A week passed since the incident in the armory, and the Royal Suite had transformed from a sanctuary into a spectacularly prosperous prison.
The "Gilded Cage" protocol, as Vera had bitterly dubbed it in her head, was in full effect. Kassian had not been exaggerating when he promised to burn anyone who came within a hundred yards of her. The corridors leading to their private wing were now choked with the absolute elite of the Imperial Guard. Damon, whose usual stoicism had been replaced by a grim, hyper-vigilant paranoia, practically shadowed her every footstep. Even Milo, who was blissfully enjoying his new life of roasted fowl and sword lessons in the outer courtyard, had a permanent, heavily armed escort.
Lysander was confined to his sprawling estate on the edge of the capital, stripped of his Council seat, but his absence in the palace only made the air feel heavier. The silence was not peace; it was the drawing back of a bowstring.
And Vera was suffocating.
She sat at the massive mahogany desk in Kassian's private study, staring at a stack of intercepted missives that Simon—her old contact from the Grey District, who Damon now smuggled in through the kitchens—had delivered that morning. She was supposed to be hunting for Lysander's remaining loyalists, acting as the Emperor's new Spymaster. But her mind couldn't focus on the wax seals and coded ink.
She reached for the crystal goblet of water on the edge of the desk.
The moment her fingertips brushed the glass, a sharp, crackling sound echoed in the quiet room.
Vera snatched her hand back with a gasp. The water inside the goblet had flash-frozen in a fraction of a second, the sudden expansion of the ice shattering the expensive crystal into jagged shards.
She stared at the frozen mess, her heart hammering against her ribs. It was getting worse.
Ever since she had transmuted Kassian's pure fire in the armory, the ancient magic of the Heart of Boreas had awakened from its dormant state. It was no longer just a passive chill in her veins; it was a living, breathing entity that craved release. When she was calm, she could suppress it. But when she felt trapped, anxious, or angry—which, lately, was constantly—the frost leaked out of her.
She had frozen a silver hairbrush to her vanity table yesterday. She had accidentally given a maid frostbite on two fingers simply by accepting a folded towel.
Kassian's solution was to keep her isolated, to keep her in the bed, wrapping her in his blazing heat to act as a buffer against her own cold. It was a wildly erotic, deeply intimate distraction, but it wasn't a cure. He was treating the symptoms, not the disease. She didn't need to be insulated; she needed to learn how to control the weapon she had become.
The heavy oak door to the study opened, and Kassian strode in.
He was dressed in his formal military blacks, looking exhausted but undeniably magnificent. He had spent the last eight hours in grueling negotiations with Lady Isolde of the Merchant Guilds, trying to stabilize the capital's economy after Lord Aris's manufactured famine had been exposed.
"The merchants are pacified, for now," Kassian murmured, unbuttoning the high collar of his tunic as he walked toward her. His eyes landed on the shattered, frozen goblet on the desk. He stopped.
A muscle feathered in his jaw. "Another misfire?"
"I barely touched it," Vera said quietly, wrapping her arms around her chest. "Kassian, I can't live like this. I'm a hazard. I need to practice. I need to go out into the training yards and learn how to channel this before I freeze this entire wing of the palace."
"No." The word was absolute, ringing with the authority of the Emperor. He closed the distance between them, pulling her up from the chair and into his chest. His natural, radiant heat instantly began to soothe the frantic, icy thrum in her veins. "You are not stepping foot outside these warded walls. Simon brought word that Lysander has emptied one of his hidden vaults. He is hiring the faceless. Assassins, Vera. The best money can buy."
"Which is exactly why I need to know how to fight!" Vera argued, pushing against his chest, though she didn't try very hard to break his hold. "You can't protect me every second of the day!"
"Watch me," Kassian growled fiercely, his arms tightening around her waist like bands of hot iron. His blue eyes darkened with that possessive, starving obsession that had ruled him since the night of the Blood Bond. "I will not lose you. I will burn the entire city to ash before I let a blade touch you. You stay here. You stay safe."
He kissed her hard, a punishing, desperate kiss meant to silence her arguments, before pulling away. "I have to meet with Damon regarding the outer perimeter defenses. Lock the door behind me."
