Born of Shadows (7 page)

He pulled back the curtain to look at the electronic lock. It’d been deactivated and left slightly ajar for a quick exit.

Yeah, someone was in here who shouldn’t be.

That calm, dead cold came over him as he went into soldier mode. He knew the perp hadn’t gone toward the study where he’d been. The other direction led to his father’s private wing.

C’mon, Cai. Don’t be ridiculous. There’s security all over the place. One of them could have been doing rounds and touched the pane.

Yeah, but when you’d grown up with people who broke into places like this to kill and rob its occupants, you knew just how worthless that security was. Alarms were only for the honest. Professional assassins and thieves picked their teeth with them.

Better safe than sorry…

He followed the wide ornate hallway that was lined with state portraits of ancestors he couldn’t keep track of, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The white walls and floors glistened to such an extent, he could see his black clothes outlined like a mirror. The scent of the myriad of fresh flowers draping from elaborate bronze vases hung in his nostrils.

You’re being stupid. There’s nothing here. Just an overactive imagination fueled by gross paranoia.

He was outside his father’s bedroom and about to go find his maid after all when he heard something fall.

A second later, his father called out for help.

5

Caillen tried the door. It was locked. He could hear them fighting on the other side as his father called for security. Grinding his teeth, he kicked the door open. His foot stung from the impact as the door slammed back against the wall with a resounding crash. The force of his strike caused the door to leave its hinges and clatter against the checkered black-and-white marble floor.

Inside, a masked assassin had his father against the wall as they fought.

Without hesitation, Caillen shot across the distance and grabbed the assassin from behind. The assassin turned on him with a curse and slashed out at him with a dagger.

Caillen jumped back and caught his wrist as the assassin tried to stab him. With a quick glance down at their entwined hands, he curled his lip. He knew the black-bladed dagger well. A League weapon, the blade was coated with a toxin so potent one scratch would kill him. Head butting the assassin, he made sure to keep his hand locked on the man’s wrist and the blade away from his skin.

The assassin stomped his foot.

“Pansy puss. What kind of girl move is that?” Caillen threw his arm up and punched him in the throat.

The assassin wheezed.

Caillen snapped his wrist so hard, he felt the bone break in his grip. The knife hit the marble with a thud as the assassin cried out in pain. Kicking it toward his father, he flipped the assassin onto his back and pinned him to the floor. The assassin tried to squirm or punch out of his hold, but it was one Caillen had used many times on Kasen.

No one could break out of it.

Well, maybe Nykyrian. But thankfully this asshole wasn’t as lethal.

His father called for security over the intercom.

Caillen grimaced at his father’s compassion. “Be easier if you let me kill him.”

The assassin continued to struggle against him like a dying fish trying to get back into water. Caillen held him fast.

Coughing to clear his bruised throat, his father shook his head. “I want the pleasure of seeing him executed.”

And he’d rather have the pleasure of gutting the bastard on the ground like a pig. “You know if he has a League contract on you, you can’t do that. But if I kill him before we find out about it, it’s legal. You sure you don’t want me to slip and accidentally plunge my knife into him a few dozen times?”

“While I admire your planned accident, son, I’d rather interrogate him.”

Caillen heard a muffled pop two seconds before the assassin started convulsing. “Shit!” He shot to his feet and grabbed his father, then pulled him out of the room.

“What’s going on?”

Holding his breath, Caillen didn’t answer until they were outside and the door was shut tight. “Suicide cap. I don’t know if it’s airborne or strictly ingested. Either way, he’s dead and we don’t need to inhale it until someone not us does a hazmat analysis.”

Security guards came running down the hall, but Caillen stopped them from entering. “You need a hazmat expert to go in there. The perp just offed himself with a cap.”

The captain nodded before he pulled his people back and notified his superior. Then the captain met his father’s gaze. “Do I need to call for a medic for you, Your Majesty?”

“I’m fine.” His father clapped Caillen on the back. “Thanks to my son. How did you know I was being attacked?”

He didn’t answer what to him was a rhetoricuestion. “My question to you is why didn’t your security know about it?”

His father straightened his robes with an imperial tug. “For an obvious reason, I don’t have cameras in my bedroom. It’s the only dark area of the palace.”

Flaky excuse in his book. Better a porn video for the guards than a dark area that left his father open to assassination. But what did he know? “Shouldn’t they have seen him in the hallway?”

His father offered him an indulgent smile. “Of all people, I think you know how easy things like this happen. Those who want in will find a way.”

Caillen ground his teeth at his father’s lackadaisical tone. “You’re awfully ambivalent over it.”

“Hazard of
my
business. Since the moment I took the throne, I’ve had attempt after attempt on my life. You get used to it after a while.”

He would argue that, but in his life and business it was so common that like his father he only found it odd when someone wasn’t trying to kill him.

His father met his gaze. “You were incredible, by the way. Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“Three older sisters who kept wanting to put dresses on me and paint my nails. Since I couldn’t outrun them, I had to learn to outfight them and unfortunately for me, they don’t hit like girls. If that’s not bad enough, they all fight dirty too.”

His father laughed. “Thank you.”

