by Lyra Selene
I shook my head. It was too late to change that now. I had to trust that Luca wouldn’t be a part of wholesale slaughter. They were here for weapons. They had their own mission.
Our plan stays the same.
“Fine.” My voice was dry as a bone. “We’ll take the quickest route to the center of the palais, to Severine’s chambers. I’ll be visible, but for you to remain unseen you’ll have to cluster close together and move as one. You’ll also need to walk in front of me.”
“Why?” interrupted Petra.
“Because I don’t have eyes in the back of my head,” I growled.
“I thought you rich snobs had everything,” the girl sneered.
“I’m not—”
“Petra, shut up,” said Luca, a warning in his voice. “Sylvie, continue. We’re listening.”
“Luca, stay in front of the other two,” I forced between my teeth. “If we reach a turn in the hall, I’ll snap once for left and twice for right. If we meet anyone coming in the other direction you’ll need to stop, and stay dead still. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“And once we get to the Imperial Wing?” asked Luca.
“Follow my lead, don’t say a word, and wait until we’re inside before you do anything.” I fixed Luca and each of his comrades with a stare. “Do you understand?”
They each nodded. I sucked in a breath that didn’t begin to fill the hollow growing shadowy as the Midnight Dominion between my ribs.
The bell for Compline rang.
It was time.
Sharp black clouds scudded across the curtained sun, throwing strange shadows as we darted across the lawn. The second we were beneath the pillars of the Esplanade, I cleared my throat, and the trio tightened formation, Luca standing in front with Denis and Petra flanking him. I conjured the illusion. The revolutionaries blurred against the background, then disappeared.
The palais was calm in the lull before Nocturne, and we kept to quieter passageways. I had to focus nearly all my attention on maintaining the illusion—it was far more complicated hiding three strangers than keeping myself out of sight. I concentrated on the gleam of the floors, the glow of ambric lamps, the flicker of torchlight on gilt. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. A mistake would mean death not just for Luca and his friends, but for me.
We were lucky. We only passed one servant, and he stepped aside and bowed his head as I passed. I was so nervous I almost greeted the boy.
Stay calm, I whispered to myself, like a mantra. You’re in control.
Finally, we were in spitting distance of the Imperial Wing. This deep into Coeur d’Or, the passageways curved inward, leading toward the most secure part of the compound. I couldn’t see the sunburst door yet, but I recognized the color of the torches, shifting from pale gold near Belsyre Wing to the deep red favored by the empress.
I was so focused on what was around the bend that I didn’t notice a pennant of shadow detach itself from an archway and step into the hall.
“Fairest Compline, demoiselle,” said Sunder, and the smile on his face was as poisonous as his sister’s touch. “What brings you to this side of the palais? At this hour? Pleasure, I hope.”
Luca and his fellows stopped dead. I froze a bare second later. The illusion stuttered, but I clenched a panicked fist and the hallway was empty once more. Fury and fear beat twin fists against my heart. A trickle of sweat trailed cold from my temple down the line of my jaw.
“Sunder,” I choked out. “What are you doing here?”
“How could you forget?” He quirked an eyebrow and stalked closer. So close his sleeve nearly brushed Petra’s hidden shoulder. “I live here.”
My voice was a caged moth in my chest, and I could only stare in mute horror at the catastrophe unfolding in front of me. Tension was a living thing, a grotesque specter hovering in the air between us.
“Not here here, of course,” he amended, clicking his teeth. “Obviously I don’t live in the hallway.”
Sunder lashed out, one hand disappearing as he thrust it into my illusion. A horrible sound like grinding bones split the air. Someone screamed. The sound sheared off abruptly. Petra fell to the floor in a heap, the entire left side of her body bent at an unnatural angle.
Chaos splintered the hallway into fragments of shape and movement. Figures darted in and out of the illusion. I gasped, raising arms that felt heavy as bricks. The emptiness dissolved.
Denis punched at Sunder, and Sunder wrapped one long-fingered hand around his fist. I heard the sound of all of Denis’s fingers breaking at once. Horror surged in Denis’s eyes in the split second before Sunder’s hand coiled around his throat and turned his head backward.