When he left, the silence of the study felt like a tomb.
Vera looked at the shattered ice on the desk. She thought of her years in the slums, surviving by her wits, never relying on a savior. She was Vera, the master thief. She was the Catalyst. She was not a damsel in a tower.
She waited exactly two hours until midnight chimed from the clock tower.
Damon was busy with the perimeter, and Kassian was in the war room. The guards outside her door were elite, but they were soldiers, not thieves. They looked for armed threats, not shadows slipping through the servant passages.
Vera stripped off her heavy velvet gown and changed back into the tight, black leather riding trousers and the dark tunic Kassian had given her for the armory. She strapped the two steel daggers to her thighs. She threw a dark, hooded wool cloak over her shoulders to hide the silver crescent mark on her neck.
Slipping out was almost insultingly easy. She knew the blind spots in the patrol routes, the exact rhythm of the guards' footsteps. Within twenty minutes, she had bypassed the inner sanctum and slipped into the sprawling, overgrown section of the Old Imperial Gardens—a place long abandoned by the current court, choked with thorny vines and crumbling marble statues.
The autumn air was crisp, the moon hidden behind thick, grey clouds.
Vera threw off her cloak. She stood in the center of a ruined stone courtyard, closing her eyes.
Control it, she told herself. Don't let it leak. Channel it.
She focused on the cold knot sitting heavy in her chest. She remembered the feeling in the armory—the way her panic had pulled the heat from the air to fuel her ice. She opened her eyes, staring at a crumbling stone gargoyle ten paces away. She extended her hand, her fingers curling into a claw.
She visualized the heat of the air around the statue being sucked away.
A soft, hissing sound filled the courtyard. Frost rapidly began to crawl up the stone base of the gargoyle. Vera gritted her teeth, pushing harder, forcing the magic outward. The frost thickened into jagged shards of true ice, creeping up the gargoyle's wings.
It was working. She was doing it purposefully.
But as she focused entirely on the statue, she committed the cardinal sin of the Grey District: she stopped paying attention to her blind spots.
The attack was entirely silent.
There was no footstep. No rustle of leaves. Only the sudden, instinctual shift in the air pressure behind her.
Vera dropped to the ground, rolling hard to the left just as a throwing knife made of blackened steel sliced through the empty air where her neck had been a fraction of a second prior.
She sprang to her feet, drawing both daggers from her thighs in a single, fluid motion.
Standing in the shadows of the overgrown hedges was a figure draped entirely in shifting, grey rags. The assassin wore no mask, because they appeared to have no face—just a smooth, blank expanse of pale grey skin where features should be.
The Faceless, Vera realized with a jolt of pure terror. Lysander had hired a Wraith. They were rumored to be immune to minor magic and felt absolutely no pain.
The Wraith didn't speak. It simply tilted its head and lunged.
It was impossibly fast. Vera parried the first strike, the sickening clang of steel ringing out in the quiet garden. The force of the blow nearly sent her to her knees. She was strong for a human, but this thing hit like a falling boulder.
She slashed with her left hand, aiming for its throat. The Wraith simply leaned back, the blade missing by a millimeter, and countered with a brutal kick to her ribs.
Vera flew backward, crashing hard into a frozen stone bench. The air was knocked from her lungs in a violent rush. Before she could recover, the Wraith was on top of her.
A blackened, serrated dagger drove downward, aiming straight for her heart.
Vera brought both her daggers up in an 'X', catching the assassin's blade just inches from her chest. Her muscles screamed in agony as she tried to hold the creature back. It was pressing its weight down, the blackened steel inching closer and closer to her sternum.
I can't out-muscle it, Vera thought, panic finally breaking through her focus. I have to freeze it.
But the magic wouldn't come. She was terrified, yes, but the Heart of Boreas needed a massive source of heat to transmute into a flash-freeze. The cold autumn air wasn't enough to fuel a blast large enough to stop a Wraith.
The serrated blade sliced through her tunic, biting into the flesh just below her collarbone.
A sharp, stinging pain flared, followed instantly by a sickening, unnatural numbness. Poison. "No," Vera gasped, her vision blurring at the edges.
Suddenly, the air in the courtyard shifted.