Promise of Darkness

by Bec McMaster

  Thiago grins at me, as if he’s enjoying this. Perhaps he is.

  He trips me with his magic, time and time again, even as I try to break through his guard.

  “Give up, Princess,” he mocks. “You won’t defeat me.”

  I push harder. I can see the knife in the churned-up snow near his feet. I just need to get it. Driving forward, I feint to the side, then dart in to drive my knee into his thigh.

  It’s the perfect move, flawlessly executed.

  Or at least, it should be.

  Two seconds later, I hit the snow, the breath slamming out of me. The prince pins me, his shoulders blotting out the weak sunlight.

  “Surrender,” he says, pressing his weight over the top of me.

  “Never.”

  I expect him to be furious at my defiance, but he’s still grinning at me, as if this is the most amusing thing he’s seen all day.

  “You will never back down, will you?” He shakes his head. “Fine. This is your own fault.”

  Grabbing hold of me, he throws me over his shoulder as though I weigh nothing at all. I catch a glimpse of a slick of ice to our left, right where he’s headed, and suddenly understand his intentions.

  “Don’t you dare!” I kick him in the midriff, but he merely curls an arm around my legs and traps them. “Thiago!”

  “Thiago. I like the sound of my name on your lips.” His arm softens, becoming a hand that slides up my thigh. “Perhaps if I heard it again, with a few additions like ‘please’ or ‘I’m sorry I threw a snowball at you,’ then I might reconsider my current intentions.”

  “You pig-fucking merciless prick! I swear—”

  A sharp slap on my ass makes my eyes pop wide. Did he just…?

  “Manners, Your Highness,” he says smugly. “Now apologize.”

  We’re getting closer to the ice. He wouldn’t. We’re in the middle of a snowy wasteland, and this will set us back hours.

  But his steps aren’t slowing, and I’m starting to recognize the set of his shoulders at times.

  “If you dump me in this pond,” I snarl, “then you’re going to have to wait until I dry.”“I have a hunting cabin nearby. I could just chain you to the fireplace and return when I’ve done what I need to.”

  A hunting cabin? It momentarily sidetracks me. “Why do you have a cabin here, in disputed territories?”

  “Because I sometimes like to hunt.” He hauls me down into his arms, where I make one last effort to escape as he threatens to heave me onto the ice.

  “Fine!” I yelp, clinging to him like a barnacle. “I apologize!”

  Thiago stills. “You apologize for….”

  Gritting my teeth, I look him in the eye. “I apologize for throwing that snowball at you.”

  Even if you deserved it.

  “Good.” He sets me on my feet. “Next time, use your magic. It’s far more effective than any punch. You’ll never beat me without it.”

  I’m left staring at his back, quivering with fury and shock as he strides away.

  The ground shakes, snow shivering off trees and a squirrel fleeing with a sudden squeak. It startles me enough that I let go of the anger I’ve been building.

  Instantly, everything falls quiet again.

  Thiago looks back at me.

  What was that?

  It wasn’t the same frenetic energy I’ve felt inside me but couldn’t touch. No, this came from far underground, as if my anger somehow roused a sleeping giant. I can still feel it, stirring beneath the frozen earth like a sluggish river of power.

  “Princess?” Thiago calls softly. “Are you coming?”

  I bolt after him, suddenly feeling the trees press in all around us.

  I can’t sense that power anymore, but perhaps that’s a good thing.

  Whatever it is, it’s not coming from inside me, even if I suspect it responded to me.

  And it’s not fae magic.

  Mistmere looms out of the frozen wasteland of the lake, the ancient keep’s spires soaring toward the skies. It was built on a rocky island, a single bridge connecting it to the land. Dawn silvers the skies in the east, but shadows cling to the city, making it look like some sort of eerie graveyard of rubble.

  “It’s said there was only one way onto the island,” Thiago murmurs, crouching behind a rocky outlook to peer down at the ruins. “What do you see?”

  I squat beside him, surprised to realize he’s actually curious about my opinion. I’m an accessory in my mother’s court, hungry for more responsibility, chafing at my reins, and yet denied attending the most basic of councils.

