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Author’s Note: This prologue is meant as a teaser until I can get a couple more chapters written, which might take until the end of this week. I hope. The thing is, I’m going to be trying to post chapters for two books simultaneously, so I don’t know how long it will be in between chapters (hopefully not more than a few days). Still, I’m eager to finish this series. I started writing these books a few years back, and the first two in the series will always be two of my favorites. I hope everyone enjoys this final installment!

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Prologue

Simon couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so well.

He also couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten drunk, gotten laid, and slept in a bed, all in the same night. That might have had something to do with his peaceful slumber. Groaning a little at the light shining through the window of his hotel room—not due to a hangover, because Simon never got hangovers, but because it was reminding him that it was time to get up—he rolled over and threw one of the pillows over his head.

It smelled like her.

He remembered little about his bed partner of the night before. By the time she approached him in the main room of the inn, he was on his fifth beer celebrating his release from the royal prison in Jordynn. This after celebrating rather heavily with Prince Marcus in the palace itself. So what she looked like—blonde hair? And she had eyes. She definitely had eyes. He just couldn’t remember what color—remained a total blur. Her smell, however, he remembered.

Strawberries.

You just didn’t meet many whores who smelled like strawberries. Since he’d never been with a respectable woman in his entire life—tried; failed—Simon certainly knew a lot about what the unrespectable kind were like. Shayarkan whores typically did not dress themselves up or waste any money on their appearance. Typically all of their loot went towards housing and entertainment of the narcotic sort. In Feirtala, the life of a whore was certainly more decadent: excessive makeup, skimpy clothes, and various perfumes designed to allure men. The whores of neither country ever wasted time or money on something as simple and wholesome as strawberries.

He buried his nose in the pillow and took a deep breath, trying to remember any other details of the night before. It had been well over a year since he’d had a woman, and it was a bit frustrating that he couldn’t remember anything about the night other than her delicious scent. Of all of the things he could have remembered, that was at the bottom of the list.

Finally, he sighed and gave up. The ale won. He wasn’t going to remember. And she was already gone, so she certainly wasn’t going to be able to enlighten him. Or remind him. That would have been nice.

Simon gave up on trying to go back to sleep and sat up to stretch. Muscles honed by a year with nothing better to do than exercise in his lonely cell flexed beneath skin scarred by a lifetime of warring. The job of an assassin was not always neat and tidy, as Simon had known from the age of eight when he first started killing people for a living. He’d been damn good at it, too, even earning himself the nickname Silent Death because none of his victims ever heard him coming. He’d once killed a man while his wife slept beside him, and the poor woman hadn’t even realized it until she woke the next morning covered in her husband’s blood.

He wasn’t proud of his past. For over a decade he had killed without remorse until a fey-like child had stopped him from killing her brother and taught him that life was about more than death. From that point on, he couldn’t kill without remembering her, without seeing her disapproving yellow gaze.

So he’d stopped. For a short time there was peace in his life, living as a simple blacksmith with the sister he had once killed to protect.

But death always had a way of sneaking up on him, and it had returned to him in the form of his mother, Sibil Viljarma.

Shuddering at the mere memory of his sadistic mother, Simon stood and walked over to the basin of cool water resting on the room’s small table. He splashed some over his face and tried to replace the image of Sibil with one of his sister, Stasia.

Please, God, if there is a God, let her still be alive.

When his attempt to save the life of Princess Cristi, the same child who had once killed the assassin living inside of him, had turned to disaster, Simon had known he was playing roulette with his sister’s life. Either he found a way to stop the treaty between Shayark, Feirtala, and Galatea from being approved—preferably by starting a war amongst the nations—or his sister died. Pretty clear cut. Unfortunately, the way his mother had wanted him to start the war was by killing Princess Cristi and pinning her death on the Galateans.

At one point in his life, Simon would not have even flinched at the thought of killing an innocent young woman. Not when there was a knife pressed to the tender flesh of his little sister’s neck. After years of cultivating a written friendship with Princess Cristi, however tainted it might have been by the fact that he was using her to gather information, he simply could not bring himself to kill her. It had taken the sight of a severed finger in a box—his sister’s pinky, according to the note from his devil of a mother—to spur him into action, and even then, he refused to bring about a war by killing Cristi.

