by Bec McMaster
“Falion will escort you,” Mistmark says, and Falion’s head tracks toward him as if to say when-the-sun-shines-in-the-Shadow-Lands.
“That’s very kind of—” There’s a hissing sound across the grotto.
A trio of rambunctious fae have levered open one of the sarcophagi and are peering inside it. One of them screams as if he sees something staring back at him, and then he tumbles inside the enormous casket.
“Those fucking morons.” Malechus’s face goes white with rage. “Do they have any idea what they’re doing? There are dragon spirits leashed into that stone—”
The sarcophagi simply explodes outward.
Falion’s eyes widen and then he slams into Mistmark, wrapping his arms around him before they both vanish. I stagger to my knees behind one of the remaining sarcophagi, with Malechus—of all fae—shoving my head down.
Screams echo through the grotto. And then laughter. Malechus, however, is not laughing.
“Stay here,” he growls, pushing to his feet and stalking in the direction of the explosion.
They’re… gone.
Not merely across the cavern. But gone. Completely. Out of line of sight.
Falion Sifted him somewhere beyond this room, which was, until this point, something I considered impossible.
I gape at the room, slowly lowering my arms.
One of the wreaths is on fire. The grotto is mayhem. Half naked males and females spill from small nooks, clutching arms across breasts and buttocks. Malechus strides through it all, seemingly intent upon murder.
I couldn’t get a better distraction if I’d tried.
I circle one of the enormous coffins, the one that calls to me the most.
It occurred to me that there’s one place to hide someone right out in the open, when you don’t want them found. Somewhere that you can keep a close eye on your prisoner. Somewhere that nobody would ever be able to escape from.
A stone tomb, built to house a dragon’s spirit.
I press my hand against the stone and lean my forehead there.
“Forever,” Soraya whispers in my memories as she slices her dagger across the palm of her hand, forcing blood to well. “You and I against the world forever.”
We bound ourselves to each other that long-ago night.
The link between us is still there, buried deep in my heart and chained down by treachery.
I reach for it and metaphysically dust it off, and on the inside of the sarcophagus I swear I feel her suck in a sharp breath as if she feels it too.
That son of a bitch.
Keep your enemies close indeed.
Now how the fuck am I going to get this cursed thing open?
16
“Soraya?” I whisper through the stone.
I’ve tried everything I could to shift the lid. The sheer weight of it is impossible to move, and the distraction across the grotto will only last so long. Which means the only way I’m getting through it is by using my magic.
I pace around the sarcophagus.
Falion Sifted beyond sight.
But how? How did he do it?
Pressing my hand against the sarcophagus, I try to reach through it the way I reach through shadows. Nothing. Nothing but cold stone against my touch.
I can’t help thinking about the first time I ever Sifted.
My two foster brothers hurled me over the lip of a well, and I woke up in a nearby forest.
Nearly a mile away.
I did it once.
But how?
I was four. I can’t even remember what I was thinking that day. It’s my first formative memory, but it’s as shadowy around the edges as the gloom that fills this room.
The well. Strong hands levering me over the edge.
“We’re done feeding you, you little bitch,” my eldest brother said.
I can’t even remember his name.
But Riori? I remember him. I remember that you never dared allow yourself to be alone in a room with him, and as he held me over the edge of the well, he leaned close enough to whisper, “I hear you sniveling at night. You’re scared of the dark, aren’t you? Well, this ends in darkness, you little bastard. And the only people who will hear you scream are the two of us. The well monster’s going to feed well tonight.”
And then he lets me go as he laughed.
That day filled my nightmares for years. Sometimes I wonder if my recollections of it are even real, or whether they’ve become some twisted amalgamation of my dreams.
I fell for what seemed forever.
And then the icy shock of cold water swallowed me whole.
I couldn’t swim.
It was so dark down there I could barely breathe.
I thrashed, and I screamed, and I looked for them, but all I could make out was a thin circle of light above me, with two dark heads peering over the lip of it before I went under again.
And then something touched my foot.
Something cold and slimy curled around my ankle, like a bony hand that was half-rotted.
“You’re not the first brat we’ve fed to the well,” Riori said as he dragged me out of the hut. “You’re finally going to go meet the rest of our brothers and sisters.”
I screamed and screamed and screamed.
Please. Please!
A glowing hand reached out to me, plunging through the dark waters like a full moon rising.
“My little girl,” whispered a voice in my head, “if you ever need me, reach for me. I’ll be there for you. I promise. I love you… I love you….”
I took that hand, and it felt like a doorway opened within my mind. I finally fell through it.
And then I was sobbing in the forest and that door was still open somehow, an invisible hand stroking through my hair before the sensation faded and a pair of dry leaves skittering over my skin as the wind stirred them.
My eyes blink open, and I’m standing in front of the sarcophagus.
I’d forgotten about that hand, that voice….
I Sifted beyond sight that first time.
Yanking my hands off the stone, I strip the glamor from my skin and stare as a faint luminescence bleeds through. I’ve spent my entire life hiding that light. It’s a dangerous kind of weakness to show before my wraithen brothers and sisters.
