Prince Artos knew the rumors about the Shadow of the North—a faceless assassin sent to end his bloodline—but he didn’t expect to find her bleeding out in his private gardens.
Tavia Lark was a name whispered in the dark, a phantom capable of slipping through stone walls. But as Artos knelt beside her, he saw only a woman clutching a side wound, her silver hair matted with mud and iron-scented blood. Against every law of his kingdom, he didn’t call the guards. He carried her to the secret passage beneath the library.
Artos didn't flinch. He simply set a bowl of broth on the table. "A contract requires a willing hand, Tavia. You aren't a weapon; you're a person who has been used as one." Download Prince and Assassin Tavia Lark epub
For weeks, the Prince and the Assassin lived in the quiet tension of the underground. Artos, a man of peace who preferred ancient scrolls to sharpened steel, tended to her wounds. Tavia, a woman built of scars and silence, watched him with the wary eyes of a trapped hawk.
Standing in the moonlit courtyard where they first met, Tavia drew her blade—not pointing it at the Prince, but standing firmly between him and the darkness. Prince Artos knew the rumors about the Shadow
"You should have let me die," Tavia rasped one night, her hand hovering over a concealed dagger. "My contract doesn't expire just because you're kind."
"The contract is void," she whispered, her voice echoing with a newfound sovereignty. "I am no longer the Assassin. And he is more than a Prince." In that moment, the hunt ended, and a rebellion began. Against every law of his kingdom, he didn’t
The shift was slow, like the thawing of a northern winter. She taught him how to see the hidden exits in a room; he taught her that words could hold more power than blades. But as the King’s health failed and Artos’s enemies gathered at the gates, Tavia’s old life came knocking. Her guild demanded the Prince’s head, or they would take hers.