Assassin of Curses: (The Coren Hart Chronicles Book 3) by Jessie Eaker (best novels in english TXT) 📕

Fumiko carefully removed her cloak, wincing as she raised her right arm. She released the ties of her shirt and went to lift it off, but was unable to. She gave me an embarrassed smile. “It hurts more than I thought.”

I stepped behind her and helped her gently raise her shirt. She slipped it off, and while modestly holding it in front of her, stood with her back fully exposed.

I remembered hearing that you can tell a lot about someone from their back. And as I stared at Fumiko’s, it whispered of a difficult past. She was of slender build but not skinny. Under her pale skin, I could see well-defined muscles across her back and shoulders—not a trace of fat on her. But marring her smooth flesh were a host of small scars starting mid-way and spreading down to her waist. They looked old, having long since healed. But what caught my eye was high on her right shoulder and completely unexpected—a small tattoo of a butterfly, beautifully done in reds and blues. A work of art all by itself, which seemed slightly out of place against the sea of scars further down.

Realizing I was staring, I slid my eyes to her side. I grimaced. Midway up her torso, I could see the injury—it was turning a deep blue. I gently probed it, and she hissed and jerked away. The skin had been broken in a couple of places, but there was no major bleeding.

“He sure got you good. I guess you’re lucky it was a shovel,” I said as I started to wrap her chest. I was careful to keep my eyes on her back and away from the more private places in front. I couldn’t help but notice how warm her skin was.

“True.” She said through gritted teeth. She looked over her shoulder at me. “Coren, you’re going to have to make it tighter.”

I frowned. “If I make it too tight, you won’t be able to move.”

“And if you don’t make it tighter, it will hurt too much to move.”

She dropped her shirt which pooled at her feet. Maintaining her back to me, she held her arms away from her body. “This will make it easier.”

I glanced at Zofie, feeling a little better at having her close by as a chaperone. I unwound the little wrapping I had done and started again going a little tighter.

“Higher, Coren.”

“But...”

She sighed. “I know I’m a woman, and you’re embarrassed, but you’ve got to do this right. Would you rather I get Spraggel?”

I shook my head. “No, I’ll do it.”

I started once more, moving higher up her chest and making it tighter. I tried not to think about the feminine parts I was touching.

I glanced at the art on her shoulder and tried to distract myself. “Where did you get the tattoo? It’s beautiful. Does it mean something?”

She was silent for a moment, and I thought she was going to pull one of her ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ diversions. But she answered a heartbeat later. “The emperor’s royal artist did it. I was quite proud of it at the time. It’s nothing myst related, but more of a sign of my previous station. Only the elite got them.”

“Is it related to the training I saw in your memories?”

She gave me a worried glance over her shoulder. “Yes.”

I smiled. “Then it must be a sign that you graduated.”

She was silent a moment. “I guess you could say that.” She looked back forward and didn’t speak further. I sensed a delicate topic and just worked in silence.

I tied off the binding and diverted my eyes as she pulled on her shirt. She rolled her shoulder tentatively, smiled, and nodded. But her expression fell as she faced me, turning to one of sadness as she searched my eyes.

Suddenly the room went eerily quiet, and I realized Fumiko had just covered us in an area of silence. Which meant Zofie would not be able to hear what came next. “That tattoo says I was once part of a special group in service to the emperor. Only a select few graduated, and we received only the most difficult of assignments. But while I left that life behind...” She reached up and gently touched my face. “I can never escape it.”

Fumiko abruptly turned away, and the room’s sound suddenly returned. Oddfrid strode back into the room carrying a well-used leather satchel. He plopped it down in the center of the floor. The satchel was faded and worn, tired almost, and like its owner, looked to have made this trip many times before.

“Gather everyone together,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

I did as he asked, and moments later, we stood nervously in the foyer. Oddfrid gave us a quick inspection and nodded. He stood erect and put his hands behind his back. “Our destination this evening will be a town called Piredrop in the kingdom of Zeveiltia. It’s about a third of the way to the Kuiojia Empire and is much colder than it is here. In fact, at this time of year, they will likely have a lot of snow.”

He paused for a moment looking at each one of us in turn. I somehow felt this was a well-practiced lecture. “Now,” he continued. “Going through a long-range portal is very different from a short-range. The difficulty and amount of myst required for any portal doubles with the distance traveled. So the amount of myst to transport you back from your family’s home was about five mystumns...”

Spraggel held up his hand. “What is a mystumn?”

Oddfrid blinked at Spraggel like he had been thrown off his lecture. “A mystumn is a unit of myst usage. I don’t have time to go into the details about it.” He cleared his throat, looked up, and seemed to find his