So he was just going to kill her friends and blame it on a deaf-mute he happened to despise—mainly because that same deaf-mute had managed to earn Princess Cristi’s love and affection where Simon could not.

Cristi took exception to that. For the second time in his life, Simon found himself being talked down out of a job. Instead of fleeing the scene as she had urged when all was said and done, however, he allowed himself to be captured, hoping that his mother would not find out that he had defected but would merely think he had failed. Maybe then his sister might stand a chance.

Now…he didn’t even know where to begin to start searching for his sister. He’d spent the past few years, ever since his mother had returned and stolen Stasia away from him, hunting them down. They had completely disappeared. None of his usual informants knew anything of Sibil Viljarma’s whereabouts. If she were hiding anywhere in Shayark or Feirtala, he would have been able to find her.

After the debacle at the Treaty Ball last year, Simon had begun to suspect that perhaps Sibil was hiding in Galatea. When he voiced this concern to Marcus, the King’s son had sent a request via his sister’s husband Nick to have the entire Empire searched. Thanks to the recently approved treaty, no criminals from any of the countries could be harbored in any of the other countries. So the Galateans put forth an admirable effort to locate Sibil Viljarma.

To no avail.

So if she wasn’t in Shayark and she wasn’t in Feirtala and she wasn’t in Galatea, that left only one place. A place Simon had feared she might have gone from the moment he’d heard about it, but had silently prayed she had never heard of.

Xinarca.

An island of legends, Simon had only learned of the land’s existence last year from an old man living in Feirtala. Now he was set with the almost impossible task of finding the place.

Simon wandered about his room, attempting to gather together all of his belongings from where he’d scattered them about the night before. He didn’t have much. A bag of clothes Marcus had lent him—after pleading, ineffectually, for him to stay at the palace—and a small purse of money buried inside of that bag. As he searched the room for the shit he’d been wearing last night—he might have other ones, but that was no excuse for the disappearance of a perfectly good shirt—he ran a hand through his hair and winced as his palm brushed over where his right ear should have been.

Unlike his battered hand, caused by another assassin attempting to convince him not to turn his back on his profession, Cristi’s elder brother Rakyr had been unable to correct the ear sliced off by his own mother. She hadn’t exactly been pleased when he refused to take up arms for her after more than a year out of the business. Simon hadn’t exactly missed his ear back then, and sometimes now he even forgot it was gone. It had been the threat of rape to his sister that had convinced him to offer to start spying for Sibil.

Again trying to block out harsh memories, he started searching through the tumbled covers on the bed. It was then he noticed something curious. Something that made him stop and frown.

Blood. On the sheets.

His first instinct was to check himself over. With the level of drunkenness he’d enjoyed the night before, it was entirely possible that he might have injured himself and not known it and bled all over the sheets. Except, he realized upon further observation, the blood was on the side of the bed where she had slept. At some point during the night he’d tried to roll over and curl up beside her, but she had rather forcibly rolled him back over to his own side. So that blood couldn’t possibly be his.

And if it wasn’t his…

Damn. Now he was going to have to find her. Simon sure as hell didn’t want anything else on his conscience, especially not harming a woman during bedplay. Although he’d injured or killed a number of people in his life, he’d never purposefully brought harm to any woman he brought to his bed. Whores or not, his sister had taught him better than that.

Another delay, he thought to himself with yet another sigh.

Giving up on the missing shirt, he snatched another out of his bag and was swiftly on his way.

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Xira darted into a nearby alleyway, pressing her slender body back against the grimy wall of a building as she counted the seconds ticking by. Her breaths heaved in and out with each passing second, but she forced herself to listen over the sound of her own breathing.

One…two…three…four…

At nine, the sound of pounding footsteps flew past her. Three sets. Which meant the fourth, the smarter one, had not followed his friends. Xira ran a hand through her pale hair, tinged brown from days of sleeping in the dirt.

Damn.

The day had been going so well, too. She’d woken up well-rested—a near first for her—and headed to the palace. The day she had been waiting for had finally arrived—yesterday—and she’d been too busy running from those dull-witted thugs to take advantage of it. And now she was too late. She’d gone to the palace and asked about the Shayarkan prisoner who’d been rotting in their dungeons for the past year, and he was already long gone.

