Switched

The assassin chose the window. That was his first mistake. The second was assuming Celestina Virellith was asleep.

Glass exploded inward with a crash as a black-clad figure came through the window, one hand protecting his face while the other drove a narrow blade toward the shape beneath the blankets.

The knife struck straight through the pillow.

The assassin froze. The bed was empty.

Behind him, a young woman sighed.

"You stepped on my flowers."

He spun.

Celestina Virellith stood barefoot beside the open balcony doors, looking less like the intended victim of an assassination than a portrait someone had hung in the wrong room.

Moonlight spilled across her pale skin and the simple white nightgown that fell to her ankles. Her hair was impossible to overlook, thick waves of crimson that were neither auburn nor copper but the deep red of fresh wine. It cascaded past her waist, catching streaks of scarlet wherever the moonlight touched it.

She was beautiful, but there was nothing delicate about her beauty. Celestina was tall for a noblewoman, with a healthy, strong body and the easy balance of someone who had spent years holding a sword. The fine features of an ancient ducal bloodline might have softened another woman's face, but on Celestina they were sharpened by the way she carried herself, with her chin level and her shoulders relaxed despite the armed stranger standing in her bedroom.

Most memorable were her eyes, a dark emerald that appeared almost black at night until the light revealed the green beneath. Those were the eyes people remembered when they whispered her name through Asteria's ballrooms and back alleys.

The Red Witch of Virellith.

At the moment, however, the infamous Red Witch was not looking at the knife in the assassin's hand. Her attention had settled on the crushed purple flowers beneath his boot.

Her expression flattened. "I liked those."

The assassin lunged.

Celestina sighed and moved before his blade reached her. It cut through empty air as she caught his wrist and twisted hard enough to send the knife clattering across the floor. Before he could shout, her elbow struck his throat.

He staggered backward, choking, and reached beneath his cloak with his uninjured hand.

"Don't."

He pulled out a second knife anyway.

Celestina kicked the first knife from the floor, sending it spinning upward. She caught it by the hilt, and the assassin had only enough time to realize what she was doing before his own blade buried itself through his sleeve and into the wooden window frame behind him.

He stared at the knife, then at her.

"You were warned."

The man snarled and tore himself free, ripping cloth and skin as blood scattered across the floorboards. He charged again, but made it only three steps before Celestina slipped inside the swing of his blade, caught his arm against her shoulder, and used his own momentum against him.

For one brief and thoroughly undignified moment, the assassin was airborne.

Then his back slammed into the floor hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.

Celestina planted one bare foot on his wrist and bent to retrieve the fallen knife just as a shadow dropped from the ceiling.

Steel flashed as Silverius Nara landed between Celestina and the assassin, his sword already drawn. His long silver-white hair, hastily tied at the nape, swung behind him.

"Lady Celestina!"

Celestina looked at Silva, then at the assassin beneath her foot, before looking back at him.

"You're late."

Silva's gaze traveled across the broken window, the shattered vase, the blood on the floor, and finally the assassin lying beneath Celestina's foot. Celestina herself was entirely unharmed.

"I was three seconds away."

"Late."

"My lady, I was stationed outside your chamber."

"Yes."

"The man entered through a third-floor window."

"Yes."

"I would like to emphasize the third-floor portion."

Celestina glanced toward the shattered window. "Then perhaps you should have been stationed outside the window."

Silva stared at her.

The assassin chose that moment to move. Silva's sword immediately shifted, but Celestina simply pressed her foot down harder until a crack came from beneath it.

"Agh!"

"Stop moving," she said.

The assassin stopped moving.

Silva slowly lowered his sword. "One day, you might consider allowing your Shadow to perform his assigned duty."

"One day you might perform it before I do."

"I see."

"You say that often."

"I find it safer than saying what I am thinking."

"Wise."

Silva crouched beside the assassin and pulled down the man's collar, revealing a small mark burned beneath his left ear. Whatever amusement had been lingering in Silva's expression disappeared.

"Not guild."

"I know."

"You saw the mark?"

"No. His boots."

Silva looked down at the expensive black leather boots on the assassin's feet.

"They're new," Celestina said. "There's no wear at the heel, and the stitching is northern. Someone equipped him specifically for tonight. He also smells like rosemary oil."

