She and Teo slipped away from the scene, pushing past the spectators and following the Hirai heir to Rose Court at a slight distance so as not to draw attention to themselves. They soon crossed a street crowded with horse-drawn carriages. Benches surrounded a garden of willow trees and rosebushes that lined a path toward a pond at the center.

One of Kouta’s bodyguards masqueraded as a businessman eating lunch on a bench, but through his shirt, Aina saw the outline of a gun. Two more guards stood at a corner, pretending to admire the garden, but their eyes were trained to watch for any threats. She couldn’t simply throw a dagger from here and walk away whistling. Any one of those guards would jump in front of a blade to protect her mark.

Kouta sat on a bench near the center of the garden, reading a stack of documents now. She wondered at what age he’d learned to read, remembering how she’d only picked up the skill at fourteen after Kohl had thrown enough books at her to get her to learn.

“You can’t be a great assassin if you’re illiterate, Aina,” Kohl had said when she’d finally thrown a book back at him.

“Why not?” she’d asked. They were sitting at a small table in the training room. Two other employees of the Dom sparred with each other, using techniques Kohl had taught them to take down bigger opponents. She itched to run over and join them, beat them, prove herself.

But Kohl’s hard sapphire eyes pinned her in place as he tapped the book in front of him. “Because you can’t be an effective assassin if all you do is swing around a knife. What makes an assassin different from any other killer?” Without waiting for her to reply, he said, “Assassins don’t get caught. You find your mark and take them out, leaving the least amount of bodies behind as you can. You are efficient; you are fast; you are flawless. So you need to make people think you’re something else. You’re an aristocrat, a bartender, an artist, and you have no idea how that man just slumped over in his chair with a dagger sticking out of his neck. Sometimes that’s the only way to reach a target. Not through a window or up a drain, but through the front door, as someone they would never suspect. To pull that off, you need to research. You need to read.”

“I can read a room,” she’d replied instantly. “And my marks. I know who will fight back, who will beg, and who will freeze up and wait for me to strike. That should be good enough.”

Before she was done speaking, he’d opened the book to the first page and shoved it in front of her.

“Who taught you to read?” she’d blurted out, partially to continue avoiding this lesson and partially because she was curious. Had he grown up reading, or had he learned at a later age like she had?