by Sarah Fine
ALSO BY SARAH FINE
The Reliquary Series
Reliquary
Servants of Fate
Marked
Claimed
Fated
Guards of the Shadowlands
Sanctum
Fractured
Chaos
Captive: A Guard’s Tale from Malachi’s Perspective
Vigilante: A Guard’s Tale from Ana’s Perspective
Stories from the Shadowlands
Of Metal and Wishes
Of Dreams and Rust
Of Shadows and Obsession: A Short Story Prequel
The Impostor Queen
Scan (with Walter Jury)
Burn (with Walter Jury)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 Sarah Fine
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503936423
ISBN-10: 1503936422
Cover design by Faceout Studio
For Brigid Kemmerer, of whom I am constantly in awe.
You didn’t force me to be your friend, lady—I was ready to beg.
And tackle you if necessary.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
There are two kinds of knowing. The kind that resides in your brain, with straight edges and smooth planes, and fits tidily between memories like a book on a shelf. The kind that matches your hopes and tells you everything is as it should be.
But then there’s the knowing that comes for you at night, after layers of consciousness have been peeled off by the exhaustion of the day. It lives in that pit in your stomach, jagged and dark. The kind of knowing that won’t let you rest until you finally surrender and let it, in all its ferocious and hideous glory, step into the light.
The kind that changes everything.
“We’re going to have to change everything, Mattie,” the seamstress announced. “This fit you perfectly last summer, but now . . .” Her gaze met mine in the mirror and slid away.
But not before I saw the accusation in her eyes. “I didn’t do this on purpose,” I said quietly, looking down at the wedding dress hanging from my frame, held up only by my mother’s hands grasping a fold of material at my back.
“Well, you’re not the first bride to go overboard with dieting.” Her papery skin tickled mine as she flattened the material along my chest and pinned it under my armpit.
I gritted my teeth. This was supposed to be a magical time in my life. I was supposed to be glowing. But one look at my mom and at Chelsea, my maid of honor, told me I was failing miserably. “I haven’t been dieting.”
“Doesn’t exactly look like you’ve been carb-loading, either,” said Chelsea, who stood off to the side, her black hair swept up in a voluminous twist—a test run for the style she’d wear on my big day. We were best friends from college, but now we got to see each other only a few times a year. She’d driven down from Green Bay just for the fitting and the styling, and she still seemed unsettled by how different I looked.
“Just a case of wedding jitters,” my mother said from behind me, her voice full of false cheer, so chirpy it made me wince.
“Fifteen pounds’ worth of jitters?” Chelsea asked, turning to my mom. “You’d think she’d be emptied out by now.”
“I’m standing right here,” I said, then gasped as pain lanced through my chest.
After nine months, I should have gotten used to it, but it caught me by surprise every single time. I hunched forward, bracing one palm on my thigh, my other hand rising to rub my chest. It didn’t help the pain, but it did make me feel a tad less helpless. Pins stabbed my side, but that was nothing compared to the slice of hurt right in the center of my breastbone. I tried to suppress a whimper.
“Oh, dear. It’s happening again,” my mother said, letting go of my dress to hold on to my waist.
“What’s wrong?” Chelsea asked, stepping out of the way as my mother helped me off the little platform where I’d been standing. My feet tangled in the train of my dress and I nearly went down, but my mother held me tight, her auburn hair tickling the side of my face as she guided me to a chair.
The seamstress pulled out her phone. “Does she need an ambulance?”
“No, no, Mattie has these little panic attacks,” Mom said breezily, rubbing my back as I bowed my head over my knees and focused on breathing through the pain. “Probably stress. We’re trying to convince her to take some time off for herself before the wedding, but she’s just work, work, work all the time!”
If I hadn’t needed her so badly in that moment, I would have screamed at her. Work was the only place where I felt like myself, where I was busy enough to be distracted from all the things I was trying not to think about—including the pain. “Mom, I’m okay, really.”
I avoided their gazes as the agony faded, a hit-and-run, like it just needed to remind me that I shouldn’t get too comfortable. Summoning all my energy and pep, I sat up straight and forced a smile. But my dress, the gorgeous taffeta-and-lace mermaid-cut sheath made to emphasize my curves and help me look taller, gaped at my chest, giving me a view straight down to my hollow belly. I was down to a hundred pounds, a few pounds lighter than I had been as a Red Squad cheerleader at University of Wisconsin. Now I barely had any curves left to emphasize.
My smile faded as I glanced up at my face in the mirror. My hair, strawberry blond and relentlessly thick and curly, had been carefully styled at the salon this morning for our little dry run, but all the product in the world couldn’t hide its dull, dry texture. My eyes were rimmed with dark circles. My skin, freckled and fair, had taken on a gray undertone that no amount of makeup seemed able to conceal. “God, I look awful,” I choked out, my eyes filling with tears.
