The Assassins' Lover

Chapter 1:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PRINCESS

Today was Katsu Shinobi’s thirtieth natal day. She’d heard such milestones upset Human females. They were considered “on the shelf” once they hit the third decade mark. Given that her race could expect to live centuries, at thirty Yama were scarcely adults. Consequently, it was not the weight of the years she’d experienced that lay heavily on Kat, it was the years she had left to go.

Her natal day was the one day she and her father always spent together. They’d share a pot of Imperial White at her dead mother’s favorite teahouse, then reminisce with pleasant stories over platters of savories.

Because that was not to be this year, Kat closed her rim-to-rim silver eyes and tipped her lovely face to the morning sun. She reminded herself she had reasons to be thankful. She might be exiled, but she was safe and her enemies far from her. The Human world, so encroaching in other places, had made few inroads here. Ever since the Humans discovered a hidden Yamish city forty years before, Kat’s people had put up with being called demons. She supposed it natural her race would seem infernal to the more primitive Humans; they’d barely invented electric power, after all. Also natural was the fascination the other race’s emotions held for her kind. Human energy affected Yama like a drug - something sensible people avoided. This province where Kat had been banished lay far from the peninsula that connected Yamish lands to those of Humans. The area was less novelty-loving than the capital. As a result, it remained culturally unconfused.

Perhaps just as important, spring had reached Ningzha. The sky was a bird’s egg blue, and the scent of cherry blossoms lent a kiss of sweetness to the soft air. The lush walled garden in which she sat was an ode to nature and the landscaper’s art. Dragonflies flitted from bloom to bloom, their colors as carefully selected by the master gardener as a princess’s party gown.

“Cousin Kat!” cried the very voices she’d been hoping to avoid today. “Why are you hiding all the way out here?”

Quashing her dismay, Kat turned on the rustic bench to greet her three female relatives. The girls were fifteen, seventeen and twenty, all blessed with the ruler-straight blue-black hair that was the Yamish ideal. Their ankle-length silk robes - only two layers in this nice weather - boasted the latest fashionable hues: lemon, lime and orange, as it happened. All her cousins were pretty; Yamish genetics rarely left room for ugliness. They were not, however, as elegant as their youth led them to believe. Jules, for one, should have eschewed anything to do with yellow, no matter how popular it was that season.

“Good morning, cousins,” Kat said calmly. Her overgown was a less fashionable but flattering bronze, the color suiting both her milk-and-roses skin and the antique brass undernotes in her black hair. Satisfied with her appearance if not her prospects, she smoothed the silk neatly down her thighs.

“Is it true?” Jules demanded, her flush betraying an undignified excitement. As the eldest daughter in her family and of marriageable age, she merited a pair of guards. The two males who accompanied her this morning were not the House of Feng’s shining best. This was probably due to Jules being the eldest daughter of a junior branch of that illustrious family. Though tall and muscular, the guard to Jules’s right had eyes in slightly different shades of silver. The one to her left was marred by a strawberry birthmark stretched along one cheekbone. Presumably, the imperfections had no bearing on their competence. Certainly, they were too professional to react to Kat’s quick perusal of their persons.

Rather, they almost didn’t react. The one with the birthmark, whose face was as smoothly sculpted as a statue, shifted the merest bit in his parade stance. Kat pulled her gaze from his otherwise handsome features with a small effort.

“Is what true?” she responded to her cousin.

“Did Prince Avel’s eyes turn black for you at his dinner? Did Aunt Miry exile you because she was hoping Cousin Mara would snag him?”

Both claims were accurate. Prince Avel had displayed the involuntary ocular reaction that signified sexual and genetic compatibility, without which no blue blood’s marriage could be sanctioned. Other classes might find spouses where they liked, but royal genes - and royal libidos - were demanding. Producing heirs required close matches. It was also true that Kat’s stepmother had hoped to catch the prince for her daughter. Neither of these facts, however, were politic to acknowledge.

“What did your mother tell you of the matter?” Kat evaded.

“She said it must have been a trick of the light, but I don’t believe it. When that other prince’s eyes turned black for you last year, Aunt Miry sent you away then too. I think she’s annoyed your mother passed better genes to you than she did to her own daughter. People still remember Miry ‘discovering’ her royal blood.”

Kat remembered this herself, for it had caused quite a stir. Mara’s birth nine months after Miry’s marriage should have put the whispers to rest for good. A prince couldn’t get a child on a nonroyal. Sadly for Miry, her daughter’s inability to attract a mate resurrected the wagging tongues. Now people claimed her line wasn’t royal enough.

“Aunt Miry says you’re coarse,” Jules’s middle sister, Jade, piped up - in what she must have thought was a superior tone. “She says your pheromones call to so many princes because you don’t have a perfect mate.”

Not as confident as her older sister, or as respected as Katsu, Jade was prone to envy. Because Kat knew this and remembered what it was to be seventeen, she answered the girl gently. “I imagine that could be true. Not every princess has one ideal husband.”

