The Grim (Ravens #3)

xviii. lady darkness

A/N: I JUST FINISHED THIS CHAPTER AND I AM SCREAMING. 

 Although the group maintained a rigorous watch schedule that evening, trading off positions every hour so that nobody could get more than four precious consecutive hours of sleep, no intruders dared near the motel. Not one of the teens had to pick up the gun, had to feel their heartbeat racing as the door handle shook from someone on the other side. No, there seemed to be no immediate threats, but that did little to assuage their racing heartbeats as they sat in the silent night, listening to nothing but the peaceful sounds of the others' breaths and the stable hum of the air conditioning.

The plan was to meet Mai and Jayden at the nearby marketplace the following morning. As Mai had argued, the group needed to appear interested in Monarchia's community. They had to make an effort. They had to be liked. Not only was cowering in the motel bedroom a waste of time, it had the potential to derail their entire mission. And there was far too much at stake for their egocentric tiredness to get in the way.

"Hey!" Mai called, crossing the street and running up to them when they finally came into sight. Her eyes lit up in a way Sebastian had rarely ever seen, an excitement foreign to a girl as tough as she. For a brief moment, the sight of her radiant smile made him forget, made the tension disappear from his guarded shoulders, but returned the moment her own face dropped, for she had felt the palpable stress and tension surrounding her friends. "What happened last night?"

"This," Sebastian muttered, shivering in the chill that had just been lifted off his bones, yet returned almost instantly. He had grown accustomed to the cold, the fear, the stress. Normally he hardly even felt it anymore, it was a part of him at his most fundamental levels. But that short relief—that short reminder of how light he used to feel...

With caution, Mai took the note out of her ex's hands, looking at him nervously as she awaited his approval to open it. She felt the rest of the group tightening around her, covering the circle so that no wandering eyes could see the contents inside. The paper was worn out, yellowed from sweat in the creases. By holding it alone, she knew Sebastian had studied it for hours the previous night, every moment he sat on watch was spent examining the sheet, searching for some hidden meaning, familiarity in the handwriting, anything that could make such a massive word somewhat less ambiguous.

But there was nothing. He had found nothing.

RUN, said the note. RUN and nothing else.

"Do you have any idea what this means?" Donny asked, and Mai simply shook her head in a numb shock. The word struck an icy fear right in her heart, and she rarely ever felt afraid. She looked over her shoulder to Jayden, whose eyes were wide with terror, clearly asking himself what the hell he'd fallen into. She mouthed something to her friend, who gave her a concerned nod in return. They were speaking with their eyes, moving their lips ever so slightly that no words could be read from the murmurs.

"I don't know anything. Not for certain, at least," she said eventually. "But I have a hunch, and I might be wrong—I really goddamn hope I'm wrong—but it's bad. It's crossed my mind before, and it's bad."

"What is it?" said Donny. It was a question, yes, but he said it. He did not ask. The inclination in his voice dropped on the last word, as though he was challenging her to not go on, inviting her to stop.

Nevertheless, despite the warning in her friend's tone, she continued. "There's an assassin," Mai sighed. She paused for a moment, stalling as she tried to find the proper words, the right way to tell a deadly premonition. "It's possible that she's.... I mean, I wouldn't put it past King Hunter to assign her to the first foreign diplomats in recent memory." She had planned to say she knew the idea sounded ridiculous, planned to brush it off the moment the words left her mouth, but as she spoke, a grave solemnity washed over the circle. Suddenly, the prospect was less than that. Suddenly, it felt real.