He shrugged the gratitude away. “You saved my life, it’s only fair I save yours.”

Evzen fell silent at those words that cut him deep inside. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear from his son. He wanted to hear Caillen say that he’d saved him because he loved him.

Just once.

He’s a man and a tough one at that.
Men like Caillen didn’t admit to tender feelings for anyone. He understood that, but the father in him who remembered holding his son as a newborn was desperate to have his son accept him.

It’s a fool’s dream.
He knew it and yet he couldn’t stop the ache inside that yearned for a relationship he feared would never happen. If he could only lay hands on the ones who’d deprived him of seeing his son grow up. Of being there when Caillen had needed him.

He wanted blood over the gulf that separated them.

Caillen still didn’t accept him as family. Not really. His sisters were the only ones he admitted to.
Damn you bastards for taking him from me.

But at least he had his son now. Though it wasn’t the close, tight relationship he desired, Caillen was still here. For the time being, he wasn’t running for the door and so he would accept that and hope for a time when Caillen felt like this was his home too.

And that he his father, not a Dagan smuggler.

Darling and Maris came rushing up to them.

“What happened?” Darling asked as soon as he stopped by Caillen’s side.

Caillen’s answer was short and clipped. “Assassin.” Nothing more than that was needed to explain the commotion.

Darling let out a sound of exasperation. “League?”

Caillen shook his head. “He had on civs, but he carried a League weapon—don’t know if it was a trophy or he was a contractor. As soon as they clear the room, I’ll have them run the DNA and see if we can find out if he was solo or attached and if there was a contract issued.”

Maris scanned Caillen’s body with a worried frown. “Are both of you all right?”

Caillen scowled. “I am so offended that you’d even ask that question. I’m sorry but if third-rate shit like that can take me out, I deserve to die.”

Maris scoffed at his righteous indignation. “Forgive me for questioning your fighting prowess. However, I do remember having to pull you out—”

“I was drunk.”

“And you were bleeding all over my new shoes.”

Caillen’s scowl melted under a smile he was trying to keep hidden as he remembered the event and didn’t want to cop to it entirely. “Yeah well, there was ten of them and one drunk me. Actually now that I think about it, I was so flagged, I thought there was twenty of them. My vision was just that screwed up.”

His father sighed heavily. “Oh the stories I overhear. I shudder at how many close calls you’ve had in your life.”

Caillen gave him an arch stare. “I wasn’t the one who almost had my head pinned to the wall a minute ago.”

He was right about that and while Evzen prided himself on being intelligent with his safety and cautious by nature, he realized how much he lacked when compared to the child he’d fathered. Whatever had caused fate to take his son from his side, it had given his boy life skills that could definitely come in handy for an emperor.

Now if he could only train and hone Caillen’s civility to the sharp point of his fighting skills he’d have a legendary leader.

Caillen flagged down the hazmat workers as they came to extract the body. He divested the first one to reach him of her mask and gloves, then went to investigate the assassin’s remains.

The man was lying right where they’d left him. A greenish cast to his skin let Caillen know the death had been quick and about as painless as it could be. But that wasn’t what concerned him.

Kneeling down, he retrieved the League dagger and searched for the assassin’s reader. He found it and rose to his feet.

The worker stopphim from leaving. “That’s evidence.”

He stared down at the woman’s peeved glare. “Indeed it is and I’ll hand it over after I look through it.” He stepped away from her.

She moved to block him again until her boss cleared his throat and shook his head. Her expression furious, she finally let him pass.

Moving out of their way, Caillen turned the reader on and started scanning the open files. They all confirmed his suspicions. Typical hired hack. Nothing really to differentiate him from any of the other scum-sucking bastards eager to earn a credit at the cost of some poor soul’s life. At least not until Caillen bypassed the security on his device and started going through his secure files.

While they searched the body, he isolated himself in a corner to review what their little hemorrhoid had been up to. Typical credit transfers that any butcher would have. Wanted postings where the perp had searched for victims…

Encryption just difficult enough to keep a low-level expert at bay and one interesting nugget he hadn’t been expecting.

He stepped out onto the balcony to make a call he didn’t want anyone to overhear.

Nykyrian Quiakides picked it up a few seconds later. “I can’t imagine what trouble you’re in now, Dagan. How many you need for an evac and how covert?”

Caillen snorted at Nyk’s dry, thickly accented tone. And for all of his bravado, the last time Caillen had told him he needed an evac, Nyk had told him to suck it up since he’d have started a war to pull him out of the Garvon prison. “Not that kind of trouble.”

“Who is she then?”

“That either. Damn, can’t I explain before you jump to conclusions?”

Nykyrian let out a dry laugh—something that had never left the former assassin’s lips before he’d married a few years ago. “By all means enlighten me. If this isn’t about a woman or your ass in jail, I’m definitely intrigued.”

Yeah, okay, Nyk had a point. Caillen glanced inside where they were putting the assassin into a body bag. “What is a tirador?”

“Context.”

Obviously the word had a multitude of meanings, so Caillen kept the explanation of his circumstances short and sweet. “I have a hitter on the floor with a League dagger who tried to off my father. His reader has him listed as one.”