  It’s strange to realize that it’s only here, with the Prince of Evernight, that I’m being treated as an equal.

  Movement shifts near the other side of the bridge; merely the faintest ripple of a guard prowling the shadows there. If I wasn’t looking for it, I don’t think I’d have even noticed. “A guard,” I murmur. “There’s someone guarding the other side of the bridge.”

  Which is highly unusual, considering the entire place is supposed to be abandoned.

  “Something,” he corrects, slipping between rocks and ghosting along the ridge. “Angharad’s brought her pets.”

  Banes.

  She’s the only queen in the territories with the ability to curse-twist a fae into one of the monstrous creatures and then bind it to her will. Most of them can cast the curse, but reining in such brutal beasts is near impossible.

  I trail behind Thiago with my hand on the hilt of my knife. The enormous brindle-backed banes that Angharad wields have been bred to tear fae apart, their teeth capped with iron tips. One bite would burn like poison.

  It’s a breathless feeling to know Thiago’s Unseelie spy is correct: Angharad is up to something.

  Which means the prince wasn’t lying.

  I don’t know how to twist that into my mother’s narrative that he’s working with the Unseelie, when he’s clearly trying to stop their queen.

  “What now?” I murmur, trailing him through the rocky crags overlooking the ruins and the lake.

  “I need to get closer to the city.”

  Excellent. “How do we do that if she’s got the bridge watched?”

  Thiago leads me into a narrow ravine choked with brambles. He pauses at the end of it, which leads right into a thicket of thorns. “The truth is, there was always more than one way into the city. When the witch king led his war host south, the Queen of Mistmere evacuated the city of its women and children through this tunnel.”

  “I thought nobody survived the witch king’s attack. And what tunnel?”

  “They didn’t.” Thiago sweeps a curtain of thorns aside, revealing the gaping mouth of a cave. “The witch king’s scouts were roaming the hills. The evacuated only made it thirteen miles before they were all slaughtered by a roaming host of banes.”

  “Then how did you know there’s a tunnel?” I stare into the darkness.

  “Because I was here to lead them out.” His voice turns hard. “Nobody from Mistmere survived.”

  I look at him sharply.

  The Wars of Light and Shadow were over five hundred years ago. I knew he was older than that, but it couldn’t have been by much.

  “My queen sent me to Mistmere to serve Queen Abalonia as a warrior. I was there when the city was attacked, though Queen Abalonia sent me with the evacuees, to try and bring help. Unfortunately, by the time I reached my queen, it was too late.”

  This would be Queen Araya, whom he later overthrew.

  “Come on.” He pushes me in the back. “We need to start moving quickly, and we need to be quiet.”

  “I’m not the one speaking loudly enough to be overheard in Valerian.”

  His eyes narrow. “Lead on, Princess. Unless you’re scared of the dark.”

  “I have nerves of iron,” I shoot back, stalking into the tunnel. “I just thought you’d prefer to lead, considering you’re the big, bad Prince of Darkness, with balls of pure steel.”

  “It’s got little to do
with my balls. I just prefer the view from back here.”

  I try to shoot a withering glare over my shoulder, but Thiago lets the drape of thorns go, plunging us into darkness. My heart rabbits in my chest. Fear is a weakness and thus something to be overcome, but I can’t help wondering if there’s anything else in here, watching me.

  “No comment, Princess?”

  Be brave. At least you’re not alone in here.

  I release a steady breath. “Considering I can’t see a cursed thing, and therefore neither can you, I don’t think I have to bother.”

  Thiago snaps his fingers, and just like that, a faelight appears in the air over my shoulder, glowing a faint silvery blue.

  “Watch out for the nixies,” he whispers.

  Cobwebs and spiders.

  Literally my least favorite combination in the world. I exit the tunnel right on the prince’s heels, trying not to scrape the dusty cobwebs from my face until I know the way is clear. Light spills ahead of us, highlighting the enormous cavern we’re in.