The assassin's expression changed so slightly that it might have escaped anyone who had not spent most of her life watching people for precisely such mistakes.

Celestina noticed.

"So either he enjoys unusually expensive bath products, or he spent time somewhere rosemary oil is commonly burned."

"The western noble quarter," Silva said.

"Probably."

"You determined all that while he was trying to stab you?"

"He wasn't very good at it."

The assassin looked offended. Silva almost smiled, but his attention shifted toward the broken vase and the purple flowers scattered among its porcelain shards.

"My lady."

Celestina followed his gaze. "Oh."

"That vase was expensive."

"I know."

"Your father gave it to you."

"I know."

Silva looked at the assassin, who looked back at him and, for the first time that night, appeared genuinely frightened.

Celestina sighed. "Don't kill him."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were thinking about it."

"I find it safer not to say what I am thinking."

She gave him a flat look, which Silva answered with a slight inclination of his head.

"Shall I have him interrogated?"

"Obviously."

"And the room?"

"Clean it."

"The window?"

"Replace it."

"The flowers?"

Celestina looked at the crushed purple petals beneath the assassin's boot before answering, "Replace those too."

Silva rose, and two more Shadows emerged soundlessly from the darkness. One took custody of the assassin while the other began examining the shattered window.

Nobody screamed or summoned the city guard, and nobody woke the household. There would be questions, naturally, followed by names, payments and connections until someone discovered that hiring an assassin to enter the bedroom of Duke Virellith's daughter had been a poor financial decision.

By breakfast, House Virellith's intelligence network would probably know who had commissioned the attack. By dinner, Celestina would know why, and by tomorrow someone might be dead.

To Celestina, there was nothing remarkable about any of it.

Silva stopped at the doorway. "My lady."

Celestina had already climbed back into bed. "Yes?"

"You are bleeding."

She looked down and found a thin red line crossing her palm, probably from a piece of broken glass.

"Oh."

"May I call the physician?"

"No."

"A maid?"

"No."

"May I at least bring a bandage?"

Celestina pulled the blanket over herself. "No."

Silva remained where he was until she looked at him.

"Silva."

"My lady."

"Go away."

"As you command."

The door closed. Three seconds later it opened again, and a roll of bandage flew across the room before landing on her blanket.

The door shut once more.

Celestina looked at the bandage in the silence that followed, then picked it up. For some reason, it annoyed her more than the assassin had.

At eight the next morning, Celestina entered the breakfast room to find her father already reading a report. Her elder brother, Cassian, was reading another, while her younger brother, Lucien, was eating breakfast with a third report open before him.

Celestina took her usual seat. "Good morning."

Duke Alaric Virellith turned a page. "Morning."

Cassian lifted two fingers without looking up, while Lucien pointed toward the bread basket. Celestina took a piece, and that concluded the family's morning greetings.

A servant poured her tea. Alaric continued reading for several seconds before he spoke.

"There was an assassin in your room last night."

Celestina buttered her bread. "Yes."

"Alive?"

"Yes."

"Good."

Another page turned as Cassian reached for his coffee. "Origin?"

"Unknown."

"Affiliation?"

"Not guild."

"Competent?"

"No."

"Pity."

Celestina took a bite of bread.

Lucien finally looked up. "Did he break anything?"

"A vase."

"The blue one?"

"Purple."

"The ugly one?"

"The expensive one."

"Oh." He returned to his report. "Tragic."

That was the entire family discussion regarding the attempt on Celestina's life. Nobody asked whether she had been frightened, whether she had slept afterward, or whether she had been hurt.

Not because they did not care. That would have been easier, perhaps.

Celestina continued eating while her father read his report, Cassian drank his coffee, and Lucien turned another page.

That was simply how things were in House Virellith. There was no cruelty in it; cruelty, at least, required attention. Celestina had never been beaten into obedience or locked away, nor had she ever been denied food, education, money, or freedom. Quite the opposite. She had been given excellent tutors, excellent weapons, excellent training, and enough freedom to go almost anywhere she pleased.

Nobody needed to worry about Celestina because Celestina could handle herself.

