Death Rites

6 - The part with Prince's house call

Back safe in the sewers, in her home, she checked all her safeguards three times and then ran towards her door for her life, like a child running back to bed after turning off the bathroom lights. Blind panic. Leonara was not there. She crashed into her comfy chair facing the door, pulled her legs up to her chest and hugged them. Should she warn the guards? Would that be too suspicious? When Alissa got back, she would know someone had been there - after fully wrapping her head around what she was seeing, the unnatural, bent and broken mess on the floor, she had thrown up against the bookcase closest to the door, the one she had ran right into in her blind confusion. She no longer remembered what the paintings had looked like on her way out. The front door had been open. Not unlocked, just open. She had seen it swing open, like it had when she and Rhys had gotten there, only he was not outside. She remembered him smiling, when he said it was a friend's house, and earlier at the inn when she had made a stupid joke. She could no longer hold back the sobs that shook her entire body, and practically rolled off the chair onto the floor to curl op and tried not to throw up again. 

PRince had said he wanted Rhys dead - he had said that but this was not what she had imagined. She had imagined someone doing wetwork, like she had sometimes done only better and more trained, someone sittin gin the shadows with a crossbow or hiding behind the door with a knife. But in the end it had been a friend, someone from back home, Arissa, "practically a mancer". Prince's murderer. Not Logan Ross or Bartleby after all but Arissa. 

She didn't feel sad - she wasn't grieving for a guard, or for a guy she had just met that day - she was just in shock from what she had seen, from what had happened. From all the stuff that had happened in the past few days. 

The stuff at the Marrowgrove house, the chase. Finding the law office all blown up, and the sheer confusion of the whole deal with getting a spirit bound to you. Almost getting made by a guard. Deciding to betray Prince for that guard's life. Having him die anyway, in that nightmare house. He said he had experience with mancers. They had brought him in all the way from where ever for his experience with mancers. How could he be dead? Now she had risked her life, everything, for nothing. She had thought he was a rookie, but he wasn't. At least, that was what he said. And when she'd been looking through his window and saw his body, it looked like a lot of training had gone into that. Sh fought the urge to hyperventilate or puke again at the thought of his body. Her first impression of a bearskin rug had not been entirely off base. Rhys's body had just looked like something big had squashed him, apart from his head and the ends of his arms and legs. All of his insides had burst out and were all across the floor in a big red pool. She had absolutely no idea how something like that could even happen. 

All of this went through her head as she lay on the floor, but mostly her head was filled with static. 

After a while she noticed someone was banging on her door. She didn't know how long that had been going on, but she knew it hadn't just started. She wiped her eyes and struggled to stand up. She didn't know if she had locked her door, so whoever it was could come in at any moment. For a brief second she thought it could be Rhys. 

"Teague, open up!"

It wasn't Rhys. It was Prince. 

They had never been on friendly terms. She was sometimes happy to see him. Sometimes. Usually when he showed he made things more complicated for her. She had never felt sheer terror on hearing his voice. 

There was only one way out of her place; the only downside. Maybe she could pretend she wasn't home. 

Sadly, it turned out she had in fact not locked her door and Prince found her in the far corner of the room holding a knife. 

"Holy shit," he said, looking startled for a second before composing himself. "Where is the spirit?"

That wasn't the question she'd been expecting. She didn't reply immediately. "I don't know."