“Oh, no, baby, you don’t,” Mom said, the cheerfulness taking on a shaky edge.
“Stop lying, Mom!” I stood up, clawing at the buttons on the back of my dress. “Get this off me.”
“I still have to pin the back,” yelped the seamstress, lunging toward me as her pins started popping from the sides of the dress, casualties of my frantic tugs.
“I-I think maybe we
should reschedule,” Mom said. Chelsea was already unfastening the trail of pearly buttons down my back. Mom pulled me forward, supporting me as I stepped over the crumpled pile of dress that fell around my calves, but I yanked myself out of her grip as soon as I had my balance again.
“I just need a minute, all right?” I turned my face away so they couldn’t see the tears. “I’ll be right out.” I fled to the dressing room, the roaring in my ears drowning out anything they might have said.
Once in there, I slid down the wall and laid my forehead on my knees. My wedding was six weeks away. My life, derailed so abruptly and completely the summer before, was back on track. My fiancé was healthy, his faulty heart permanently healed with magic owned by the very mob boss who had ordered his violent kidnapping in the first place. And Ben had worked so hard to set things right since we’d gotten home.
I’d worked hard, too, but with less success.
“Stop it, Mattie,” I whispered for probably the tenth time that day, like every other day.
Especially every time I thought of Asa Ward. Every time his face, his crooked nose, and his knife-blade smile crept to the front of my thoughts. Every time his voice slid into my head.
I jerked like I’d been shocked, and pushed myself to my feet. “Dammit.” I swiped my hands across my cheeks.
A knock at the door made me turn to see Chelsea’s face as she opened it. “You okay?” she asked as she came inside. She scooped my bra from the floor and nodded toward the strapless one I’d donned for the fitting.
I unfastened it and let it fall, then put on my regular one, trying to ignore the way my breasts didn’t really fill the C-cups anymore. I’d put off buying new bras, or any clothes for that matter, telling myself I’d regain my appetite soon, that the weight would stop melting away and I’d be myself again. I hastily pulled my loose-fitting shirt over my head before smiling at Chelsea. “I’m all right. I just wasn’t in the mood to stand still today, I guess.”
Chelsea arched an eyebrow. “Maybe because your feet have become two giant blocks of ice?”
I rolled my eyes as I pulled on my yoga pants. “I don’t have cold feet, lady. I’m nervous, sure, but that’s not the same thing.”
“Uh-huh. You always ate like a freak when you were nervous, Mattie. This right here?” She gestured up and down my body. “I don’t know this girl.”
“Well, it’s been a while since you were down—”
“We text at least once a day,” she snapped. “You might have mentioned that you were falling apart. I’d have been at your door with a barrel of Häagen-Dazs in a matter of hours.”
It wouldn’t have helped. “What do you want me to say?”
“How about something honest? You haven’t been the same since the thing with Ben last year.”
“It was kind of stressful.” Understatement of the century. “He could have been killed, Chelsea. I nearly lost him.” And I’d traveled halfway around the world to save him. I’d risked my life and sanity to pay his ransom—I’d carried an ancient, invaluable magic inside me in an attempt to hide it from the scores of dangerous mobsters out to claim it. I’d survived only because Ben’s estranged brother had been willing to go to the same lengths despite the fact that he had every reason to walk away. But we never talked about Asa. He didn’t fit into the story Ben and I told. The truth was too unbelievable, too wild, too secret. Too dangerous.
I shivered, trying to shed the memories. “I’m over it, though—that’s all behind us. Lately it’s just all the little details of the wedding. I want it to be perfect for everyone. It’s a lot of pressure.”
Unfortunately, Chelsea always called BS when she smelled it—part of the reason I’d avoided telling her how I was really doing. “So you’re having panic attacks? You used to be the top flyer off our human pyramids in front of eighty thousand people, and you barely batted an eyelash. You loved it, in fact. This just doesn’t sound like you.”
I knelt to tie my sneakers. “Things change, and the doctors all agree that’s what it is.” I’d been subjected to every medical test under the sun. I’d been seen by a cardiologist. A gastroenterologist. A pulmonologist. An endocrinologist. A neurologist. And of course, the last stop—a psychiatrist. Panic attacks were the only explanation for the stabbing pains that awakened me every night, that interrupted my days and stole my appetite. “There’s nothing physically wrong with me, so it’s all in my head, right?” I let out a weak laugh.
She looked me up and down. “Nothing physically wrong? Are you freaking serious?”
I threw my shoulders back. “It’s nothing a positive attitude can’t squelch.”
“Maybe your body’s trying to tell you something.” She inclined her head toward the door. “You don’t have to do all this, you know. It’s never too late to call it all off.”
“What have I said to give you the impression I’d want to call it off? I love Ben!”
