by Jodi Meadows
A darkness flashed through his eyes: his failure today, the failure of King Terrell’s bodyguards not even a week ago. He needed me to obey, to take the guard and keep myself safe. And with the wraith boy in the palace, we all needed to be even more alert.
He was correct. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t also guarding the rest of the palace from me.
“Only because you asked so nicely.” I grabbed the leather-bound notebook I used as a diary and strode after the young sergeant James had indicated. A moment later we were out the door, the wraith boy following at a short distance.
It wasn’t a long walk from Tobiah’s apartments to mine. Both suites were located in the Dragon Wing, the area typically reserved for Indigo Kingdom royalty. My presence here was indicative of both the respect Tobiah held for me, and the respect he had for my dangerous abilities. He kept me close because he needed to watch me.
Sergeant Ferris led me in silence, though he cast a few curious looks toward me.
As we approached my door, I made my expression stony. “Yes, Sergeant?”
He ducked his head. “Pardon, Your Highness.”
“If you have a question, ask it.”
He hesitated, but curiosity won over. “You are Black Knife?”
Though an afternoon of sitting over writing materials had made every muscle in my shoulders and neck stiff, I drew myself up to my full height, nearly even with my guard. “What do you think, Sergeant?”
He snapped to attention at my door and held his position. “Your Highness.”
I entered my sitting room, allowing myself to feel a sliver of satisfaction—at least until I remembered the wraith boy trailing in after me, a white shadow jacketed in indigo.
“Stay in the corner,” I told him. He obeyed, hands clasped in front of him, head slightly bowed.
I moved toward the table to lay down my notebook, but stopped. Something was different.
When Tobiah had summoned me to his quarters this morning, I’d run off quickly, not bothering to close the jars of ink, or clean my pens. Now, the bottles were corked or capped, and the ink-stained nibs soaked in a shallow cup of water, rusting.
A folded paper was pinned beneath a bottle of blue ink, a quick W scrawled on the corner.
Someone had been in my rooms. Or still was.
I snatched a clean pen off the table and clutched it like a knife, moving through the room without stealth; any intruder already knew I was here.
One by one, I opened doors and scanned the shapes and shadows of the music room, the game room, and the dressing room for hints of the intruder. But there was nothing untoward. Just the same opulent suite I’d become intimately acquainted with in the days since the Inundation. The same brocade silk curtains, the same glossy, wood-paneled walls, and the same gleaming brass knobs and hinges and other finishings. There were no strange shapes in the pockets of darkness by full bookcases, or under the ornately carved tables, or in the curtain surrounding the tub in the washroom.
Everything was quiet. The windows here faced the back of the palace, giving me a view of the ruined gardens and woods beyond. Protesters’ cries were muted, and I heard no scrape of shoes on rugs or brush of clothes on wood.
Whoever had been here was gone now.
My fist relaxed around the pen, and I lit a candle when I returned to the table.
After King Terrell had been assassinated, Tobiah had told me that people always wanted to kill kings. Now that my identity was out—as well as my magical ability and the way I’d allegedly spent time as a vigilante—I had to be careful, too. Particularly since I was alone here. Had Melanie stayed with me—
Well, she wasn’t here.
I brought the candle close to the paper, but found no traces of powder. There were no unusual scents, either.
It was probably safe.
I slipped the paper from beneath the bottle and unfolded it. The note was in Tobiah’s handwriting. A strained laugh escaped my throat. All that work, and the intruder turned out to be a boy dying just a few doors down the hall.
Wilhelmina,
I’m sorry I didn’t visit you after the Inundation. I should have.
Please forgive me for what I’m about to do; know that it is duty and honor that compel me to act against my true feelings. You were correct when you said I need to decide who I am.
No matter where my heart leads, I must become who my kingdom needs me to be.
With greatest affection,
Tobiah Pierce
My heart twisted, and tears in my eyes made halos grow around the words.
He must have written this right before he announced the date of his wedding to Meredith—winter solstice—during the minutes he’d left James’s side to deliver a list of places in Aecor Patrick might have gone.
Unfortunately, Patrick had been on his way here.
To shoot Tobiah.
Maybe I hated the prince, but I loved the vigilante, and now he was dying.
My feelings had been complicated enough when I’d believed they were separate people, but now that Tobiah Pierce was Black Knife . . .
Black Knife was Tobiah Pierce . . .
And where was Connor?
My breath came hard and fast as I placed the letter on the table once more, and smoothed out the corners. My weapons had been taken away, but not my clothes.
I glanced at the window. Nearly dark.
“Wraith boy.”
In the corner, he perked up and tilted his head. “Yes, my queen?”
“From the balcony, can you lower me to the ground?” Being on the third story, I wasn’t keen to climb down without my grappling hook and line. My first night in this suite, I’d checked the outside wall for any footholds, but without tools, there’d been nothing but a high probability of two broken legs.
“It isn’t for me to question my queen, but”—he shifted his weight—“can’t you simply walk out? Are you a captive?”
I glanced at the letter on the table, the beautiful room that had been my prison for three days, and the crown prince’s blood staining my gown. Black Knife’s blood. “Can you do what I asked?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then you’re going to help me escape.”
