Nox obeyed, and as he exhaled a long breath, his dagger flew. It didn’t hit the bull’s-eye, but it came within the inner circle. His brows rose. “That’s a bit of an improvement.”

“Just a bit,” she said, and held her ground as he gathered their knives from the two targets and handed hers back. She sheathed them in her belt. “You’re from Perranth, right?” she asked. Though she’d never been to Perranth, Terrasen’s second largest city, the mention of her homeland still spiked a bolt of fear and guilt. It had been ten years since the royal family had been butchered, ten years since the King of Adarlan had marched his army in, ten years since Terrasen met its doom with bowed heads and silence. She shouldn’t have mentioned it—she didn’t know why she mentioned it, actually.

She schooled her features into polite interest as Nox nodded. “This is my first time out of Perranth, actually. You said you were from Bellhaven, didn’t you?”

“My father is a merchant,” she lied.

“And what does he think about a daughter who steals jewels for a living?”

She conceded a smile and hurled a knife into the target. “He won’t be inviting me home for a while, that’s for certain.”

“Ah, you’re in good hands, though. You’ve got the best trainer out of anyone. I’ve seen you two running at dawn. I have to beg mine to put down the bottle and let me train outside of lessons.” He inclined his head toward his trainer, who sat against the wall, the hood of his cape over his eyes. “Sleeping, yet again.”

“The Captain of the Guard is a pain in my ass at times,” she said, chucking another knife, “but you’re right—he’s the best.”

Nox was quiet for a moment before he said: “The next time we pair off for lessons, find me, will you?”

“Why?” She reached for another dagger, but found she’d depleted her stock again.

Nox threw another dagger, and it hit the bull’s-eye this time. “Because my gold’s on you winning this whole damn thing.”

She smiled a little. “Let’s hope you won’t be eliminated at the Test tomorrow.” She scanned the training hall for any sign of the challenge to come the following morning, but found nothing out of the ordinary. The other competitors remained mostly quiet—save for Cain and Verin—and many of them were pale as snow. “And let’s hope neither of us winds up like the Eye Eater,” she added, and meant it.

•

“Don’t you ever do anything other than read?” said Chaol. She started from her chair on the balcony as he took a seat beside her. The late-afternoon sunlight warmed her face, and the last balmy breeze of autumn rushed through her unbound hair.

She stuck out her tongue. “Shouldn’t you be looking into the Eye Eater’s murder?” He never came to her rooms after lunch.

Something dark flitted across his eyes. “That’s none of your business. And don’t try to pry details from me about it,” he added as she opened her mouth. He pointed to the book in her lap. “I saw at lunch that you’re reading The Wind and the Rain, and I forgot to ask what you thought.”

He’d really come to talk about a book when a Champion’s corpse had been found that morning? “It’s a bit dense,” she admitted, holding up the brown volume in her lap. When he didn’t reply, she asked, “Why are you really here?”

“I had a long day.”

She massaged an ache in her knee. “Because of Bill’s murder?”

“Because the prince dragged me into a council meeting that lasted for three hours,” he said, a muscle in his jaw feathering.

“I thought His Royal Highness was your friend.”

“He is.”

“How long have you been friends?”

He paused, and she knew he was contemplating how she might use the information against him, weighing the risk of telling her the truth. She was about to snap at him when he said: “Since we were young. We were the only boys of our age in the castle—at least of high rank. We had lessons together, played together, trained together. But when I was thirteen, my father moved my family back to our home in Anielle.”

“The city on the Silver Lake?” It somehow made sense that Chaol’s family ruled Anielle. The citizens of Anielle were warriors from birth, and had been guardians against the hordes of the wild men from the White Fang Mountains for generations. Thankfully, things had gotten a little easier for the warriors of Anielle in the past ten years; the White Fang mountain men had been one of the first peoples to be put down by Adarlan’s conquering armies, and very rarely did their rebels make it to slavery. She’d heard tales of mountain men killing their wives and children, then themselves, rather than be taken by Adarlan. The thought of Chaol going up against hundreds of them—against men built like Cain—made her a little sick.

“Yes,” Chaol said, fiddling with the long hunting knife at his side. “I was slotted to join the Royal Council, like my father; he wanted me to spend some time among my own people, and learn . . . whatever it is councilmen learn. He said that with the King’s army now in the mountains, we could move our interests from fighting the mountain folk to politics.” His golden eyes were distant. “But I missed Rifthold.”

“So you ran away?” She marveled that he was volunteering this much—hadn’t he refused to tell her almost anything about himself while traveling from Endovier?

“Ran away?” Chaol chuckled. “No. Dorian convinced the Captain of the Guard to take me as his apprentice, with the help of Brullo. My father refused. So I abdicated my title as Lord of Anielle to my brother and left the next day.”

The captain’s silence suggested what he could not say. That his father hadn’t objected. What of his mother? He loosed a long breath. “What about you, then?”

She crossed her arms. “I thought you didn’t want to know anything about me.”

There was a ghost of a smile on his face as he watched the sky melt into a smear of tangerine. “What do your parents make of their daughter being Adarlan’s Assassin?”

“My parents are dead,” she said. “They died when I was eight.”

“So you—”

Her heart thundered in her chest. “I was born in Terrasen, then I became an assassin, then I went to Endovier, and now I’m here. And that’s it.”

Silence fell; then he asked, “Where’d you get that scar on your right hand?” She didn’t need to glance at the jagged line that ran along the top of her hand, just above her wrist. She flexed her fingers.

“When I was twelve, Arobynn Hamel decided I wasn’t nearly as skilled at swordplay with my left hand. So he gave me a choice: either he could break my right hand, or I could do it myself.” The phantom memory of the blinding pain lanced through her hand. “That night, I put my hand against a doorframe, and slammed the door shut on it. I split my hand wide open and broke two bones. It took months to heal—months during which I could only use my left hand.” She gave him a vicious smile. “I bet Brullo never did that to you.”

“No,” he said quietly. “No, he didn’t.” He cleared his throat and stood. “The first Test is tomorrow. Are you ready?”