Black Roses

By Zoe Cannon

The Black Rose. Once, the dread assassin's name was whispered through the streets of three kingdoms. Her victims never saw her coming, and she never showed mercy.

 

Until she fell in love with the prince she was hired to kill.

 

Now, years later, the Black Rose slips on her old leathers and sharpens her knives. She will stalk the night again…

 

…Unless the prince has his way.

 

This short story is 12,000 words long. It is also available in Not Your Heroine, a fantasy short story collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zoe Cannon
• Release date: Feb 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215150870

Book preview

Black Roses

Zoe Cannon

© 2023 Zoe Cannon

http://www.zoecannon.com

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Black Roses

Siana had been worried her old leathers wouldn’t fit anymore. She’d had a baby since she had last put them on and everything had changed shape, just like her sister-in-law the future queen had warned her. But maybe there was some magic lurking in the clothes, or maybe they were simply as glad to see her as she was to see them, because they made accommodations for her. The pants slipped over her widened hips without so much as a whisper of resistance, and the clips of her vest tightened easily over her chest, which was still swollen even though she had passed off the chore of feeding the baby to a wet nurse months ago.

She took a long breath in. Finally, she could breathe again. And not just because she had rid herself of the corset her lady-in-waiting stuffed her into every morning. The familiar smell of the leather almost blotted out the odor of the dried flowers jammed into every corner of the room. Siana had always had the impression that the harder people tried to make their air smell clean, the more they were trying to cover up.

The same time went for the amount of time people spent cleaning. Or, in the case of the royal palace, how much time they ordered their servants to spend cleaning. Siana and Reuchel had servants in their suite sweeping and scrubbing at least three times a day, no matter how often Siana tried to tell them once a day was enough. Or once a week. Or once a month—she could handle dirt more easily than she could abide strangers in her space. Even barring the door hadn’t worked. They had brought one of the stablehands to break it down, and by the time the ordeal was over, half the palace was in a panic over what might have happened to the prince’s wife. Servants—the blasted creatures were like cockroaches.

That one had earned her a confused talk from Reuchel, too, and a suggestion that maybe she was still fragile from the birth and should spend more time resting. She had refrained herself from braining him with the gilded bust of his great-great-grandfather that watched over their bed, for which she should have received far more credit than she had. Of course, that wasn’t her style—she had always preferred more subtle methods. She would be lying if she said she hadn’t considered slipping a little something into his soup, or a dagger between his ribs while he slept. But she hadn’t entertained the thoughts for more than half a day at most. That was true love for you.

She ran her fingers lovingly over the hilts of her daggers now. She had never stopped wearing them, of course, but it had been a long time since she could wear them openly. A long time since she could reach out and touch them whenever she wanted, without needing to reckon with layers upon layers of skirts, not to mention others’ curious looks. Weapons, like smells and dirt, were something else the royal palace preferred to keep hidden. But like the smells and the dirt, that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

It wasn’t that she objected to the idea that the dealings of the royal court might not be all gleaming white floors and the smell of roses. Only someone with the life experience