by Jay Kristoff
“… A LITTLE LATE FOR A DRAMATIC ENTRANCE…”
“DRAMA WASN’T MY INTENT,” he replied. “I KILLED HIM QUICK AS I COULD.”
“… he was already dead…,” the not-cat sighed.
“… LOOK…”
Tric sheathed his blades, stared down at the wreckage of Hush’s skull. Amid the fragments of skull and dashed brains, his eyes caught a hint of movement. A thin ribbon of blood, crawling upward in defiance of all gravity, pooling among the rain on the back of the fallen boy’s leather doublet.
It struggled to hold itself together, more and more washed away in the downpour, thinned near to worthlessness. But before it lost cohesion entirely, bleeding out into the puddle of Hush’s pretty ruin, the blood managed to form itself into simple shapes.
Four letters that formed a single word.
A name.
NAEV.
BOOK 3
A HOUSE OF WOLVES
CHAPTER 20
SUNDER
Cold.
That was the first sensation Mia felt. Chill seeping into her bones. Stone at her back. Cold and hard and damp.
She lifted her hand, tried to move.
Pain.
In her head. Her back. Her leg. Her fingers touched her brow and a groan escaped her lips, the light above too bright to open her eyes against.
“LIE STILL,” came a voice. “YOU MAY HAVE A CONCUSSION.”
Mia opened her eyes, pain be damned, saw a boy she might once have loved looming over her. Thunder rolled, stirring the ache in her skull. She winced as the lightning danced, flicker-flash, dragging her eyes closed again. The impression of the strike remained behind on her eyelids, snatches of memory shifting in the fading glow.
Shadows.
Blades.
Blood.
“Hush,” she gasped, sitting up.
She felt Tric’s hands on her shoulders, surprisingly warm, heard his soft murmurs bidding her lay still, but she shoved it all aside—the gentle touch, the oceans-deep voice, the glass-brittle pain—surging up to her feet and breathing deep and willing her eyes to focus. Her mind to remember.
The tower. They were still in the tower. Sid, ’Singer, Butcher, and, Goddess … Ash and Jonnen, all lay arranged around the cooking pit. For an awful, bottomless moment she thought they might be dead, that all of them were gone, that there was nothing and no one left. The thought was simply too terrible to manage, too dark to look at. But then she saw the gentle rise and fall of their chests, felt a shiver as Eclipse melted into the shadow at her feet and took away her fear.
“… ALL IS WELL, MIA…”
“No,” she whispered.
Her eyes found the bodies, fallen and still.
“No, it’s not.”
Tric had set them aside with those strong black hands of his. Apart from the others, but still under cover from the rain. The stone around them was dark with blood. Their throats cut to the bone.
“Bryn,” Mia whispered, her voice cracking. “’W-Waker.”
“IT WAS QUICK,” came a voice. “THEY FELT LITTLE PAIN.”
“O, Goddess,” she breathed, sinking to her knees beside them.
Mia reached out with one shaking hand, tears burning her eyes. She touched Bryn’s cheek, smoothed back ’Waker’s locks. She remembered the look of joy on the big man’s face as he spoke of his life in the theater, the melodies of his songs making her turns in the collegium that much easier to bear. She remembered Bryn’s words about enduring the unendurable on the sands. How in every breath, hope abides.
Except Bryn wasn’t breathing anymore.
“… i am sorry, mia…”
Her eyes widened at his whisper, pupils dilating with rage. She looked up at the shape of him, coalescing on the wall in front of her. The shape of a cat. The shape he’d stolen when she was a little girl, mimicking the beloved pet Justicus Remus had murdered in front of her. The shape of something familiar. Something comforting. Something to blind her to the awful truth that he had no shape at all.
The anger felt so good.
If she was angry, she didn’t need to think.
If she was angry, she could simply act.
Hurt.
Hate.
“You bastard,” she whispered.
“… i am sorry…”
“You fucker!” she shouted. “I told you this would happen! I told you I didn’t want them here, and now look! Look what you fucking did!”
“… the blade that killed them was not mine…”
“They wouldn’t have been here if not for you!” she roared, rage burning brighter and hotter until it was all she was. “You selfish little shit! They’re here because of you! They’re dead because of you!”
