The stones of the Treviso hall were still warm from the day's heat, though the sun had long since dipped behind the tiles and towers of Antiva's bones. Starling's boots tapped quietly through the mess hall, soft and sure. She moved like someone used to stepping over bodies, though the only blood on her was dried beneath her sleeve and already cracking. Not hers. Never hers. Not yet anyway.
Starling adjusted the strap of her satchel across her chest as she passed through the near-empty room, eyes flicking instinctively over faces and weapons. All quiet. All safe enough. Her mark had died quickly. A quiet breath, clean slice, no suffering. The Crows didn't demand mercy, but she gave it when she could. It cost her nothing, and it let her sleep most nights.
She'd made the kill. Delivered the proof. Collected the coin. Now, all she wanted was a cot, a clean shirt, and maybe a moment to close her eyes without seeing the flicker of a pulse under someone's skin.
A familiar voice rang out before she made it to the dorm halls. "Starling! Still alive."
She turned automatically, exhaustion tucking itself neatly away behind a grin. Tenna.
Starling altered her course and slid into the seat beside her with fluid ease, dropping her satchel beneath the table.
"Still warm, the blood that runs through my veins," she said airily. "Disappointed?"
"Perpetually. But not about that," Tenna muttered, nudging a half-eaten hunk of bread across the table. "You want it? I think it fought back."
Starling snorted. "I've eaten worse. You've cooked worse."
"Truly," Ridge murmured, lounging across from them with all the elegance of someone who had never been told no. "Tenna's stew last week could have taken a man's soul."
"I liked that stew," Tenna grumbled.
"You like watching us suffer," Ridge said.
Starling leaned back in her chair, letting the tension bleed from her shoulders now that she was among them. They were the closest thing to safety she had.
Tenna. Ridge. Cade, when he was here. Not quite a family, not quite a team. But close enough.
"Is Cade back yet?" she asked, reaching down to unbuckle her throwing knives, fingers nimble even half-dead with fatigue.
Tenna shook her head, her expression slipping for just a second. "No. Nothing yet."
Starling nodded once, lips pressing together briefly. Cade had been sent north last week. Short job, supposedly. He should have been back.
She pushed the worry down where the rest of the bad things lived. She couldn't afford to let it show. Not here. Not around the others watching from across the room, the ones who'd kill for a reason to rise.
Instead, she smiled like nothing was wrong and propped her chin in one hand, studying the flickering candlelight against Ridge's hair. Mahogany, loose around his shoulders. He was too pretty to be trusted. And exactly the kind of danger that got invited into locked bedrooms and whispered halls.
Not that she could talk. She'd used her face the same way more than once. Pretty, delicate, young. People expected softness. So she let them.
She'd been with the Crows for nine years. Killed more people than she would like to admit, and buried the things that still hurt. But she hadn't let it harden her. Not all the way. Her father wouldn't have wanted that.
Her fingers curled around the edge of the table. If he was alive, he was still looking. If he was dead… well, that would be the only thing that could have made him stop.
The thought curled around her heart like wire. But she didn't believe it. Not really.
He was Zevran Arainai. Light on his feet. Sharp as sin. She remembered the way he'd laughed when they ran, when they vanished through shadows like smoke, when he'd called her his little starling and told her, "One day, mi alma, you will disappear so beautifully they'll call it magic."
He wouldn't have stopped looking. Unless— No. She pressed the thought down hard.
She hadn't wanted to become someone he wouldn't recognise. That had been the quiet promise beneath everything, beneath the training, beneath the kills, beneath the masks. She held onto the soft parts. The bright ones. The ones he'd loved. The ones she hid now so no one could take them away.
And when she saw him again, she'd let them out. Let him see them. To let him know she was still her, no matter what else she'd had to become.
But that day wasn't here yet.
She had to climb further. Earn trust. Gain autonomy. She needed the ability to vanish for weeks without questions. To build her own contacts outside the Crow halls, whispers beyond the contracts. That kind of freedom didn't come cheap.
The Crows hadn't been the ones to take her. But they had been the ones to buy her, ten years old, silent and sunburnt, all bones and fury. She still remembered the man who'd handed over the contract. Slavers that had attacked the village of the woman her father had left her with while he dealt with business.
And once she'd arrived, the Crows had wasted no time. No kindness. She'd done well, though. Because she'd already been trained. She just hadn't realised it. All the little games—how to run without a sound, how to lie with a straight face, how to vanish, how to read a room before it read her. How to charm, dodge, throw a dagger across a courtyard and make it stick.
But he hadn't taught her to kill. So when she was fourteen, given the parameters of her assessment, nothing prepared her for the warmth that spilt from someone else's throat.
Starling blinked, hard, and shook the memory off before it could set down roots.
She turned back to Tenna, grateful for the noise, the mess, and the nearness of familiar people.
"Did I miss anything interesting while I was gone?"
Tenna gave her a slow, wicked grin. "Ridge got into a fight with Alasan."
Starling's brows lifted. She turned to Ridge. "Why?"