Luca leapt onto Sunder’s back. A blade flashed like kembric in the torchlight. I opened my mouth and flung out a hand, but it was already too late. Sunder disarmed Luca in a flurry of expertly placed blows, and the dark-haired boy’s knees hit the marble floor with a crack. Sunder twisted his arm behind his back, bones grinding in protest.
“So this is your Tavendel lover?” Sunder wasn’t even winded. A flower of hostility blossomed in my chest. “I expected him to be taller.”
“Please,” I heard myself whisper. Water dragged cold trails down my frozen cheeks. “Don’t hurt him.”
Sunder sighed, and rolled his eyes. “An empire’s trash is a revolution’s treasure, I suppose.”
His fingers dug into the space between Luca’s jaw and skull. Sudden agony flashed across Luca’s face, then his eyes lost focus and his head rolled forward. Sunder dumped him in a heap on the tile.
“What did you do to him?” A sob escaped my chest, rising into a wail. “Is he dead?”
“Bane!” called Sunder. “Do you mind?”
Bane emerged from the opposite side of the archway where Sunder ambushed us. For once, the pale girl wasn’t wearing gloves. Her bare fingers were long and white as albino spiders.
Bane gave her brother a questioning look. His shrug was fluid with apathy.
Fear poured adrenaline into my veins. I took a shaky step away, and prepared to flee.
Bane raised one liquid wrist to her mouth, and blew me a kiss. Her breath gusted across her fingers, black as dusk. I whirled as the inky particles glided toward me. My shoes slipped as I scrabbled for purchase on the slick floor.
It was like a bad dream. The cloud of poison surrounded me, and I was too slow. My steps clomped ponderous and strange, as though I was slogging through mud. My heart beat dull and sluggish, and I couldn’t seem to draw enough breath. The vapor hemmed me in, clinging to my nose and prying at my mouth.
I collapsed to my hands and knees on the floor, coughing as Bane’s venom invaded my system. My vision blurred.
Conviction crowded out any lingering uncertainty: This was the end.
I fumbled for my ambric necklace with numb fingers, and clutched its familiar, worn planes as darkness settled in.
Consciousness dug sharp fingernails into the edges of my mind, and pulled.
My sense of hearing returned first, sending a constant clatter thundering into my brain. The sound was scraped raw of context or meaning, jarring me to my bones. I stirred. My muscles wailed in silent agony. I shifted my jaw and tried to open my eyes. Light screamed in like shards of glass. It prickled raw along my tender skin. I moaned, and curled away from the onslaught of sensation.
Slowly, the world settled around me. My head ached like I’d been drinking wine for three days straight, and I couldn’t open my eyes more than a slit. I peered around, trying to make sense of the clatter and sway jolting me side to side. A carriage? I pressed my palms to the plush cushion beneath me.
“You’re alive,” remarked a cool female voice.
I forced my eyes to focus. A blurry face sharpened. Red lips. Ice-white hair coiled in complicated spirals.
Bane.
“What—?” I croaked out, but my throat was so dry I couldn’t manage another word. I swallowed. It was like gulping razors.
“Pithy,” said Bane.
Her tone was cruel, with none of Sunder’s bite of humor to warm it. “Sunder never said you were a philosopher.”
“Water?” I managed. Pitiful.
Bane sighed, and tossed me a heavy skin sloshing with liquid. I raised it to my lips, sucking at the water like a greedy child. It was cold—so cold my teeth ached—but it was clean and pure and tasted like paradise. Finally, I capped the bottle and wiped a hand across my mouth to clear the droplets from my lips. My palm came away black.
Memory came flooding back. The Imperial Wing. Sunder. Violence and death. Luca. Bane, breathing poison, chasing me down the hall.
“What did you do to me?” I spat. The fingers I brushed across my eyes and nose came away filmy with fine black soot.
“Scion, you’re a mess,” she sneered. She looked away and curled a voluminous fur ruff closer to her face. She was clothed all in furs, pale grey and white framing her face and draping her slender figure. “Sunder’s taste in women really has taken an unfortunate turn.”
