Free My Immortal Assassin by Carolyn Jewel

am now and in return I’m your good little soldier. Am I right?”
    “There are obligations on my part as well.”
    She cocked her head, water bottle halfway to her mouth. “Like what?”
    “So long as you uphold your oath, I can do nothing unjust where you are concerned. I cannot be capricious or malicious in any requests I might make of you. If I were to be so, you would reach a point where you would cease to be bound by the oath.”
    “Sounds fair.”
    He let her surprise pass unremarked. “You won’t be without protection. None of the kin can harm you without repercussions from me. I assure you, there aren’t many who would care to have me seeking revenge against them.”
    She looked at him sideways. “What if I kill Christophe? Hypothetically speaking.”
    “I can’t be sure, but if you were to succeed, I believe your oath of fealty would prevent me from killing you.” He straightened his sleeves until they were even. “Which is not to say that Nikodemus would not later decide to punish you.”
    “All due respect to your warlord, sir, but if I manage to off Christophe, I don’t care what he does to me.” She sat up and raised a hand, palm out. “I, Anna Grayson Spencer, do solemnly swear to be your loyal minion under penalty of perjury and pain of a gruesome death. So help me God.”
    “Sarcasm is neither appreciated nor helpful.”
    She shrugged and kept her emotions blocked from him. Gray Spencer was, in some ways, more damaged than he was. “It’s been a long day. I’m low on good manners.”
    He let the silence close in on them. “You must be certain. You must freely accept.”
    She let her head fall back against the couch. Her fingers curled around the half-empty water bottle. She whispered Jesus under her breath and then looked at him. “Define free .”
    “Don’t be tiresome. You know full well what I mean.”
    Still slumped down, she crossed her arms over her head and rolled her eyes, then she cocked her head and looked him up and down. Her shirt rode up, exposing a wide strip of her belly. “I bet you go for the educated girls. Doctors or lawyers. The ones with PhDs. A woman who can talk about science, history, and world politics and give you her opinion on the Impressionists versus the Modernists. Not some punk like me.” She laughed softly, then drained the bottle in one long drink. “You’ll make yourself want me, though. Eventually.”
    She was astonishingly accurate in that, by and large, he did prefer the sort of woman she described. “To be clear,” he said, “I am not asking for a sexual relationship with you.”
    Her gaze flicked to his. He was struck once again by the intensity of her eyes and the bleakness that lived there. She lifted her water bottle in his direction. “I’m not your type.”
    The water bottle collapsed under the force of her fingers around it. She stared at the broken plastic. Durian got another water from the mini-fridge. The bottle was cold and wet against his fingers. He handed it to her.
    “Thanks.” She drained that one quickly, too. When she finished, she picked at the label until she had a strip of plastic loosened. She sat with one foot on the couch, her elbow on her upraised knee, the rest of her body relaxed. Durian stood in front of her, feet apart, arms crossed over his chest. He stayed out of her head.
    She ripped off the rest of the water bottle label and let it fall to the floor along with the empty, after which she leaned forward with her arms down, hands clasped between her shaking legs. The position made her look submissive, but she was anything but submissive. Nor was she as collected as she appeared. Her magic was all over the place. Burning hot one minute, cold the next. The traceries on her arm moved faster, a reaction to her unsettled state and proof of how desperately she needed to learn to control that magic before ignorance killed her.
    Still bent over, she lifted her head and gave him a smile that made him think she was