“If you take one more step toward that gate, I will slit your throat right here,” Lyra hissed, her blade pressed tightly against the neck of a frightened merchant.
“Put the knife away,” Cassian ordered, his voice low and commanding as he yanked a heavy wool hood over his head. “We are not trying to draw every guard in this territory to us.”
We stood at the dusty perimeter of Alpha Lord Darius’s mountain fortress, hidden among a line of trading wagons. To the rest of the world, we were just three weary travelers looking for shelter. But beneath our mud-splattered cloaks, we carried secrets that could burn this entire kingdom to the ground.
“He was staring,” Lyra muttered, reluctantly easing her steel back into her sheath. “People who stare get suspicious. Suspicious people talk.”
“And p