“Bane!” I snapped. She cut frigid emerald eyes to me, and her mouth formed a moue of scorn. “Feel free to insult me at your leisure, but would you mind telling me what happened? What did you do to me? Where’s Sunder? What happened to Luca? Where are we, and where are we going?”
“Who are you? What time is it? What’s a bath?” she mocked.
“You only tried to kill me,” I hissed. Fury sent lines of fire to kindle my chest, and I felt suddenly myself again. “I can make you wish you’d succeeded.”
“Ooohhh,” said Bane, rolling her perfectly lined eyes. She lifted a velvet-gloved hand to tap idly at the white lace of frost spreading across the carriage window. “I didn’t try to kill you. Sunder asked me to incapacitate you.”
“But—you’re—”
“Poisonous? Yes, I poisoned you. Don’t worry, the effects aren’t permanent. You’ll feel mildly ill for another day or two before you return to your natural state of loathsome vulgarity.”
“And Luca?” I swallowed the wave of nausea rising in my stomach. “Did Sunder kill him, like he did the others?”
“The Tavendel ore trader?” Bane curled her lip into its accustomed sneer. “Sadly, no. My brother seemed concerned about how you might take that news.”
I leaned forward, sudden hope fizzing in my chest. “Where is he? Luca?”
“In a great deal of pain, if I know Sunder.” She smirked at my stricken look. “Oh, calm down. I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“And the empress?” The words were blades in my throat, and I dreaded the answer. “Did she learn of our attack?”
“I’m sure she’d be soooo surprised to discover the Dusklander trash she let into the palais turned out to be a traitor.”
“Is that why I’m here? Are you taking me somewhere to torture me, or to—”
“Kill you?” Bane’s eyes glittered. “Scion, I wish. But I’m afraid that’s Sunder’s decision.”
I bit back the vicious words rising in my throat. She was baiting me—her eyes had the same savage glint as her twin brother’s. I suddenly remembered what Lullaby called them when I first arrived at Coeur d’Or: the Suicide Twins.
I smothered a desperate, humorless laugh.
“Something funny?” Bane snapped.
“You are,” I spat back, and was rewarded with a barely masked flash of curiosity. “If you’re not going to kill me, then where are you taking me?”
“We’re a day’s ride from Belsyre,” she said, returning her wintry gaze to the frost stitching a cold tapestry on the glass window. “I hope you like the cold.”
We spent most of the journey in uneasy silence, Bane and I.
Soon after our delightful conversation, I suffered a bout of nausea so intense I could do nothing but curl against the seat and close my eyes. The constant rocking and swaying of the carriage soured the empty cavern of my stomach, and for the first time in my life, I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything.
When the nausea finally ebbed, the chills set in.
I shuddered in the corner with my teeth chattering before Bane finally took pity on me and tossed me a length of pale fur so soft and luxurious I could barely believe it wasn’t an illusion. The moment I wrapped it around my shoulders my shivers faded away and delicious warmth folded me in its arms. I spared a thought for whatever fluffy winter animal gave its life for my comfort, and snuggled deeper into the fur.
The travel became almost hypnotic. I couldn’t see anything out the frost-glazed windows, so I could only guess where we were. Sometimes I felt the pull of gravity as we crested a rise or turned a corner, but for all I knew we were driving around in circles a mile outside the palais. I settled into an uneasy stupor as my body slowly detoxified from the poison scouring my insides. I only moved when a leg went numb or the edge of the carriage jarred my shoulder. Bane seemed lost in her own thoughts, and neither of us was eager to engage the other in conversation.
We stopped only once, when—much to Bane’s disdain—I had to relieve myself.
She rapped on the ceiling of the carriage, and the equipage slowed to a halt. A footman handed me down. Ice bloomed on the dark fur of his hood and rimed the tips of his mustache.
