assassin's first blade, and Orin wielded it well. He watched, he waited, until at last—on the sixth day—he saw her again.
She walked the street with the same measured grace, satchel at her hip. The sight struck him like an arrow. His chest tightened, his pulse surged. She was real. Not dream, not figment.
He followed again, as he had before, but this time farther. Through markets, down shaded lanes, across a small stone bridge arching over a canal. The city shifted around them until the air itself seemed cleaner, quieter.
This was no merchant quarter. Houses here were large, their gates wrought iron, their gardens pruned. Guards in livery lingered near doors, their eyes sharper than common watchmen. The woman walked as though the streets belonged to her.
Orin shadowed her until she turned into a broad house of pale stone with shutters painted green. Two guards lounged at the gate, halberds in hand. They greeted her with nods, their ease betraying long familiarity. She disappeared inside.
He stood across the lane, arms folded, and studied. So—wealth, perhaps old blood. A daughter of coin or title. The guards spoke low, unconcerned. They did not see him vanish into the alley's shadow.
That night, he returned.
The guards leaned drowsy against the gate, their lantern casting a pool of yellow light. Orin crept along the wall, silent as thought, scaled ivy trellises, and slipped onto the roof. From there, he lowered himself to a balcony, then slid the latch with a wire. The window opened with the sigh of old hinges, and he entered.
Inside smelled of lavender and beeswax. Carpets muffled his boots, tapestries softened walls. Candlelight glowed faint in the hall, unlit rooms yawning dark. He moved with predator's patience, every step considered.
Her house whispered wealth in every detail: polished tables, gilt frames, crystal decanters. Yet he did not linger on treasure. He prowled instead for her.
Once—twice—he nearly collided with her. She passed through a corridor as he crouched behind a carved screen. She hummed softly in another room as he pressed flat against the doorframe, holding breath. Each time he escaped her eyes by a hair's breadth, heart thundering with the thrill of near discovery.
He left before dawn, slipping out as shadows thinned. Satisfaction burned in him. He had been in her home, unseen. He had breathed her air, walked her halls. It was enough—until boredom returned.
He came again. And again. Always unseen, always the ghost. Until, on the seventh night, his illusion shattered.
He had entered through the balcony, gliding into her chamber like smoke. The room was dim, the scent of jasmine heavy. He thought her absent. He thought wrong.
Her voice came from the dark, calm yet cutting. "What in the bloody well are you doing in my house?"
Orin froze. She stepped from the shadow, candlelight catching her features. More beautiful than memory had allowed—eyes sharp now, her poise edged with steel. She held no fear, only command.
He reacted on instinct, spinning toward the window, but she moved first. Quick as a striking cat, she blocked his path. He tried to slip past, but she caught his arm, grip iron-strong.
Shock jolted him. No soft court-bred maiden fought like this.
He shoved back, measured enough not to wound. She shifted with the blow, used his momentum against him, forcing him sideways. He struck low, swept a leg. She leapt clear, spun, and countered with a fist that clipped his jaw.
He grinned through the sting. "You fight."
"Better than you sneak," she said.
They clashed in silence, feet sliding across carpet, fists and palms striking, blocking, twisting. She was trained—trained well. He tested her with speed, she met him with cunning. He tried brute force, she answered with precision. She moved like an assassin herself, each step economical, each blow intended.
At last she broke the rhythm with something he had not expected. She raised her hand, whispered words that trembled the air, and power surged.
Invisible force gripped him, hoisted him off his feet. The world spun as she whirled him like a doll, his balance shredded. Then she cast him down hard enough to rattle his bones.
Dizzy, stunned, he looked up—and saw her kneel beside him. A dagger pressed cold against his throat. Her eyes burned above it, unflinching.
"Don't move," she warned.
For once, Orin obeyed.
He stared up at her, chest heaving, mind awhirl. He had been outmatched, caught, subdued—by a woman who was both assassin and mage. Beautiful beyond reason, and dangerous beyond belief.
Disappointment gnawed him, yet beneath it flickered awe.
He had wanted to know her. Now he did.