Anya could barely breathe through the pain of her fear for the twins.

"I'll do whatever I have to, Thorne."

"Very good.  As I said, you will enter the household of Wildwood.  You will present yourself as a lady's maid for the future Lady Wildwood.  She has need of a second with more exact talents."

"I don't know anything about being a lady's maid."

He handed her a book she had not even noticed that he carried.  "This will teach you everything you need to know.  Lord Keaton Wildwood has a fondness for keeping wizards in his household."

Anya protested, "But I'm no wizard!"

"You are now.  You know as well as I that your witch's magic comes from the same place as a wizard's does.  The line is not so firmly drawn as they think.  You have a week to study the ins and outs, and you will be given a post close to Lady Wildwood, likely to help her prepare for their wedding.  From there, an opportunity will no doubt arise for you to destroy Lord Wildwood.  Stab him in the back, poison him, control him, suck the magic out of his very soul.  I care little how you do it, but do not be long in your planning."

Anya nodded, holding the book in her shaking hands.

"I will require regular reports.  You may send them to this house using your crow.  I will retrieve them from here.  He will have to live in the woods around Wildwood so that they do not suspect that he is your familiar and that you are a witch.  That suspicion would make your task far more difficult."

"I understand," she said, just wanting him to leave.  She had much to do, and she did not know how much longer she could keep her tears in.

He moved as if to leave, and then turned briefly again.  "There is a letter in the book which will further explain your identity and past.  Also, if it makes your task easier, I shall tell you something.  You should know that your brother's eye was destroyed by Lady Theresa Waldwick, the future Lady Wildwood.  Furthermore, it was her sister, The Honorable Lady Daphne of Waldwick and The Honorable Sir Thomas of Harding who put the two arrows in your brother's back.  He would be alive today if it were not for their actions."

Gage would also be alive if it were not for Thorne having convinced him to interfere in matters that were too big for him as well, Anya thought bitterly.  She wondered if she would go the same way as Gage. 

If only she could get the twins to safety first.

"Good luck.  If you play your cards right, you will return here to your cottage with your precious siblings as if you had never left.  I will send someone by within the week to take you to Wildwood."  Thorne turned, and walked down the drive.  Anya stood and watched him until he was out of sight.

* * * * *

When he was gone, she collapsed down in the dirt and let her tears escape.  Sabin hopped off her shoulder and stood on the ground, watching her sympathetically with his intelligent eyes. 

Thorne had forced her hand, and she was left with only impossible choices.  She could not kill a man.  She would not become a murderer.  She just could not.

But if she did not kill him, Thorne would kill the twins.  She knew it with a deadly certainty.

The twins' lives or a stranger's.  She really had no choice.

She wiped her face, uncaring that dirt was streaked across it.

The twins were young and good, and they deserved more than life had given them.  The stranger, this Lord Wildwood, had been born into a life of privilege.  He probably did not care about the lives of the common people.  He was likely wicked and dissolute.  The world would almost certainly be better off without him.

He was also a wizard, thus there was no doubt that he was seeped in his own arrogance.  He would never suspect a lowly witch of planning to assassinate him.  Or rather, a lowly wizardress, for that was what he would believe her to be.

It did not matter what he was.  Killing him was wrong.  She hated it.  But there was no choice.

She would do what she had to so that the twins would be safe.

Sabin cawed loudly.

* * * * *

Anya did not allow herself to break down again.  She spent the entire week preparing for her unpleasant task with the same meticulous care she took while making potions.  She studied her fake trade and identity.  She tried to think through scenarios that might occur.  She tried to convince herself that what she was doing was right.  She was very nearly successful.

Anya was ready and waiting when she finally heard the sound of a wagon clattering up the drive.  She took a deep breath, and walked out the door, Sabin riding on her shoulder.

"Miss Anya!"

"Sam."  She was not entirely surprised to see him.  She had known that he was somehow entangled with Gage and her newborn problems.

"I sure am sorry to see you like this," he said.

"Me too," she agreed.  She wondered how much he knew.  Not that it mattered.

"Ready to go?"

"As I'll ever be."  Anya had already piled the bags she had filled with supplies outside.  She grabbed them and set them in the back of the wagon.  She climbed up into the wagon.