“I know. And I know you’ve wanted this for a long time. I’m just saying—”
“Stop.” It came out of me so loudly that my mom let out a surprised yip from the fitting room.
“Everything okay, baby?” she called. “You need any help?”
“I’m fine!” I gave Chelsea a warning look, and she clamped her mouth shut, crimping her full lips over her disapproval. “Chelsea just threatened to tell embarrassing stories about me during her maid-of-honor toast, that’s all.”
“Oh, Chelsea,” Mom said, laughing. Even through the door, I could feel her relief. “Save it for the big day.”
“If you insist, Mrs. Carver,” Chelsea replied, adopting a cringeworthy fake-enthusiastic tone while she stared me down. “But I’ve got some good ones.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly, reaching for the doorknob.
“Don’t.” She stepped closer and leaned in. “You’ve been lying to me for months, Mattie. But fine, whatever, I get it. Just don’t lie to yourself, okay? Ask yourself if this is what you really want, or if you’re just barreling forward like you always do while your body tries to put on the brakes.”
She put her hand over mine and pulled open the door, then walked out ahead of me. I took a moment to hitch a cheerful smile onto my face, pinning it into place with happy thoughts of flowers and lace and Ben standing at the end of the altar, waiting for me to meet him there. Then I exited the room to sail through the rest of my day.
By the time I reached the front door of the cottage, I could already smell dinner. Onions, garlic, bacon. “Ben?”
“Kitchen,” he called. “My afternoon splenectomy got canceled.”
I frowned. The patient, a nine-year-old schnauzer mix named Gordon Lightfoot, had been diagnosed with cancer of the spleen just a few days before. “Why?”
“They decided they wanted to put him down instead,” Ben said as I joined him in our kitchen. He handed me a glass of merlot. “They took him home and are spending the weekend with him. He’ll come back on Monday.”
My throat got tight at the news, but Ben looked unruffled. He’d had longer to process the decision. “You could have saved him.”
He nodded. “But it would have been expensive. They said they couldn’t afford it.”
“Couldn’t you have . . .” I took a quick sip of my wine. I’d been about to suggest he offer to do it for free, or for a much lower fee, something he used to do all the time. But we were still repaying the debt he’d racked up with his addiction to Ekstazo pleasure magic . . . and to other types of magic as well.
He used Knedas juice on you, didn’t he? Asa whispered in my memories.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “That’s too bad. Are you okay?”
“Just part of the job.” His fingers caressed my cheek. “You look tired, babe.”
I let out a weary chuckle and set my wineglass on the counter. “Isn’t that a socially acceptable way of telling someone she looks terrible?”
He took my face in his large, warm hands. “You look as beautiful to me as you ever have, Mattie.”
&nbs
p; Liar, I thought. But I stayed quiet.
He kissed my forehead. “I came home early to cook dinner for you. Bucatini with bacon, tomato, and onions. Something hearty to put some meat back on your bones.”
I pulled away from him. “My mom called you, didn’t she?”
“Am I not allowed to talk to my future mother-in-law? She wanted to make sure you had a nice, relaxing evening. Said you’d had a busy day filled with hair and dresses and tricky flower arrangements.”
That would be what my mom told him. No matter how bad things were, she’d embroider the edges of the truth with a pretty silver lining. It was like she believed that naming a bad thing gave it power, but if we just talked around it, maybe it would simply go away. “Yeah. Who knew wedding planning was so exhausting?”
Hey, I’d learned from the best.
Ben ushered me onto the screened porch, where we could see the emerald buds dotting the branches of the trees that lined our yard, the daffodils poking their little green heads through the soil in the flower beds. We ate our dinner in near silence, him gobbling down pasta while I picked at my food. It smelled good, but I already felt full, like my stomach had been stuffed with something huge and brittle and too much weight would cause it to splinter.
After we were finished, we did the dishes together. Ben’s hands snaked around my waist as I dried my hands with a towel. He bowed his face into my hair. “You didn’t believe me when I told you that you were beautiful to me.”
I folded the towel over the edge of the dish rack. “I never said that.”
“You don’t think I know you well enough to tell? Come on, Mattie.” His fingers spread, stroking across my ribs.
I fought the urge to pull away, knowing he could probably feel each one. “I never said that, either.”
A breath of laughter warmed the top of my head. “Because you don’t say much of anything these days.”
“I’m stressed out. It’s no big deal, just a lot of details to manage.”
“Then let me help. I’ll take time off—”
“You can’t, and you know that.”
He sighed. “I know.” He was determined to pay off the debt to the contractor who’d renovated the vet clinic, and he wanted to get it done before the wedding. “But I want to do something for you.” He tilted his head and kissed the side of my neck. “I love you so much, and I just want to make you happy.” His hand slid around to my stomach and began to dip into my pants.