Before my king….
Swallowing hard, I curl my fingers around the glow. Spears of light stab through my clenched fingers. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of it means.
But there’s one thing that’s starting to embed itself in my mind: Shadow is the absence of light. Light is the death of shadow.
What if I was able to manipulate more than mere shadow?
You are not merely wraithenkind, Zemira….
I let the light escape along with the exhale of my breath. Even if I am half fae, there’s nothing for me in this world. My ghostly pale skin sees to that. I can hide it behind glamor, but I’ll always be hiding it. I would be forever living a lie, no matter how much I yearn for that lie.
There is no place of acceptance here, even if I wish I could escape my father’s court….
The only one who has ever accepted me—betrayals or no betrayals—is entombed alive within this sarcophagus.
Soraya is all that matters. I’ll need her if I’m going to be able to pull off this heist.
Or maybe I just need her.
It’s a bitter antidote to swallow.
I place my hands on the stone again.
And this time I push through them.
Soraya. Soraya. Soraya. I try and channel that focus, that desperation I had the first time I Sifted beyond my limits. Darkness flickers in and out of my mind—there’s something….
There.
I plunge through the sarcophagus, and then I’m tumbling onto a warm body.
“What the fuck?” Soraya bursts out, grabbing me by the wrists.
I’m groggy and disorientated, but I have precisely two seconds to remember she’s an assassin and will probably
take to my sudden appearance in a similar way to a sleeping cat that’s suddenly had a dog thrown upon it.
“It’s me!” I hiss as she wrestles with me. “Soraya! It’s me!”
Harsh gasps burst through the small space as she freezes. “Z?”
I wilt against her. “Hold tight.” There are chains around her wrist. “I need to pick these locks.”
She clutches my hands as I pick the manacles, her breath coming loudly in the dark.
The dark.
She hates that I know this, but she always sleeps with a faint light because she’s afraid of the dark.
“Did Malechus talk you into these shackles, or did he actually fool you? Because I’m going to be very disappointed if you fell prey to the crown prince of the Blood Court,” I tell her in a conversational tone.
“How did you find me?” she snaps. “What are you doing here? You were in the—”
“Abyss?” I finally get the second lock open. “Apparently Father was getting a little concerned that you weren’t checking in. He sent me in to finish what you started.”
“What I started?” I can’t see her in the dark, but I know her head just whipped toward me. The movement throws me forward until I have a knee in her thigh. “But you’re not….”
“Not what?”
“Goddess’s breath, are you done?” she grinds out. “There’s not enough air in here for two.”
I was hoping she’d spill her secret mission, but it appears she’s starting to think again.
“I’m done.” I slip the lockpick back into my belt and curl up against her side. “Just how much do you want to get out of here?”
“What do you mean?” And then she stills. “How did you intend to get me out?”
“That’s the problem. I can’t lift the lid—”
“Zemira.”
“Just hold still. Really still.” I let my body relax, melting into shadows. But this time, I hold myself right on the edge between corporeal and incorporeal.
Falion did it.
He took Mistmark into the Sift—an act I’d previously believed was impossible. And while Mistmark didn’t look too happy about it, I have to presume he was still in one piece when he arrived.
“Don’t you dare.” Soraya stiffens. “Zemira. Zemira! Have you ever done this before?”
“Sshh.”
The bond between us flickers to light. There. There she is. I feel her flesh, feel her breath in her lungs, her heart racing. I sense her eyes going wide, and then I plunge us both into the Between.
A single second that stretches to an eternity.
I don’t think I could do this if we weren’t bound by blood.
We burst onto the flagstones of the grotto floor, and Soraya scrambles out of my arms, whipping a knife into her hand and staring at me with wild eyes. It’s one of her little tricks: It doesn’t matter whether she’s been unarmed, she can always Summon a weapon when she needs to.
“What the fuck did you just do?”
Her words are a slap in the face. So much for the warm welcome, the gratitude. “I’m fairly certain I just rescued you.”
“Rescued me?”
Soraya’s stern façade lasts all of a half second, before she’s paling. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
And then the staggers for the nearest statue and vomits behind it.
“So Malechus got the jump on you, huh?” I rub her back after she spends fifteen minutes retching into an urn. I hauled her into the hallway and well away from the grotto before Malechus could deal with his fire. Now we’re sitting in some underground room somewhere, that might have once been a cellar. “You got sloppy.”
Soraya sits back on her heels, scrubbing at her mouth. “If I didn’t still feel like I’d been turned inside-out and then put back together again, I would punch you.”
“Please. You’d have to catch me first. And you can’t even do that when you’re at your best. Also, you’re welcome. I saved your ass. I’ll accept any favors and gratitude you can throw my way.”
Soraya shoots me a murderous look.
The last time we confronted each other, she was glamored to look like me as she tried to drive her knife into Keir’s chest and steal the amulet around his throat. We both thought it was the relic our father was looking for, and she double-crossed me at the last second.
It’s not the first time.
It won’t be the last.