THREE
IN MY BEDROOM, I stripped off the bloodied gown and hunted through a wardrobe until I found a dark shirt and trousers. Finally, the haunting sense of internment lifted. James said I shouldn’t leave the palace, but this was something I needed to do.
Because as much as I disliked the prince, I was relying on Tobiah to help me reclaim my kingdom.
If he died, I would truly be a hostage here.
Resolved, I moved toward the front door and rested my fingers on the lock. Just then, footfalls slammed through the hall, toward the crown prince’s apartments. I held my breath as they shouted for another physician, but there was no word on his condition.
I twisted the lock, and the bolt fell into place with a heavy thunk. A breath went by before Sergeant Ferris noticed and began rattling the handle, but I was halfway to the balcony already. “Help me to the ground,” I told the wraith boy. “Then I want you to hide under the bed”—surely he couldn’t hurt anything there—“and if anyone asks where I went, just tell them I will return soon.”
He followed me to the balcony. Stars crowded the sky, their faint shine glowing across the woods at the back of the palace. Gleaming remnants of the king’s glasshouse shimmered below. Cold air blew in from the west, buffered by the palace.
“Do you remember my instructions?”
“Yes, my queen.” He’d grown bigger outside, ready to follow orders. The acrid stink of wraith came off him, making my eyes water. “I will hide under the bed. I will tell anyone who asks that you’ll return soon.”
“Good.”
“Princess!” Sergeant Ferris was knocking at the door. “What’s going on?”
“Hurry.” I scrambled over the balcony rail so I faced out, my heels on the very edge, my calves and thighs pressed against the w
rought iron. “Quickly, but carefully. Remember, if I die, you’ll be inanimate again.” As far as I could guess anyway. “I assume you have some sense of self-preservation?”
He sniffed, almost an offended sound, as he gently took me around the waist. Suddenly I was in the air.
My toes stretched for the ground, touching nothing as air whooshed around me. I was dropping.
Dropping.
Very.
Slowly.
Inside the room, the door banged open and James shouted something, but finally my toes touched the ground. The wraith boy’s hands slipped off my sides and the odor of wraith retreated.
“What are you doing?” cried James.
“My queen will return soon.”
When I looked up, I could just see James striding toward the edge of the balcony. I stepped beneath it where he couldn’t spot me. Not yet.
“Wil!” James leaned over the balcony, scanning the gardens.
If Melanie had stayed, she’d have covered for me. She’d have known just what to say to distract James and his guards while I slipped away.
“Ferris.” James’s tone was hard. “Get a small team together and search for Her Highness. Keep this quiet. Last thing we need is for everyone to know she’s broken out.”
“She’ll return soon!” added the wraith boy.
“Yes, Captain.” Ferris’s voice grew softer as he left the balcony.
“And where are you going?” James asked.
“Under the bed until my queen returns.”
I stretched my senses, straining to hear footfalls and breathing and the catch of clothes on buildings or brush. Carefully, quietly, I kept to the shadows and slipped around the perimeter of the palace. When patrols strode by, I held still and silent. The surge of adrenaline in my head felt real and right as I darted through the once-extravagant courtyards, leaving the palace for the first time since the Inundation.
There wasn’t much of a difference between the King’s Seat and Hawksbill; the two ran together and their boundaries weren’t marked. So there was no way to tell as I moved from one district to the other, but a rush of relief poured over me as I prowled around the wraith-twisted statues and trellises of nobles’ gardens, keeping beyond the glow of the gas lamps lining the streets.
Steadily, I moved westward, past the Chuter mansion and toward the Bome Boys’ Academy that sat along the Hawksbill wall. The school was four stories high, with a brick face and dozens of windows. Where there’d once been glass, now the holes were boarded up or covered with heavy wool blankets. Last I’d heard, the students had been sent home; during the Inundation, some of the doorways in the school had grown teeth and begun chewing.
Just past the school, I came to the wall.
It wasn’t impassible by any means, but without my grapple it would be a challenge to climb. The stone was smooth, even after the flood of wraith had changed the city.
Low voices sounded, and lanterns flared in the darkness between streetlamps.
I had to hurry, but without my tools, I had only one option.
“It’s for Black Knife,” I whispered, pressing my palm to the wall. “Wake up. Make a passage to the other side big enough for me to walk through.”
Under my hand, the stone warmed and began to ripple. Blackness paraded around the edges of my vision and I swayed. This was a mistake. I hadn’t awakened the entire wall, had I?
“There!” The soldier’s voice came from close by. “I see someone!”
“Is it the princess?”
“Hurry,” I whispered to the wall, and my vision blanked as the stone split open with a low rumble and groan. I struggled to breathe, to tell up from down. My groping hands fell on the edges of the new tunnel through the wall. Narrow. But I could squeeze through.
“Flasher! Saints, she’s using magic!” A light fell over me, too bright. “Get a patrol on the other side. Run!”
A pair of boots thumped off, leaving two men running for me.
But I was already in the tunnel, which was barely wide enough for me to move through sideways. I scooted as fast as I dared, jagged edges of stone catching on my clothes and hair.