An entire trip, wasted. Now what was she going to do? Zorin was counting on her!

Stupid man and his stupid soft heart…

Keeping her ears perked, Xira waited for the sound of the fourth man’s steps. They jingled. He was the leader of the group, a young fop who didn’t have a whole lot of money but dressed like he did. How did she know that his bright, outlandish clothing and bell-decorated boots did not imply real wealth? Because he’d only offered her two coins for the pleasure of her company—and her virginity. The drunk she’d propositioned last night had offered her ten without even flinching, and the man had been dressed far more reasonably.

Ah. There he was. Jingle jingle, you jerk.

Xira held tight to the cool metal of the weapon hiding beneath her too-large shirt. Only one shot, so she had to make sure it was worth it. Hopefully she’d managed to shake the other three, so she should only need the one shot anyway. She just hoped the sleeves of the drunk’s shirt didn’t get in her way. Damn him anyway for ripping her own shirt clean off her body. She would have taken more money for compensation if he hadn’t paid her so handsomely to begin with.

“Where are you, my sweet? I know you’re back here.”

Still clinging to the shadows of the narrow alley, Xira waited for the right moment to confront him. Even in the dim light she could make out his fleshy, florid face. She shuddered in revulsion. Not for twenty coin would she have given up anything to that man. At least the one she’d chosen last night had been mildly attractive.

Finally, he was within range. Xira stepped out of the shadows and pointed the gun at his forehead. The man stopped dead in his tracks and looked at the weapon curiously.

“What in the world have you got there, my dear? A steel club?” His voice was filled with derision, as if he didn’t believe a woman capable of cold-blooded murder. And probably not, either, since he had no idea that what she was holding was not a club, but a weapon that could shoot a small, metallic bullet at high speeds so as to imbed the metal into a person’s flesh, where it would then explode. A pretty surefire way to kill someone, if you asked Xira. The only misfortune was it’s inability to fire more than one shot without having to reload, and reloading was a real bitch.

“I’m warning you, Jernik. You might as well just give up now. You’re not going to get my supposed ‘innocence’ anyway.” When the man had mauled her yesterday on her way to the palace, she’d had no way of knowing that the way a woman fought tooth and nail to get away from a man could be any indication of her virginal status. Jernik, however, had somehow managed to determine that she was untouched, which had only made him want her more. Then there was the fact that he found her ‘deliciously, foreignly attractive.’ Whatever that meant. From the few days she’d been in this country, she knew that silvery-white hair, pasty white skin, and violet eyes were not common. In fact, she had seen no one with similar features anywhere in this land. So her exoticness had only further incited him, and he’d followed her all day. Harassed her all day. Hired thugs to track her down all night.

And she had thwarted him, damn him. She was going to let him know that before he died.

“Whatever are you talking about?” He said this in his usual fake-polite tone of voice, but he was frowning now.

“I gave my virginity to some drunk in a tavern last night for ten coin.” She grinned unrepentantly. Good riddance to it, too. Wasn’t worth much to begin with. “Should have offered me more, Jernik.”

The man flushed with anger. “You little…”

Before he could get the insult out, Xira pulled the trigger. She watched with some satisfaction as the bullet struck him right between his eyes, which widened comically with stunned horror. Then, almost as if in slow motion, the man’s head exploded. Pieces of skull and brain flew out in all directions, splattering against Xira’s borrowed shirt.

Most women would have looked upon such carnage and retched. Most women would not have watched the decapitated body of the despot fall to its knees and then topple over, spilling more blood onto the stones of the street.

Most women had not grown up surrounded by death ten times more gruesome than this.

Another unfortunate aspect of her gun—its noise. There was no muting the sharp crack the weapon made when it fired. The men she had thought far gone returned almost instantly, horrified to find their boss not only dead but obliterated. Although their money source was now gone, it was clear from the violence in their eyes that they wanted revenge in some form.

And she was out of guns.

What to do now? Xira had always been the sharp-shooter. Stay in the background with a pile of pre-loaded guns and kill people from a distance, that was her job. If she’d been able to carry more than one pre-loaded gun without having trouble walking, she would have brought more. Zorin had always been the one who handled the hand-to-hand combat.