Sam pulled the reins and the horses began to move.  He spoke again.  "In the back I've got a couple of bags from Thorne.  I don't know what's in them.  Do you know about them?"

Anya shrugged.  "Probably tools for my new trade."

"I think he's making a mistake, bringing you into this.  You're not a killer."

"Not yet," she said.  But she would be.  She went through her list of rationalizations why murdering Lord Wildwood was what she would do.

She thought about her brave and proud Damani, and her vibrant and gentle Kallie.  She would get them back no matter what it took.

She really did not have a choice.

* * * * *

Anya watched as the country side rolled by the wagon, but her mind was not engaged in what she saw.  She was numb, as if she was watching someone else's problems.

The journey was tedious, with long stretches of nothing but the wagon jarring her out of her thoughts.  Sam would occasionally say something.  She tried to answer kindly, but she could not help remembering that he was somehow connected to her brother.

Anya was becoming accustomed to the mixed feelings she had for Gage.  Of course, she was sad that he was gone, but she could not help feeling resentful.  Gage had gotten himself mixed up in bad things, and he had dragged her and the twins into it with him.

Anya did not like the feeling of bitterness that welled up inside her.  Gage surely had not planned for things to turn out like this.  But what had he expected, becoming involved with a man like Thorne?

She remembered how much she had appreciated that he had taken care of them financially for so many years.

He had left their childhood home when he was hardly more than a boy.  He had worked among strangers for such a long time.  She had worked hard, too, but it was not the same.

He had probably been tired of bearing the burden, and he must have looked for an easy way out.  Killing one man rather than toiling under the burden of a debt too large to repay for the rest of his life had probably looked good.

Even though she understood, she was having trouble forgiving him.  It was a foreign feeling to her.

Her life had been relatively simple before.  She had only two sorts of people in her life until recently.  Her family whom she loved; and the ignorant peasants who feared and rejected her because of her abilities.  She supposed that it hurt to be rejected by them in an abstract way.

But she hurt far worse now.  Having the twins in danger was like a gaping hole in her heart.  Having Gage grow into a man that she did not know pushed the hole deeper.  She realized she had failed to see how desperate he was becoming.  Perhaps she could have done more to pay off the damned debt.

If only there had been no debt.  Anya had been younger and quite sheltered when her father first went to Lord Reaumur to borrow money.

She had not understood what it had truly meant.  She had only known that it might save her mother.  She had been so worried and so afraid of what would happen if her mother did die that she had been excited to hope for a cure.

But her mother died in spite of all the treatments, in spite of all the healers and physicians that her father had consulted.  She probably would have been more comfortable if she had simply been allowed to die in peace.

But they had all been too afraid to lose her to allow her to leave so easily.  The twins had been little more than babies, and Anya and Gage had been mere children.  Her father had loved her mother so much that he would have done anything for her.  She had been a wonderful woman.  She was the one that had taught Anya to be patient and kind, to be slow to anger and generous in understanding.

And she had understood.  Anya's mother had been grieved to leave them, but she had accepted her impending death with the same calm understanding that she had accepted all parts of life.  She had undergone all those terrible treatments because she had known how afraid they were to lose her.

Especially her husband.  He had lived only a couple of years after his wife's death.  Anya did not think it was true that a man could die of a broken heart, yet she had watched the drastic decline of her father from the moment of his wife's last breath.  He had not wanted to live without her.

And his four children had apparently not been reason enough for him to endure.

Anya inhaled sharply as she was forced to recognize her buried grief and bitterness.  Had she always deep down felt he had abandoned them?  Had she been pretending with herself so long?

She was angry.  He was the one who had put them in such an untenable position.  Then he had abandoned them.

Gage had paid the price and now she would do something so terribly wrong that she probably would never forgive herself.  If she did not, Damani and Kallie would be the ones to pay the accursed debt.

Sabin cawed sympathetically.  She turned and studied the scenery so Sam could not see her cry.  He must have known she was upset, because he kept his face turned studiously away from her, as if there was something interesting to look at in the forest scenery beyond.

* * * * *

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading!!!  :)