A Court of Whispers and Song

Chapter 26

Gwyn and the Spymaster had been training for many weeks now, analyzing strategies. How to trail your mark without detection.

"You have the upper hand in the library," Azriel stated, pacing in front of the desk in the personal library of the House she sat with a blueprint of the institution dating many centuries. She noted various stack locations on a copy, but little else had changed. "You are familiar with every corner, which brings me to dead drops."

"Dead drops don't sound like a good thing. Am I expected to assassinate someone and dispose of the body?"

Azriel sputtered and laughed, shaking his head. Clearing his throat, he answered, "Although quite enjoyable to imagine you stuffing a body somewhere in the library, that's not what I was getting at. A place to hide documents or to exchange messages."

She tapped her chin with the quill for a moment. "Like inside a book? What if you wrote something and stuck it in an exact book on a specific page? That's precisely what I'd do in a library. Should I also include some type of code if the message is highly confidential?"

He gaped at her, confounded.

"Despite what you may think, Shadowsinger, many of the novels I read do not contain smut. I also enjoy adventure and spy dramas."

His eyes flared like chips of amber as he wore a roguish grin. In an instant, Azriel had reached the desk where Gwyn sat. She swiveled her chair to face him. His scalloped leathers and chiseled face suggested a warrior as he prepared to leave with Cassian to quell yet another rebellion in Illyria. Unrest and uprisings were becoming too frequent.

Azriel placed his hands on the arms of her chair, caging her in. As his warm breath brushed against her ear, Gwyn shivered as she leaned forward. "Oh, I'm betting those spy stories were indecent, Berdara." Her mouth was dry as she gulped hard. "Were you thinking about fucking the spy?"

Sweet Mother above. Her face grew hot at the boldness and accuracy of his words. She saw what game the Spymaster was playing right now. Cloak-and-dagger intelligence often involved using high emotions to one's advantage. He admitted to her several times, explaining that sometimes he must use whatever means necessary to get information. His body included in the past. A lust-addled brain was as loose as a drunken one.

Even as her thighs pressed together under her robes, Gwyn told herself to focus.

"Well, Berdara? Have you?"

Her expressionless smile told nothing as Gwyn looked him in the eye. "Can't say I have." Leaning away from him, she sat back. "Because the spy could try to get me to reveal something I don't want to... Spymaster. "

Azriel shook with amusement, holding back his laughter. "Fair enough," he said, tapping her playfully on the nose, which had her batting his hand away. "But if you ever come across a book with a sexy priestess, you let me know. It might intrigue me enough to read your genre."

"The smutty priestess genre is woefully underdeveloped," she replied with a half-grin.

"Well, maybe you should compose one. I bet your mind has a good deal of dirty ideas you need to put down on paper."

"You wish, Azriel." Gwyn shook her head, turning back to focus on the proper task of mapping out the library.

Over the last few weeks since Shelah's death, the library had once again been deceptively calm. After the consecration service and honoring of Shelah's Invoking Stone in the temple's inner sanctum, there'd once again been nothing . The same as after the dark shrouded figures had appeared. She persisted, paying more attention to the surrounding sounds. Of the names addressed. This posed a challenge since not everyone in the building spoke. Gwyn worked around it, however.