“Aunt Miry says I will,” Jade declared.

Her little sister, Joy, was young enough make a rude noise. She was also smart enough that, when Jade spun to face her, she’d retrained her countenance to proper Yamish stillness. Kat had to tip her chin down to hide her smile. Once her amusement was under control, she looked up. To her surprise, the handsome guard with the strawberry birthmark was gazing directly into her eyes.

Perhaps he was as shocked to be caught staring as Kat was to be stared at. The circumference of his pupils jumped wider. Kat blinked, then he did, and then both of them looked away. Kat thought the other guard might have glanced sharply at his partner, but managed to control herself enough not to check. Her thighs were dangerously warm, and her face threatened to become so. It simply wasn’t done to connect with servants in a personal way. She wished she hadn’t noticed how good looking the guard was, in spite of his facial flaw. His shoulders were positively monstrous in his gray fighting robes. He’d been bred to be strong, of course, but it was too, too trite for unattached Yamish females to develop yens for their protectors.
Kat had her quirks, but she trusted being trite wasn’t one of them.

“We’ve planned a boat ride on the lake,” Joy said, thankfully oblivious to Kat’s struggle. The girl was bouncing just a little on the balls of her jeweled slippers. “We’re hoping you’ll join us.”

“Do say you will,” Jules seconded more moderately.

Kat rose from the bench she’d intended as her sanctuary. The lake was an easy walk outside the garden’s wall.

“It would be my honor,” she said. Maybe she’d have been more peaceful without the girls’ company, but she was fond of them, and her youngest cousin was a very likable wild thing. Joy didn’t have much longer to be irrepressible: two years, at the outside, after which she’d settle into being a well behaved young lady. Today, that inevitability made Kat reluctant to miss a minute of her effervescence. In truth, it made her a little sad.

It had been too long since Kat herself had been inappropriate. In the deep dark privacy of her mind, she sometimes thought it would be fun to live as freely as the primitive Humans.

True to form, Joy ran ahead of her sisters, her expensive gown trailing damply in the flower dotted grass. To Kat’s surprise, and a little to her discomfort, the handsome guard fell into step beside her. He was very tall - at least a hand span above her own royal height.

“You don’t travel with an escort?” he commented quietly. His gaze was on Jules’s back - where indeed it belonged. As was also right, his partner guard walked by the other girl.

Kat should have had an escort. She was the eldest daughter of the Shinobi clan. Regretfully, her stepmother had resented her from the start. At first, the cause was the respect with which Kat’s father and the House retainers regarded her. Later, it was her father’s failure to leave off honoring - if only occasionally - his first wife’s memory. When Katsu’s greater appeal in princely circles became apparent, distaste turned into hostility. Kat saw little use in complaining to her father. He wasn’t unhappy in his second marriage, nor was Miry the sort to change her behavior for anyone. She’d simply have become slyer, and Kat preferred her enemies out in the open.

“Bringing an escort would have caused my House an inconvenience,” she said aloud. “I’m sure no harm will come to me here.”

The guard said nothing, though he did glance at her again. He walked an arm’s length away, his strides shortened to match hers. She supposed his question could be professional. If she had no guard, he might be expected to protect her. Though this was the likeliest explanation, she couldn’t deny her skin tingled on the side of her body nearest his. Annoyed by her lack of discipline, she sought to push the sensation from her as they reached the reed-fringed bank of the sparkling lake. Two light rowboats were tied to the wooden dock. Their lack of a power source increased their picturesque appearance. This boat ride, evidently, was to be an old-fashioned exercise.

“You’re in my boat,” Joy announced to Kat. “You too, Hattori. We’ll trounce Ciran and the others with no trouble.”

Hattori seemed to be the name of Kat’s walking companion. He bowed to Joy as if she hadn’t committed a breach of etiquette by not calling him Citizen.

“As you wish, Princess Joy,” he said gravely.

Joy giggled, and the back of Kat’s eyes actually stung at the merry sound. If she was this emotional, maybe her uncelebrated natal day was affecting her. Both guards stepped into the rowboats to steady them, their highly trained grace barely causing the hulls to slap against the water. Nimble as an elf from a Human story, Joy hiked up her gown and hopped into Hattori’s boat without help. Then Hattori held his hand politely out to Kat.

It was natural that their eyes would meet, but not that her heart would start beating faster. Hattori’s pupils were more enlarged than before, like ink shining in his molten silver irises. Kat put her hand in his and he clasped it firmly. His skin was warm, his palm callused from sword play over most of its surface. She couldn’t help imagining that roughness sliding over her breasts.

“Princess,” he said low and huskily.

She nearly stumbled at the gravelly sensual sound. He had to catch her elbows to help her sit without falling. When he released her, confident she wouldn’t capsize the boat, his narrow nostrils flared.
Kat’s hand fluttered to her throat before she could stop it.

Hattori had an erection.