“… mia, they chose to be here…”
“You bastard, of course they did! They’d no sooner shirk a debt than they’d stop breathing! And you knew that, and still you had to open your fucking mouth!” She climbed to her feet, shouting over the thunder. “You always see clearer, don’t you? You always know best!”
“… and if they had not been here? what then? the moment’s warning you had was enough to turn the battle’s tide. without it, you may all be dead…”
“You don’t know that!” she raged. “You don’t know anything!”
“… i know they were here because they loved you, mia. just as i do…”
“Love?” she spat. “You don’t fucking love me, you don’t know what love is!”
The not-cat shook his head, sorrow slipping into the velvet of his voice.
“… that is not true. i am a part of you. and you are the all of me…”
“Bullshit!” she screamed, lightning tearing at the skies. “You’re a leech! A fucking parasite! You love me because of what I give you, and that’s all!”
“… mia—”
“I want you gone, do you hear me?”
The not-cat tilted his head. Shivered slightly. And for the first time since the turn they met, the first time he spoke to her from the dark of her own shadow, all those years and miles and murders ago, he sounded afraid.
“… what do you mean…?”
“I mean get the fuck away from me!” she roared, spittle flying, snot spilling down her lips. “Go back to the ’Grave and crawl into the black you fucking came from. Find someone else to ride. I don’t want you anywhere near me!”
“… mia, no…”
She stood there with hands in fists, the blood of her friends pooling about her feet, head pounding in time with her pulse. The sight of those bodies, the memory of Bryn’s laughter, the smile on ’Waker’s face as he pranced about in his decrepit old theater … it filled her belly with broken glass, her eyes with scalding tears.
Eclipse coalesced between them, her voice low with sorrow.
“… PERHAPS YOU SHOULD GO…”
“… ah, always can we count on you, mongrel, for advice both ill-timed and unasked for…”
“… SHE TOLD YOU TO LEAVE…”
“… you have no right to a voice here. i have walked with her for eight years, and you, a handful of heartbeats. now silence your tongue before i rip it out…”
“… DO NOT PUSH ME, MOGGY…”
“… then get out of my w—”
“ENOUGH!”
Mia drew back her hand, clawed at the air between them, at the dark he was made of. The shadowcat yowled and flinched at her blow, a fine black mist spattering against the wall behind him before evaporating into nothingness. He tumbled away, disappearing and coalescing on the broken level above her head.
“Get out of here!” she roared.
“… mia, don’t…”
“Go!”
“… mia…”
“GO!” she cried, raising her hand again.
And with one final look
A soft sigh
“… as it please you…”
He vanished.
Mia slumped down onto her knees again, arms wrapped around her chest to hold in the sobs. Of all th
e deaths she’d seen gifted or given in kind, these hurt worse than almost all of them. These were her friends. Folk who loved her. People she’d risked everything for and who’d risked everything for her in turn. All those months in the collegium together, bleeding together, living and fighting together, and in the end, this was where it finished. Some broken tower in a stretch of nowhere.
All of it had been for nothing.
She felt a gentle touch on her shoulder.
“THEY ARE BY THE HEARTH NOW, MIA,” Tric murmured.
Thunder rocked the skies above. Bitter tears welled in her eyes.
“You think that makes this easier?” she whispered.
“IT IS WARM THERE. FULL OF LIGHT AND LOVE AND PEACE.”
She hung her head. Face twisting as she tried to hold in the sobs. The wind was colder than she could ever remember feeling. The hands of fate, colder still. And yet, these weren’t just platitudes Tric was speaking—he’d actually been beyond the veil between life and death. And if there was some kind of peace in it …
“What will they see?” she whispered, looking up at him. “What did you see?”
The deadboy turned to the storm above, watching the rolling gray with eyes the color of night. Thunder rumbled again, and Mia shivered in the chill. It was a long time before he answered.
“WHEN I AWOKE AFTER I FELL,” he said, “IT WAS IN A PLACE WITH NO COLOR AT ALL. THE QUIET MOUNTAIN LOOMED AT MY BACK, SHROUDED IN EVERNIGHT. BUT BEFORE ME, FAR IN THE DISTANCE, I COULD SEE A BRIGHT HEARTH. I COULD FEEL ITS WARMTH ON MY SKIN. AND AROUND IT, I SAW THE FACES OF ALL THOSE I’D LOVED, GONE FROM THIS WORLD.” He sighed softly. “I KNEW I BELONGED THERE. THAT EVERYTHING WOULD BE WELL WHEN I SAT BESIDE IT. AND THAT IS WHERE THEY WILL BE NOW. WARM AND SAFE AND FAR FROM ALL THIS. TOGETHER.”