Ridge didn't even flinch. "He spat in my tea."
Tenna snorted. "And then Ridge picked up his cup and smashed it into Alasan's face. Tea was still hot. Freshly brewed."
Starling let out a low whistle, lips curling in amusement despite the weight in her chest. "Dramatic."
"I'm pretty," Ridge said, flicking his hair off one shoulder. "Not patient."
"You're lucky Lucanis wasn't here," Tenna muttered.
Ridge shrugged. "He's never not mad at me."
Starling smiled faintly, her fingers moving over the edge of the table. But her heart gave a sudden, unbidden kick at the mention of Lucanis's name. Not from affection. Not even fancy. More like fear. Not sharp terror, but the kind that lived beneath the skin. A quiet, simmering awareness.
She was Lucanis and Viago's current… interest. Flavour of the month, as the barracks liked to say when they thought no one important was listening. And maybe she wasn't important. But being seen—being chosen—by two of the most powerful men in Treviso's Crow hierarchy meant she might become important. Whether she wanted to or not.
It didn't happen all the time. But it happened enough to be a known pattern. If they liked you, they invited you to their bed. Sometimes just once. Sometimes for a few weeks. Rarely longer than that. Rumour had it they got bored easily. But while you were their favourite? You got better-paying contracts. Better gear. Special favours. Protection.
And if you believed the whispers, the sex was phenomenal. She could confirm that part. But the coin? The gear? She had gotten better daggers. But her contracts hadn't seen a rise in coin. She was starting to wonder if that part of the rumour was baseless or at least a little inaccurate. Or maybe it just hadn't been long enough. Maybe she was already fading from favour and didn't even know it yet.
Still, she hadn't declined. She hadn't dared. She didn't believe they'd retaliate, not directly. Viago smiled too often. Lucanis didn't smile at all. Neither wore their cruelty openly. But this was the Crows. Piss off the wrong person, and you wound up on a contract that looked normal, felt normal... until it didn't. Until the guards were four instead of two. Until the poison didn't take. Until your mark was ready for you.
She couldn't afford that kind of mistake. She also couldn't afford anyone knowing. If word got out, if even Tenna or Ridge guessed, then every step she took up the ladder would be tainted. No matter how hard she'd worked, no matter how sharp her kills were, no matter how much she bled for the guild.
They'd say it wasn't her. They'd say it was them. That she'd been pulled up the ranks by powerful hands she'd let touch her in the dark. Her competency would be questioned. Her reputation gutted. Everything she'd built would turn to ash.
So she smiled carefully now. And stayed quiet. Even when Viago's hands had tangled in her hair a few nights ago. Even when Lucanis had watched her from across the training yard, expression unreadable. She hadn't said a word. Because you couldn't win if the whole table thought your hand was fixed.
With a soft sigh, Starling leaned forward and snagged her satchel from under the table. "I'm going to change," she said, getting up from her seat. "Maybe nap. I've got the rest of the day off."
"Glory and luxury," Tenna said dryly, tearing another bite from her hunk of bread.
"Yes it is." Starling smiled faintly. "Might even splurge and go to the bathhouse."
"Hot water?" Ridge said, scandalised. "Who are you?"
"A woman of means and mystery," she murmured.
"Smells like blood and road dust," Tenna muttered, but she was grinning.
Starling lifted two fingers in a lazy farewell and slipped away, boots quiet as breath as she made her way to the sleeping quarters. The familiar scent of oiled leather, old wood, and too many bodies met her halfway down the hall.
Her cot was tucked near the corner, beneath a small arched window that let in late afternoon light and not much else. She unbuckled her belt and dropped it onto the trunk at the foot of the bed, starting the familiar rhythm of stripping away the job. Shed the gear. Stow the steel. Let the muscle remember it had nothing left to hold.
She was halfway to unbuttoning her shirt when she saw it. The edge of parchment, tucked neatly under her pillow. Not hidden exactly, but not meant to be visible to passerbys. Her stomach tightened, though her fingers didn't falter as she reached for it. She turned it over. There was no formal seal, just blank wax, plain and unassuming.
She cracked the seal and unfolded the letter. There were only a few lines, written in the same elegant, precise hand she'd seen before. No names. No instructions. Just a time. A place. The soft curve of a sigil worked into the bottom right corner. Not a Crow mark, but one she'd learnt to recognise.
Lucanis and Viago.
She let out a long breath through her nose and sat down on the cot's edge, parchment still in hand. She wasn't disappointed, exactly. But she'd been thinking about that bath. The quiet, the soap, the heat soaking into her bones. Maybe even something sweet from the bakery near the square.
And now she'd be spending the evening elsewhere.
They weren't restful, the two of them. Not by a long stretch. They didn't hurt her, nothing cruel, nothing unkind. But they unravelled her, picked at her edges with teeth and touch until she forgot how to breathe. And she'd have to wear a new mark tomorrow like it didn't come from a place too high above her station.
Starling folded the parchment carefully, tucking it into the lining of her satchel with practised fingers.
All right. So that's what she'd be doing tonight.