where river meets sea

CHAPTER TWO,

WHERE RIVER MEETS SEA | TWO

MELIQUE HADN'T ALWAYS been like this. Once, the country had been a bustling, developing nation with so much to offer. But then it got greedy and ambitious. That had been its fall.

  Leocadio Mallen. Danna wasn't a fan of the man, personally, but she supposed he was better than Caba. But then again, most people were. Melique's president was strangely unlikeable. Funny, because he was handsome and charming and manipulative as a snake.

  Maybe that was why. Because Danna had a brain and eyes and wasn't blind or an idiot.

  It was late. She hadn't glanced at the clock, but it had to be two or three o'clock now. And she had work to do tomorrow, so she should catch a bit of sleep. But.

  Sucking in a breath, she placed the file on the Black Camellia back where it belonged.

  She'd seen the assassin in action. Once. The woman seemed to possess some supernatural grace that wasn't quite human, but Danna had never heard reports about her being wiccai either. And if she was wiccai, wouldn't she be a member of the Melique's Falcons instead of a separate, one-woman army?

  It couldn't be because she was Asayaman either, because she knew that the Meliqueans had plenty of foreign agents under their belt. So the Black Camellia should be human. One nice thought among all of this.

  One highly-skilled assassin, she and Aleks could handle. One highly-skilled wiccai, they could not.

  Thinking of wiccai made her feel a pang of sadness. She knew plenty of the magical herself. The Saian's Iron Wolves, for example. They'd discussed sending a few over, but it never came into fruition. As much as she'd have liked that, a part of her was relieved.

  Less lives in danger. Though perhaps not in the long-term. No, it could, she just had to play her cards perfectly.

  She'd been trying to figure out Leocadio Mallen before all of this. The man had practically risen from nothing to everything in a single night, and was the only person now who could hold a candle compared to Rufino Caba—the man's own allies not considered. His promises were ambitious and positive, things most people liked, patching up the holes Caba had left behind, but he just didn't strike Danna the right way. He said nothing about his actual stances, which annoyed the Saians. Would he continue pursuing the peace treaty that had been under discussion for a few months? Or would he abandon it all and continue on with war?

  She'd always trusted her guts. Asteria used to say that she was impulsive, but her friend was wrong. She did think about her choices. She just did it quicker than any of them.

  They wouldn't have sent her to this shithole if they weren't at least a bit confident in her ability to make split-second decisions. Perhaps she should have been an impulsive fool, then.

  It wasn't precisely that she hated being an agent. No, it had its advantages. She enjoyed the thrill of a fight, the brainwork needed behind every successful mission. But she hated the responsibility. The knowledge that the lives of entire nations was on her back. The knowledge that she carried a burden she should not have to.

  All because her mother was Meliquean and her father was a fool. Wasn't that all fun? They said children should not have to pay for the crimes of their parents, but look where she was now? A textbook example that was not true.

  She didn't feel anything towards them, though. Hadn't have for many years. Not her late mother, not her idiot, traitorous father, not her cruel stepmother. That chapter of her life was done. Had been done for years.