And yet, despite everything, it’s good to see her again. She’s the one constant in my life, and even if we’re often at odds, if some outside force wants to harm one of us, he’ll have the other to deal with.
“You look better than I would have expected, considering you were in the Abyss for three months,” she says gruffly.
“You look like shit.”
Soraya shudders. “Some asshole just pulled me straight through a stone sarcophagus. All I can taste is bile and granite. What did you expect?”
“My abject apologies. The only person I know who might be able to lift the lid probably has you high on his kill-on-sight list. I went with the only option I thought might be able to work.”
At that, her gaze sharpens. “What are you doing here? Who are you with? What does Father want?”
“What he always wants. A means to break the curse. He wants the Horn of Shadows. And I’m here with Prince Keir—”
“Keir?” She actually pales a little.
I can’t resist a smile. “Nearly seven feet of furious, slightly-territorial fae prince? You might remember him from that time you tried to cut his heart out of his chest. He certainly remembers it.”
“And you’re working with him?”
“He wants the horn too. It seemed an easy way to get into the Court of Blood.”
“Yes, because that’s exactly what I’d call him—easy. Cauldron’s piss,” she growls, “were you even thinking? What were you going to do? Use him to get in, bat your lashes at him a few times and then double cross him the second you caught a glimpse of the horn? Because I’m fairly certain that’s how you played it last time, and as far as I recall, it left you hanging in chains in the Abyss. He’s not going to fall for the same ruse. I don’t even think he fell for it the first time.”
My conscience chooses that moment to replay the look Keir gave me the second he realized I wasn’t there to become his bride—but to betray him.
I’ve taken a knife to the chest a few times and that look felt exactly the same.
I can’t let her see it though, so my voice is all mock bravado. “If he’s foolish enough to trust me twice, then he’ll get what he deserves—"
“Or he’s playing his own game.”
There’s nothing I can do except shrug, because I know she’s speaking the truth. I haven’t figured out what stakes he’s playing for, but Keir definitely has some kind of game in play. “Most likely. But until we find the horn, the point is neither here nor there. We’re using each other, we’re both aware of it, and now that I’ve dragged your sorry ass out of your stone prison, I’m about to put the winning piece on the board. I just need one or two pieces of information.”
She rolls her eyes. “What?”
“Who did Father send you to kill?”
A hint of steel settles over her expression. “Mistmark.”
“That makes no sense. You’ve tried before.” I watch her expression closely, because this is Soraya’s weak spot. I don’t know how. I don’t know what happened exactly. But I do know she squirms like a worm on the hook whenever his name is mentioned. “You failed. And why would Father send you to the Court of Blood? How did he know Mistmark would even be here?”
She throws her hands in the air. “Ruhle said Mistmark was arriving for a tense negotiation with Malechus. I wasn’t in a position to argue.”
And there it is….
“Ruhle,” I whisper. “He’s the one who brought the information to Father. He’s the one who set this game in play.”
Soraya flexes her knuckles as though she’s thinking abou
t conjuring a weapon. “You think Ruhle set this up? But why? We’re the ones in the field. If one of us brings the horn to Father….”
We’ll be the heroes. Not him.
I can’t stop my feet from pacing.
A thousand thoughts misfire through my brain. “Maybe he thinks he’ll earn his way into Father’s good graces for the sake of the information.” No, that makes no sense. Father doesn’t give credit to those who sit back and wait. He urges for us to strike and strike hard. He admires bravery, fierceness, courage and determination.
But he also admires manipulation.
Play the game right, and you earn a pat on the back. Play it wrong, and you’re right back there in the Abyss.
I think of everything I know about Ruhle and his seven wraith lackeys.
“If Ruhle set this into play then he’s waiting for us to retrieve the horn,” I say. “He’ll hit us hard the second we get our hands on it. Then he delivers it to Father.” I frown. “But why… why didn’t he send you straight for Mistmark? Why make the play here? At the Court of Blood? If Mistmark had the horn, then why this elaborate ruse to draw him out of his castle?”
Once again, there’s a flicker of some unknown emotion in her eyes. “It’s not that easy getting into Mistmark’s castle. Or getting out.”
“Well, yes, I have met Falion.”
She scowls. “So have I. Indeed, I promised him a reckoning should we meet again. But Falion’s not… he’s not the only weapon Mistmark has up his sleeve. The castle… it exists within an Other World, outside of time. He makes the rules there. He controls the entire castle. It’s shrouded in mist, and it’s hard to gauge sound and sight within those mists. There’s also something that hunts the forest around the castle. To make it past both….”
“How’d you get in?”
Soraya snorts. “Damsel in distress. How else? I appealed to his sense of mercy. When I ‘woke’ I was tucked carefully in his bed with a healer hovering over me.”
In his bed? Interesting. But there’s no point dwelling on that. I feel like there’s a knot within this chain of thought that needs to be untethered. “Mistmark’s impossible to breach. Ruhle knows Father wants the horn. But how did he know that Mistmark would leave the castle? What did Malechus have on Mistmark in order to draw him out?”