❝ when she looks into his eyes, she feels the gripping temptation to tell him all her darkest secrets; the names of the men she has killed, but she learned a long time ago that the only people who can keep secrets are resting in overgrown graveyards...
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When Calliope feels herself spiraling, she tends to make herself as busy as possible.
Once she had recovered from her time in captivity, her mind became completely focused on the most important information she had gotten in years. Her mother. A possible lead to finding her after all this time. But even through the determination for answers, the assassin can't deny the anxiety that twists her stomach into a tight knot because there is still the possibility that this lead could be nothing more than another dead end.
The trip will take several days and will no doubt be dangerous. Calliope needs all her strength, physically and mentally. She wants to take this journey alone—traveling through Mercian territory will already be risky enough for one person—and she has no idea what she's walking into if she does find Drak. No one else needs to put their life at risk. This is the reason she spent so long hunting down the raiding party. It's a loose end she must tie up herself; the question she must answer.
Her absence from Camelot will not go unnoticed, but she cannot let anything hold her back.
Something had shifted inside her in Hengist's fortress. Ever since she first came to Camelot, she tried her best to keep a tight leash on the beast within her, cold and unrelenting and hungry for blood. The ringing of steel as she cut down tens and tens of men was exhilarating. She had also seen the look in the Prince's gaze as well. Through sheer awe for her ability to kill so effortlessly there was also a presence of something else...not fear, but caution. It was as if he forgot her past in these recent weeks as they grew closer.
He forgot that underneath soft smiles and warm touches Calliope reserves only for him, rests a trained killer. And Arthur would deny it. He would say he cares for her no matter what, that he knows she's working to change, but what if change isn't something in the cards for her? Another reason he can't come along: because if she finds Drak and he has done anything to hurt her mother, she will make him and anyone else in her path to him wish they had never been brought into this godforsaken world.
She makes her way to the stables in the dead of night. She's familiar with the guard rotations and the small windows of opportunity in which the path to her horse is clear for exactly two minutes. Counting the seconds in her head, Calliope darts across the courtyard, her pack strapped around her shoulders. Dressed in all black, she blends in with the veil of midnight and shadows. Two daggers are strapped to her belt, and her sword is slung around her back in its sheath. She also has three other small knives hidden in her boots and tunic and a sharp hairpin that could come in handy in a desperate situation.
Calliope tacks her horse before the guards return. She's about to place her foot in the stirrup when she hears a voice travel through the shadows.
"And where are you sneaking away to at this hour?"
