Rex found Iris in the household's eastern courtyard two mornings after the training hall's second session, a session that had left the stone floor stained with copper-scented blood and the air ringing with the wet sounds of broken ribs.
She was seated where she always sat, a shadow among shadows, sharpening a set of throwing knives with the specific, unhurried focus of someone who used lethal precision as a form of meditation.
The morning air was crisp, but the courtyard felt heavy, charged with the residual tension that always seemed to follow Rex like a storm cloud. He did not approach her with the careful, skittish energy most people brought to an assassin, that instinctive, primal recoil people felt when they sensed a predator in their midst.
Even after weeks of him becoming an undeniable fixture of the household, people still treated her as though she might slip a blade between their ribs for breathing too loudly.