Zorin was not here.

Xira was considering playing the role of damsel in distress—that sort of thing supposedly worked very well in this country—when another man stepped out of the shadows. A rather familiar man, at that.

What was he doing here?

“Gentleman, I think that the game is up. You may want to disperse now that your master is dead,” he said rather cordially. There was an underlying menace to his tone, however, that brooked no opposition.

The thugs were too stupid to catch it. They immediately turned to face this new threat.

He didn’t look intimidating. That was the main reason Xira had approached him last night. Not only had he been drunk out of his mind, but he’d looked utterly harmless. Of course, later she’d found out precisely how deceiving appearances could be. Clothes that were a few sizes too big had concealed a very honed and muscular body. The thugs didn’t know that, however, so she’d just let them continue grinning like idiots at the thought of tearing him to pieces.

For whatever reason the stranger from last night had chosen to follow her—if that was, indeed, what he had done—she was grateful. There was no way she could have handled the three thugs on her own.

But he did. Quite nicely, actually. Xira had never seen anyone move with such swift efficiency. Zorin was always fluid in his movements, a smooth killer who took lives with beauty and finesse. This man—well, he killed. That was about all she could say in relation to his skill. Only seconds after breaking the first man’s neck, he relieved the second of his knife and slit his throat, following that up with a sharp blow to the third’s head that cracked his skull and had him crumpling to the ground. At first Xira thought the thug had simply been rendered unconscious. Only as she stepped over his lifeless body did she realize he wasn’t breathing.

“Impressive,” she murmured.

“Hit in just the right spot and it shoots a piece of skull directly into a person’s brain. Very effective,” the man told her calmly. “I trust you are all right?”

Not bothering to ask what the man was doing there—the less questions asked from her, the less asked of her was the way she intended to play it—she nodded.

He looked her over carefully, his eyes narrowed as he took in the blood-splattered shirt she was wearing. She thought she heard him mutter something along the lines of “So there it is. Looks better on you anyway,” before he shrugged and turned away.

“All right then. Good day.”

Odd. He was walking away. She hadn’t thought that men in this country generally saved damsels so well and then just walked away.

He stopped at the entrance to the alley and turned back with a half-smile on his lips. “You know, I would have paid more if I’d known what I was getting.”

And then he started to step out onto the street.

She would never have known if not for the breeze. He looked nothing like she had imagined. Hair described to her as fiery was more of a rich auburn. Eyes described as intense blue were more of a gray. Hands badly mutilated were actually perfectly formed.

She would never have known but for the breeze, lifting his longish hair far enough for her to see that he was missing an ear.

It was him. Simon.

Stasia’s brother.

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For the second time in the past day, Simon found himself in a hotel room with Xira. Except this time they were both fully-clothed, and he actually knew her name.

Xira. His first virgin.

And he still couldn’t remember it.

He probably should have been insulted that the girl had chosen to sleep with him because he was the lesser of two evils, but Simon had grown so used to disappointment over the years that he’d forgotten what it was to hope. So when he’d found her in that alleyway, facing a man twice her size with some strange metal contraption, he hadn’t felt any tender hopes being crushed at the realization that the woman he’d slept with the night before had, in a way, been taking advantage of him.

Actually, he kind of admired her for it.

He’d admire her a lot more if she’d start talking. Especially after taking his hand earlier and saying merely, “Stasia sent me. We need to talk.”

They had stopped at the nearest hotel and bought a room. Since then, Xira had done nothing but pace and mutter about how he looked nothing like how his sister had described him. He’d already explained about his hands—how Princess Cristi had sent her healer brother up to Feirtala to reconstruct them. The woman was too kind-hearted for her own good.

“Please,” he said finally, breaking down. “Is she all right?”

Xira stopped pacing and turned to him, her expression uncertain. “Last I heard, she was still alive. It has been some time, however…” She sighed. “Perhaps I should just start at the beginning?” she suggested.

“Perhaps,” he agreed.

“Then we must go back many moons.”

Simon settled himself in for a long story, mildly comforted by the fact that his sister had still been alive weeks ago…which meant that his mother hadn’t killed her for Simon’s failure.

There was still hope.