“So why…”
Mia sniffed hard, tried to steady her voice.
“Why didn’t you stay there if it’s so fucking wonderful?”
“IT…” The boy shook his head. “… I SHOULDN’T SPEAK OF IT.”
“Tric.” Mia reached for his hand. She was surprised again to feel the warmth of it. Where once he’d been hard as stone, there was now a suppleness to his skin, his fingers pitch-black against her milk-white. “Tell me. Please.”
He was still searching the sky, rain beaded on his cheeks like a beautiful statue in the forum. But finally, he looked down at her, black eyes swimming with sorrow.
“BECAUSE WHEN I LOOKED AMONG ALL THOSE FACES,” he said, “THE FACES OF ALL THOSE I’D LOVED, THE ONE I LOVED MOST WASN’T AMONG THEM.”
Mia felt her belly flip, her breath catch in her throat.
“I CAME BACK FOR YOU, MIA,” Tric said, black light burning in his eyes. “THAT WAS THE GIFT THE MOTHER OFFERED ME. SHE WASN’T STRONG ENOUGH TO BRING ME BACK HERSELF, SHE COULD ONLY SHOW ME THE WAY.” He held out his hand, stained with black. “I HAD TO RIP MY WAY BACK THROUGH THE WALLS OF THE ABYSS ITSELF. THAT WAS WHAT I GAVE UP MY PLACE BY THE HEARTH FOR. NOT THE CHANCE TO MEND THE BALANCE OR RESTORE THE MOON OR SEE THE WORLD PUT TO RIGHT. I CARE FOR NONE OF THAT.” He took Mia’s hand, pressed it to his chest, and she was astonished to feel a heartbeat, strong and thudding beneath her palm. “BUT I WOULD STRIKE A THOUSAND BARGAINS WITH THE NIGHT FOR ONE MORE MOMENT WITH YOU. I’D DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS AND DEFY THEM ALL, JUST TO HOLD YOU IN MY ARMS ONE MORE TIME.”
All the world fell silent. All the world fell still.
“Tric, I—”
“I LOVE YOU, MIA. AND NIGHT WILLING, I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER.”
“… Mia?”
Jonnen’s voice. Tearing Mia out of the moment, back into the cold and the wet and the hurt and the blood. But she lingered in the dark pools of his eyes for one moment more. Hand pressed to the muscle of his chest. Glancing at Ashlinn, aching and wondering.
Torn in two.
“Mia?” Jonnen groaned again.
“It’s all right, brother,” she said, turning away from Tric. “I’m here.”
She made her way across the tower, head still pounding, body aching, leg bleeding beneath the strip of dark cloth Tric had no doubt bound it in. Skirting around the fire, she watched the tongues of flame lap at her hungrily, finally kneeling beside her brother with a hiss of pain and gathering Jonnen up in her arms.
He was still groggy from the Swoon, his eyes bloodshot, face pale. But Eclipse slipped into Jonnen’s shadow to calm his fears, and Mia was steeped enough in her venomlore to know he’d recover fully in an hour or so—quicker than the adults, in fact, who were only now beginning to stir.
Mia thanked the Goddess they’d all been clumped together, that the imperative to take Jonnen alive had overridden the assassins’ desire to see the rest of them dead. She could remember the battle, the thunder of her blood, the power rippling in her veins. It’d never felt that way before—she’d never wielded the dark so easy, so quick. It was more than just the fact that only two suns hung in the sky now. The new fragment of the Moon inside her—once Furian’s, now hers—had made her more.
She couldn’t help but wonder about Cleo then. The woman who’d written the old journal Chronicler Aelius had found in the library’s depths. Who’d given Mia the only real clues about darkin she’d ever managed to find. Who’d spent her life collecting Anais’s shattered pieces, only to stumble without ever completing the puzzle Mia herself was now somehow expected to solve.
That journal had spoken of a child inside Cleo. The Mother’s sins.
Might that have had something to do with her failure?
And what had become of the woman herself?
Her daughter?
Son?