My palais slippers crunched through a thick layer of frigid snow as I trudged toward a copse of trees. But I barely noticed my cold toes or the chill air sucking the warmth from my cheeks. Hulking mountains rose up like giants, jagged heads and shoulders disappearing into clouds stained bloody by a hidden sun. Snow lined the branches of black trees. Everything was bright, and sharp, and crisp beneath the muted light. I stared around in awe even as the cold robbed the breath from my lungs.
“Hurry up!” shouted Bane.
But nothing could take away the mute wonder settling in my breast as we left civilization behind and climbed into a strange world of winter. And when I finally fell into a restless, broken sleep, I dreamed of red blood spilled across milky snow. Stone black as hate. Cold so fierce it snapped your bones.
And Sunder, with my name on his lips.
I jolted awake to the sound of shod hooves striking cobblestone and the vague certainty that someone was trying to talk to me.
“Huh?” I grunted, shoving myself into a sitting position and closing my gaping mouth.
“Ever the poet,” said Bane, but for once the jibe wasn’t laced with poison. She rubbed the sleeve of her coat across the window and stared outside, joy polishing her face to a jewel and lighting her up from the inside. “I said, We’re here.”
I reached for the handle of the carriage door. Bane slashed a hand toward me and frowned.
“Careful,” she snapped. “Unless you want to lose a finger to wolfbite.”
I snatched my hand away. “What?”
“It’s colder here,” warned Bane. “You’re not used to it, and you’re not dressed warmly. The cold steals from those who don’t respect it.” She tossed me fur-lined gloves and a pair of woolen socks. “Stuff those in your shoes. They’re ruined anyway. We’ll find you better clothes once we’re inside.”
I did as she said, swathing myself in layers of warmth. When I was cocooned to Bane’s satisfaction, we stepped from the carriage.
Belsyre flung ice and light into my eyes, shattering my sight into razored shards of broken mirror.
Perched on a craggy rise nestled between two black ridges, Belsyre jutted strange and pale, slicing through a veil of icy fog like the teeth of some forgotten monster. The château seemed to grow up from the stone, rugged outcroppings smoothing upward into sharp towers and looming walls. Slender bridges arched across steep ravines, the crash of fast water thundering through a shroud of grey. Black trees drew lines of ink across a bone-white canvas of drifted snow.
And between the shadows of these looming mountains, I could almost imagine the sun had set forever.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” whispered Bane at my shoulder.
And when I turned to look at her I realized she wasn’t speaking to me at all. Her face was turned up in rapture to gaze
at her home. The tears at the corners of her eyes were already frozen. They glittered like perfect diamonds.
I shivered deep in my borrowed fur, and watched as servants clad in the stark argyle of Belsyre unloaded the carriage. A team of ink-black horses, their forelegs and hooves flocked in white, stamped impatiently. Their breath sent clouds of steam to mingle with the fog.
“My lady.” An older servant bowed low over Bane’s gloved hand. “Welcome home at last.”
“Thank you, Bertan,” she replied. “How are your girls? Did Mireille ever coax that oleander plant to bloom?”
“She did, lady,” said Bertan, “and its loveliness reminds us of you every day.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the smile that ghosted across Bane’s face was kind.
And as I trailed Oleander de Vere through the austere gates of her childhood home, I found myself wondering that I ever thought the Suicide Twins cold or cruel.
A wolf wasn’t cruel when she killed for her meal. A nighthawk wasn’t cruel when he ripped his talons through the still-warm body of a mouse. Winter wasn’t cruel when it blanketed the land in snow and stole the warmth from your bones.
Sunder and Bane might be cold, but they weren’t cruel.
They were merely as nature made them.
The inside of Belsyre was as forbidding as its outside.
Our footsteps reverberated strangely across the vaulted foyer. High above, white stone twisted in shadow-wreathed archways. Slender ambric lamps pierced down like blood-dipped icicles, throwing garnet jewels across the bare, smooth walls. I shivered.
Bane marched across the gleaming tile to a spun-sugar staircase coiling up toward a gleaming balcony. She didn’t say anything as she took the steps at a trot, her gloved fingers skimming the balustrade.
“Wait!” My voice chimed like a bell in the echoing space. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Do?” Bane paused, her face a blurry circle of white in the muted glow. “Why should I care?”