When she had returned from training at twelve with a split lip, her father had asked whether she had won. She had, and he had nodded once.

When she had been poisoned at a banquet at fourteen, Cassian had wanted to know whether she had identified the poison before swallowing it. She had, and his response had been a simple, "Good."

When three men had cornered her carriage on the eastern road at sixteen, Lucien's first question upon hearing the story had been how many survived. When she told him one, he had laughed.

Perhaps that was affection in House Virellith. Celestina wouldn't know. No one had ever explained it to her.

She knew her father trusted her, Cassian respected her, and Lucien enjoyed provoking her. She also knew Silva would put a sword through anyone who threatened her, although that was quite literally his profession.

Celestina was the Red Witch of Virellith, and she was strong enough that everyone around her had long since stopped wondering whether she needed them to be concerned.

She knew she was strong too.

She was simply tired of having to be.

"Your coming-of-age ceremony is tomorrow," Duke Alaric said.

"I remember."

"You need to arrive at the Temple of the Spring Goddess before sunset."

"I know."

"The letter specifically mentions weapons."

Celestina looked across the table at him. "It's a ceremonial bathing rite."

"Yes."

"I wasn't planning to bring a sword into a sacred spring."

"Good."

Alaric returned to his report, and the conversation ended as easily as it had begun.

Celestina leaned back in her chair and thought about tomorrow. She would stand beneath the Spring Goddess's statue in a ceremonial dress someone else had selected, smile at noblewomen who whispered devil-blood when they thought she could not hear, and listen to priests recite words whose meanings half the nobility had forgotten. Then she would enter the sacred spring because generations of noble daughters before her had done the same.

Afterward, she would come home and continue with her life.

From the outside, Celestina knew that life probably appeared exciting. House Virellith stood at the center of Asteria's darker affairs, where assassins, secrets, hidden passages, political conspiracies, poisoned wine, masked informants, and midnight messages were ordinary parts of existence.

Their bloodline could be traced to a Succubus Devil, a fact polite society had never forgiven despite happily purchasing Virellith information whenever it suited them. Kings had employed them, nobles had feared them, and enemies had cursed them. Everyone in Asteria knew the name of House Virellith, and everyone knew what sort of daughter such a house was expected to produce.

Celestina had become exactly what that life required of her: strong, alert, capable, and prepared for danger whether she wanted to be or not.

If someone threatened her, she fought. If someone insulted her family, she answered. When she entered a room, she noticed the exits without consciously looking for them, and if a stranger approached too quickly, her hand moved before her thoughts caught up.

At night, the faintest unfamiliar sound could wake her, and when it did, her hand automatically reached beneath her pillow for the knife she had kept there since she was thirteen.

Sometimes Celestina wondered what other girls kept beneath theirs. Perhaps they hid love letters, books they were not supposed to be reading, dried flowers, or some other ridiculous little treasure they wanted nobody else to find.

Celestina kept steel.

Every morning she woke, dressed herself, tied another weapon somewhere beneath whatever beautiful gown had been chosen for the day, and went back to being the Red Witch of Virellith. She had been doing it for so long that one day had begun to feel very much like the next.

Her tea had gone cold by the time she noticed she was alone at the table.

Celestina looked through the tall windows at the morning sunlight spreading over the Virellith estate, catching against the black iron gates and immaculate gardens. Beyond them, Asteria was waking into another ordinary day. Shopkeepers would be opening their shutters, children would be complaining about lessons, and somewhere someone was probably sleeping late.

Someone else might be deciding what to eat for breakfast without first wondering whether it had been poisoned.

Celestina rested her cheek against her hand.

Tomorrow she would go to the Temple of the Spring Goddess, although she expected nothing from it. It was an old tradition, a ceremonial bath and blessing performed because generations before her had done the same. When it was over, she would return to another year of the life everyone else seemed to find so fascinating.

With nobody left in the room to see her, Celestina finally allowed her shoulders to sag.

At eighteen, she had strength, freedom, money, a powerful family, and a name capable of frightening grown men. She could go almost anywhere she wished and do almost anything she wanted, but wherever she went, she would still have to be strong enough to survive it.

She closed her eyes and wondered what it would feel like to live a life where, just once, she didn't have to be the strongest person in the room.