  I stagger over a cracked tile and a leering face jumps out at me. The sword clears my scabbard, hissing loudly in the stillness of the night, and I’m two seconds away from skewering the beast before I realize it’s a troll carved from stone.

  Soft laughter echoes behind me.

  Heart pounding like I’ve just run a race, I turn to find the prince bent over as he tries to choke down his amusement.

  “Thanks for warning me,” I whisper, since he’s clearly unconcerned with being found.

  I could have had a heart seizure—or worse, screamed—and he thinks this is funny?

  “Nerves of iron,” he mocks.

  I punch him in the abdomen. Hard.

  Or at least, it’s meant to be a punch, but the bastard barely flinches, capturing my wrist. There’s got to be a solid ripple of pure muscle behind his leather body armor, because I think I broke my knuckles.

  “Next time, hit something a little softer,” he mutters, pushing past me.

  “Next time, I’m going to aim for your balls.”

  He doesn’t quite wince.

  Instead, he turns around, pressing a finger to his lips in warning as he steps into the light.

  Understood. No speaking from here.

  I follow him past more stone statues. More leering trolls. Guards, I realize, for the enormous stone sarcophagi between them. We’re in the catacombs of Mistmere, though after venturing into the City of the Dead, with all its wraiths and shades, I barely flinch. The roof is caved in, and as I step through the moonlight, I feel a creep of dread down my spine.

  Because I could swear something just howled in the distance.

  We move like wraiths in the night, and Thiago merely assumes I’ll follow his lead, gesturing sharply every time he thinks he hears something.

  Fog lingers like a soft blanket in the streets, stirring around our boots. I feel something pulse against my skin, like a far distant drumbeat.

  “Do you hear that?” I breathe into the prince’s ear as we hover in the shadows under an arch.

  He looks at me sharply.

  “Drums.”

  Thiago cocks his head for a long moment, and then slowly shakes his head. “Nothing,” he mouths.

  I hold my arm out. All the hairs have lifted, and I can almost feel the pulse of that beat in the night. Weird.

  He’s watching me as if to ask what I can hear, but I merely shrug. Maybe I’m imagining it. Or maybe it’s the beat of my heart drumming in my ears.

  Soon we’re in what remains of the city. Moonlight gilds the stone, highlighting silver glyphs in the Old Tongue, which must have been painstakingly carved into the stone many years ago. Mistmere worshipped the Mother of Night, if I remember correctly, and there are half moons carved into every available surface.

  I’m fairly certain Queen Abalonia alone refused to condemn the Old Ones to their prison worlds when the alliance banded together to trap them.

  A snuffling sound echoes through the ruins ahead, and my hand leaps to the hilt of my sword. It’s not the first time, but this time, I’m fairly certain the threat is real.

  Thiago pushes me into a rubble-strewn alleyway, where I barely dare breathe. Every little noise—even the barest crunch of my boots on gravel—seems to echo hollowly in the fog. He’s pressed against me, a solid wall of muscle between me and the threat. If his head wasn’t cocked to the side, listening intently, I’d almost suspect this was deliberate.

  To take my mind off the danger, I follow the cords of muscle in his throat with my eyes. Every day I brush a kiss against those chiseled lips, and every day he sits there and waits for it, hunger barely restrained by the clench of his knuckles around the arms of his chair.

  It’s the restraint that affects me the most, I think.

  He never says a word, though his eyes hold the heat of a thousand unspoken promises. All the things he’d like to do to me, if I let him.

  The snuffling sounds drift away slowly, and I can finally breathe again. Shoulders slumping in relief, I realize my hand is pressed to the prince’s chest, and he’s no longer focused on the creature. Instead, his gaze drifts to my lips.

  We’re standing too close together, and with the chill of Mistmere pressing against my skin, I can feel the heat of his body radiating like a furnace. Evening is falling, and I still owe him a kiss.

  And for the first time, I almost want to give it.

  “Later,” he whispers, his breath ghosting over the soft hairs that curl at my temples.

  A shiver runs through me. He’s very, very good at what he does. And he knows exactly how easily he’s getting to me. I can see it in the faint creases that line his eyes when he’s amused.