An arm reached in. Fingers scraped my elbow. My stomach turned and I wanted to tell the wall to close after me, but I couldn’t with him reaching through. Shouldn’t. I’d have to leave it open.
“Go to sleep.” My hands scraped over the stone. “Go to sleep.”
Just as the soldier started to squeeze in after me, fingers twisting around my sleeve, I threw myself out the opposite side of the wall. He let out a frustrated growl.
“By Captain Rayner’s orders, you must return to the palace!” The guard shouted through the hole, but I was already sprinting into Thornton before the rest of the patrol caught up. “You won’t be harmed!”
I was gone, down a street and keeping close to the shadows, and finally behind a bakery where I leaned against a wall and let my breath squeeze from my lungs in silent gasps. Cold slithered into my chest.
That had been close.
And the magic. That had been stupid. Dangerous. Even if I’d animated only a section of the wall, it had still been too much. I should have found a trellis or something to climb.
But there hadn’t been time. And Black Knife was still dying.
I gave myself another long, silent breath as I listened for the patrols, and then I found a stack of crates by a fence where I could climb to the rooftops.
And I got my first look at the nighttime city since the Inundation.
The dark was overwhelming.
In Hawksbill and Thornton, streetlamps glowed like stars and hope, but in Greenstone and the Flags farther south, there was nothing. Just flat blackness.
Only days ago, there’d been mirrors on every west-facing surface in the city, catching sunsets and moonlight. All seven districts of Skyvale had been lit with faint reflected light.
But when the wraith came, every mirror in the city was destroyed. Glass windows, glass shields over lamps: those were shattered, too.
Legend had it that King Terrell the Second, Tobiah’s great-grandfather, had been called the Mirror King when he’d had mirrors hung all over the city. While it ultimately became just another way for people to display their wealth, it had been intended to frighten the wraith from ever invading Skyvale.
The truth ended up being a lot more complicated.
My wraith, what was now the boy, certainly didn’t like mirrors; it had stopped chasing me at West Pass Watch because of them. But in Skyvale, it had shattered the mirrors rather than retreat. How? Because I’d brought it to life?
I gave the dark, unfamiliar city one more look before I threw myself into it.
For hours, I moved from Osprey hideout to Osprey hideout, searching for signs of my friends. I kept an eye out for Patrick as well, but what would I do if I found him? I was unarmed, and as much as I wanted to catch Patrick and punish him for what he’d done, that wouldn’t help the prince.
It was almost midnight when I approached the Peacock Inn in White Flag—or what was left of the inn. It hadn’t been much to look at before the Inundation, but now boards had warped and bricks over the front of the building had melted over windows.
I stood at the corner of a nearby building, watching the inn for signs of the patrols James had sent after me. Three of my last stops had had a police officer lurking about, which meant James knew where I’d gone—and why.
Usually, the inn was loud with drunks and thugs, but the whole city was quiet. The few people who braved the debris-filled streets skittered from place to place, keeping their heads low. Prey, waiting for a predator to strike.
Sounds from the taproom were muted. No one felt festive tonight.
If there were any officers here, they weren’t showing themselves. I dropped to the street and moved for the front door; the window I usually entered by wasn’t there anymore.
The front door opened and Melanie strode out.
We stopped and stared at each other for a heartbeat, an
d then her arms were around my shoulders and she gave a faint, relieved cry. “Saints, Wil!”
“Mel!” I hugged her back, then ushered her into a narrow alley. A dull crack sounded under her boot; we both froze, but the dirt and old papers that concealed the glass also muffled the noise.
We both exhaled.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. “Why are you here?”
“What are you doing here?” I glanced toward the top floor, dark and eerie without the mirrors. “Are they here? Connor and the others?”
“They’re sleeping.” She leaned closer, smelling faintly of fire and something warm and damp. “There are people looking for you. Soldiers. The police. Looking for Princess Wilhelmina. Everywhere I go, I hear your name. Someone said you’re a flasher. What did you do?”
“Nothing. I broke out of the palace. I have to get Connor.”
“Are you a prisoner there?”
There wasn’t really a good answer to that question.
“Why Connor?” she pressed.
“I need to take him back to the palace.” Melanie didn’t know that Connor was like me. No one did.
“Are you afraid that I’m going to tell Patrick?”
My heart gave a painful lurch. “Are you?”
“No,” she breathed, looking hurt. “Saints, no, Wil. I only went with him because you need someone to keep you informed. You know that, right?”
“You couldn’t inform me that he planned on assassinating Crown Prince Tobiah?” Stupid Tobiah, standing out there on the balcony only days after the first assassination attempt. Less than a week after his own father had been killed. Stupid, stupid boy.
At least, if he’d been just Prince Tobiah, I could have blamed ignorance or arrogance, but he was also Black Knife, and for that I could only assign reckless need to do what he viewed as right.
“This is the first time I’ve been able to get away.” Her shoulders slumped. “He suspects why I went with him. There’s no proof, of course, and as far as he knows, we’re still”—she swallowed hard—“together. But he’s kept a close eye on me. The only reason I was able to get out tonight was because we need supplies. We’re leaving tomorrow.”