Two-Faced (Assassin at Court Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

“How can you speak of noble women with such derision when you are in fact, a noble woman yourself, and here for the same reason the other ninety-nine girls came to the High Palace?”
                  “I may be competing in this stupid contest, but it is because I made the decision myself to do so for a specific purpose. I did not blindly travel to the High Palace because my already ridiculously rich noble family is jockeying for more power. I am nobody’s pawn but my own.”
                  “And tell me Skyler, what is your purpose here?”
                  The question caught me more off guard than it should have. I would have liked to think it was because my true purpose there could never be revealed. In truth, it was because my purpose was becoming muddled with the more run-ins I had with the man beneath the mask of the Crowned Prince.
    I said I was nobody’s pawn but my own, but how much truth was really in that statement. I had not come to the High Palace on my own accord. I came because I was an assassin hired to kill the Prince.  I was playing at a dangerous game. To fulfill my contract quietly and neatly as requested I needed to get close to the Prince. To get close to the Prince I needed to gain his trust, which I was doing by spending time with him. The problem was the more time I spent around him the more I got to know him as a person. I liked Zander, the person. When the time came to kill him, could I do it? My mind dredged up memories of four years prior.
    It was a week after the deaths of my mother, father and brother. A terrible disease circulated through Arythmia’s low society. The Common People’s water supply had become contaminated and none of the High Nobles wanted to incur the cost of cleaning it up. A group of commoners petitioned the royal family for help, but they said it was the nobles’ duty. The High Nobles of the city were too busy bickering back and forth amongst themselves about whose responsibility it was to actually do anything about it. The Common People were left with no choice but to keep using the bad water. We could not heat it before use because that required burning kerosene gas. As expensive as it was, we always had a limited supply of it.  One night I went to bed and the next morning I woke up without a family. My mother, father and brother had all passed in their sleeps, sickened by the water. When the High Noble in our part of the city sent an undertaker to retrieve the bodies for burning, he also sent someone to inform me that I needed to vacate the premises. I could not stay there if I could not pay the taxes. It’s funny he could send somebody to kick a thirteen year old girl who had just lost her family out on the street, but he could not send somebody to purify our water. Maybe my family would have never fallen ill. The first couple of nights I slept in the field behind our home. Then, the same High Noble sent the same man to tell me I could not stay there either. He owned the field too and felt entitled to taxes on it as well. I found myself in a dark alleyway that no one could lay claim to. I fell asleep and awoke to a trio of men ripping away at my clothes. I screamed and tried to fight them off, but it was three of them and one of me. Then Samael appeared and sliced the throats of them all. He took me away from the alley and gave me warm clothes and my first meal in days. Then he explained to me what he did and offered me an opportunity to learn to defend myself and to never have to starve or live on the streets again. I was thirteen and alone and afraid and I accepted his offer.
                  “I lost you again,” Zander gave my hand a gentle squeeze to draw me back to the present.
                  “I’m sorry, again.” I knew the smile I shot him across the table failed to reach my eyes.
                  He let my hands go to trace a finger down the length of my cheek. “I don’t