  “Never,” I whisper back.

  Thiago leans closer, his lips tracing the curve of my ear. “Then stop looking at me like you want to eat me alive.”

  I jerk back from him. “I do not—"

  A hollow throb pulses through me, breaking my gaze from that dangerous mouth. It echoes through the earth beneath my feet like the first vague trembling of an earthquake. Stronger this time, leaving ghostly shivers over my skin.

  “Iskvien?” Thiago asks sharply.

  I rub my arms. All is forgotten. “What is that?”

  “What is what?”

  It comes again. Stronger this time. Not an earthquake’s tremor, no, but something akin to sonar. It ripples over me and locks hold for a second, as if sensing me amidst the carnage of the city. Then the sensation sluices down my skin like warm water, leaving me trembling.

  I stare at my fingertips. There’d been a hint of golden light rippling beneath my skin that time, as if my veins absorbed the… sensation.

  Thiago grabs my forearm, staring intently at my expression. “Tell me what you feel.”

  So I do.

  His frown only notches deeper between his eyebrows. “You’re sensing the Hallow. It’s stronger than it should be. You should only be able to feel a faint quiver by now. The circle focusing its power inward was warded by wyrd stones, which lock the power of the ley line within it. The stones fell over two hundred years ago, during the goblin incursion.”

  “That’s the Hallow? Wait. Why can I feel it?”

  And you can’t?

  “Some fae are sensitive. Come on,” he mutters. “We need to see the Hallow. It shouldn’t be active.”

  The Mistmere Hallow lies in the heart of the city, and all the main boulevards lead toward it. Carved owls stare down from each avenue, their endless eyes staring right through us. The owl is the symbol of the Mother of Night, the Old One that Mistmere and its queen once revered. I can’t escape the sensation that she’s somehow watching us, even though she’s trapped in the Underworld.

  More banes hunt the rubble-strewn streets. I dart down an alley on Thiago’s heels, and he bends to cup his hands, gesturing his chin toward the roof. The second I step into his cupped hands, he tosses me high, and I drag myself on top of the roof. He follows, hauling himself up a stone balustr
ade with the lithe grace of an acrobat and enough arm strength to make me jealous.

  Just in time.

  Another bane stalks around the corner of the alley, snuffling the cobbles. It’s larger than the one Andraste killed, and moonlight shines off the enormous spiked collar around its throat. This one seems more lion than wolf, a snarling, monstrous creature that looks like a nightmare called directly to life.

  Head down, it follows our trail toward the wall. I freeze, pressed flat to the roof.

  Thiago stares intently into the alley, weaving his fingers in an intricate fashion. The bane’s head jerks up, and it stares into the distance, where shadows flicker over the walls like a pair of people running. In the heavy fog, it’s a deft enough illusion to seem lifelike.

  Baying loudly, the bane sprints after them.

  A dozen voices rise to join it, all of them heading in the same direction. They stream from everywhere, galloping along on all fours, some of them mere stirrings of fog and others flashes of fur and claws.

  “Erlking’s hairy cock,” Thiago swears under his breath. “Whatever she’s doing here, she’s got the entire city locked down.”

  “We’re not going to get near the Hallow.” That we’ve made it this far is a miracle. And now— “We’re not going to escape. Not now they’ve got our scent.”

  “One problem at a time, Princess.” Thiago scrambles over the rooftop. “Keep moving.”

  We circle closer to the Hallow, leaping across alleys and rolling along rooftops. If I couldn’t hear the ever-present howling of the banes as they come across various scent trails, I’d be almost enjoying the exhilaration of the moment.

  It’s not until we get close to the center of the city though, that I realize what Thiago’s been doing all along.

  “You’ve been leading us in circles,” I mutter.

  Ever since we exited the catacombs.

  He flashes a smile at me. “Scent trails overlap. My shadows have been hauling a shirt of mine all over the city too. Let them track us. There’s too many trails for them to follow.”

  “Your shadows can do that?” Despite myself, I’m impressed.

  He arches a brow in a Princess-I-can-do-anything look.