Tric was watching her across the veil of rain. His declaration still ringing in her ears, louder than the storm raging above.
“How’s your head?” she asked Jonnen.
“Sore,” he whimpered.
“It’s all right, love. I’m here. When all is blood…”
“… blood is all,” he murmured.
She held him tight, kissed his brow. Thinking about all that might have been, everything that could have happened, her belly cold with fear.
That unfamiliar sensation. The prickling of her skin, the churn in her gut. The absence of a cat who wasn’t a cat like a hole in her chest. A missing piece of herself. But rage flooded in to replace it, and she seized hold tight, desperate, like a drowner to a scrap of driftwood. Letting the bitter, burning anger fill her to the brim.
The Red Church had thrown their dice, sent five of their best, emptied the Galante chapel to strike her down.
They’d failed. And now …
Now as the Goddess is my fucking witness …
There would be a reckoning.
* * *
“Naev.”
“THAT’S WHAT THE BLOOD SAID.”
They were gathered around the fire, still sore and reeling from the Swoon. Wavewaker and Bryn lay still and cold on the stone. A fire burned in the eyes of the remaining Falcons, matching the one in Mia’s breast.
“Who the fuck is Naev?” Butcher demanded.
“A friend of mine,” Mia replied. “She’s a Hand. A disciple who works in the Quiet Mountain in service to the Church. I saved her life.”
Mia recalled the sight of Naev standing at the foot of her bed, drawing her knife along the heel of her hand, blood welling from the cut and spattering on the floor.
“She saved Naev’s life. So now, Naev owes it. On her blood, in the sight of Mother Night, Naev vows it.”
“So she’s a blood worker?” Sidonius asked.
“No, that’s Adonai,” Ashlinn replied, her mouth twisting. “He and his sister Marielle are both sorcerii. Masters of Old Ashkahi magiks, and as fucked in the head as any pair of siblings you’re like to meet.” She stretched her hands out toward the fire, fingers curling. “That bastard killed my brother.”
“AFTER YOU BOTH BETRAYED THE RED CHURCH,” Tric replied.
“If I wanted to hear from an arsehole, I’d go use the privy, Tricky.”
“Can we not?” Mia snapped, her temper rising. “Please?”
“All right,” Bladesinger said. “So this blood mage Adonai is your ally, Crow?”
Mia shrugged. “I saved his life, too. He did say he owed me. Though I can’t say he’s ever struck me as the most trustworthy of bastards. Nor his sister, truth told.”
Eclipse’s shape flickered and shifted on the wall as the fire danced.
“… HE KILLED HUSH, MIA. I SAW IT. WHILE YOU AND THE OTHERS WERE AT HIS MERCY, ADONAI’S BLOOD MAGIKS STRUCK THE BOY LOW…”
“And now Adonai’s directing us toward this Naev woman,” Sid said.
Mia nodded. “She does supply runs for the Church. Runs a caravan train from the Quiet Mountain to Last Hope and back. I suppose they’re working together?”
“But why?” Ashlinn asked.
“I don’t know,” Mia sighed. “But at least I know I’m on the right path. We get to Amai, then I head across the ocean for Last Hope. From there I can ride to the Quiet Mountain and Mercurio’s rescue. Just as planned.”
“… Wait,” Sidonius said, a scowl forming between his dark brows. “What do you mean you head for Last Hope? What about the rest of us?”
“You head back to Whitekeep,” Mia said. “Corleone can probably take you. Jonnen will have to come with me, and I don’t suppose there’s any talking Ashlinn into leaving, but you, ’Singer, and Butcher are done.”
“Bollocks we are,” Butcher said. “We’re with you to the end.”
“No,” Mia said, anger creeping into her voice. “You’re not. You’ve paid your fucking debt, all right? ’Waker and Bryn are dead because of it, and I’ll not have more blood on my hands. You’re leaving me in Amai.”
Sid’s scowl only deepened. “Mia, I might’ve been drummed out of the legion, but I still swore an oath to Darius Corvere. I wasn’t there when your father died, but—”
“He’s not my father, Sid!” she snapped, rising to her feet. “He’s nothing close! I’m the daughter of Julius fucking Scaeva, do you understand that? I’m the daughter of the man who killed Darius Corvere!”
“’Byss and blood,” Sidonius breathed.