Descent Read Online Free PDF

There was a metal fence surrounding it and dogs inside.
    Something had happened to Luca in that battle so long past. An appalling determination was his, a new set of skills, a different way of thinking.
    Was it possible to kill for a living and still have morals?
    Luca didn’t have the answer.
    He crept into the grounds, climbing the fence with deadly silence and grace. He didn’t wake the dogs—he was a ghost. Up the ivy on the wall and into an upper window, sitting for an eternity to make sure it was safe. Feet feather soft, he walked into the room and waited at the door to the hallway for a long time before stepping out. As he walked he scanned the floor, looking for loose floorboards, stopping at the second door on the right. Again he waited, listening for the heavy breathing of two bodies in sleep. Opening the door gently, he walked to the bed.
    He was just going through the motions. Motions he had been taught every day for the past two years. Motions that, if he thought about properly, made him shiver.
    Luca looked at the figure in the bed, and at the girl who slept beside him. She was very pretty, her white-blonde hair fanned out around her.
    Taking his knife out of its sheath, he ran it swiftly through the neck of the sleeping man, using a cloth to cover the wound so that the blood didn’t gurgle and wake the girl.
    Retreating quickly through the open door, remembering the boards in the hall and the room with the window, Luca descended down the ivy, across the grass, over the gate and six streets away to safety.
    Luca ran a hand through his short hair, and entered a tavern. He ordered a glass of red wine and drained it. As usual, he looked at his hands. It always seemedto him that they should tremble. They never did. They never so much as moved, never whispered or gave any hint of his doings. But inside ... everything shook.
    Luca knew who the woman in the bed was. It would have been the Lady Tzenna of Sair. She was betrothed to Lord Willem of Amalia, and it was known that they were already living together. A love match, apparently. She had been beautiful, but he hadn’t allowed himself to think about that, or to look at her for too long.
    Luca’s talent had been discovered, honed, crafted, and who was he to let it go to waste? He’d been told on a number of occasions that skills like his were good for only one thing. So he ended lives as his job.
    Willem of Amalia had been a nobleman, one of the men from the royal court, and he’d secretly made a large portion of his money through the slave trade. Accolon’s obsession with eradicating the trade was the reason Willem had died.
    Lord Willem drank and gambled half his money away. He was violent and sold young girls into slavery.
    But did he deserve to die?
    Luca drank his third glass slowly and then went back to the castle. There he would sleep, and in the morning collect his pay. It was better that the king himself had commissioned this job—it made Luca feel justified.
    A big blow to the trade, Accolon had said.
    If you did an evil thing to cause good, does it make the deed any less evil? Too hard a question.
    But Luca knew he was kidding himself if he thought he was doing this to help the king. He was doing it in order to subdue the chaos inside him where his heart had once been. In order to try and feel something, so that he might still consider himself human.‘I’ve shown them to their rooms. They’re sleeping. Or trying to,’ Harry said. He was still smiling.
    ‘Good,’ Satine said. ‘They’ll need the rest. They’ve got a lot to deal with.’
    ‘Yeah right—it isn’t half as bad as when I arrived. You had me crossing the marshes within minutes of waking up to a splitting headache, with no clue where I was!’
    ‘Oh wonderful,’ Altor drawled. ‘We get to hear this story again.’
    ‘What’s put you in such a bad mood?’ Harry asked, eyebrows raised.
    ‘Forgive me if I do not deign to listen to repeated dribble that occurred nearly