Mastermind | | Azriel

7

Two days went by before Cassian showed up at Elysia's apartment, worried after not having seen or heard from Azriel. The door was unlocked, so he let himself in.

He found Azriel on the couch, still tied up in pink rope.

"Did I just walk in on something?" Cassian asked, glancing around as if he expected Elysia might pop out of some corner.

"She's gone," Azriel answer, "days ago."

"She—what—what happened?" Cassian asked as he rushed off to the kitchen to grab a knife. He hurried right back and began cutting away the ropes.

"It was her. It was her the whole time," Azriel told him, sounding somewhere between disappointed and eager. An odd mix.

"What are you talking about, Az?" Cassian pressed, cutting away the last of the ropes. "What was her?"

"The assassin Rhys told me to find. It was her," Azriel murmured, standing up and stretching shakily. Cassian eased him right back onto the couch. "You knew the whole time something was off."

"I didn't think it was that! How are you alive right now? Why didn't she kill you?" Cassian stumbled over his questions.

"She didn't want to," Azriel answered simply, standing up again and stumbling over to the kitchen. It was a risk, but surely it everything in here was drugged like the tea had been. He was starving. There had to be something safe he could eat. He settled on an apple, biting into it as Cassian stared at him.

After a long few moments of silence, Cassian asked, "did you at least get a refund?"

Azriel burst out into laughter, and then Cassian did too. They laughed until they were both out of breath.

"She could have killed me, and she just didn't want to," Azriel emphasized incredulously, "I should be dead right now!"

"She—how did this even...why did she decide to show her cards now?" Cassian asked, a frown on his face now.

"I called the assassin a male and said he had no morals. Hurt her feelings a little bit," Azriel explained, "she wanted to let me know she won, and that she wasn't a male with no morals who only cared about money."

"Did she...did she tell you anything about Rhys's mother and sister?" Cassian brought up hesitantly—nervously.

"She said she didn't do it. That she wouldn't have done it if she was asked. She also claimed someone tried to hire her to kill Rhys once and she refused. Apparently she only kills people she thinks deserve to die."

"And she gets to decide who does and doesn't deserve to die?" Cassian scoffed, and Azriel felt oddly defensive.

"You say that as if we haven't made choices like that," he countered, to which Cassian's eyebrows raised.

"We were at war. She's an assassin. It's not the same thing," he argued, "we were fighting for something that mattered. She kills for money."

But they weren't at war anymore. They weren't at war, and Azriel still killed if Rhys asked him to. He might have ended up killing Elysia if he had found out before she revealed herself. He might still end up killing her. Or she'd end up killing him. He wasn't sure which way it might end.

Someone was going to end up dead, that much he knew. He didn't know, though, which ending he might prefer.