The Shadow Hour

by Melissa Grey

  Nothing in this world came without a price, least of all favors from warlocks.

  One of the thorns was slightly larger than the rest, beckoning Caius to dig the pad of his finger into it. He did just that. Pain radiated along the length of his arm, as if the thorn and the wound it caused were ten times their actual size. Blood welled up on the surface of his skin, and he held his finger where it was, pressed against the thorn’s sharp point. The stem was stained crimson for only a moment before it absorbed the blood offered to it. With a jolt and a clang, the elevator began to rise.

  After what felt like an eternity, the stuttering ascent ended. Caius pulled back another accordion gate and entered a corridor warmly lit by a series of small gilded chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. At the other end of the hallway, a burgundy velvet curtain covered the only doorway. A woman pushed it aside as he stepped into the corridor. She was tall, and as she moved, a slit on one side of her black silk gown revealed glimpses of a knife in a bejeweled sheath strapped to her thigh. A cascade of ebony hair fell freely around her shoulders, and her lips were the deep scarlet of freshly spilled blood. She held the curtains closed behind her as she let her gaze trail up Caius’s body from his boots to his hair. Her eyes were devoid of pupils and white as cream.

  She smiled, like a wolf baring its fangs. “Are you lost, little lamb?”

  Little lamb, Caius thought. How precious.

  “Hardly,” he said. “I’m here to see the master of the house.”

  “And who might I say is calling?” asked the woman.

  Jasper had warned him against providing a fake name, so he answered truthfully. “Caius. We have a mutual friend.”

  The woman simply arched one flawlessly sculpted eyebrow.

  “His name is Jasper. He told me I could find assistance here.”

  The scarlet smile wilted at the sound of Jasper’s name. “Is that so? Well, in that case, come along.” She swept the curtain aside, gesturing Caius through. Before he could cross the threshold, a hand on his elbow stilled him.

  The woman leaned into him, lips brushing his ear, the fall of her hair hiding her face from view. “Is he well?” she asked. “Jasper?”

  Caius offered a shallow nod in response. Her behavior puzzled him. She had gone from well-mannered hostility to concerned curiosity just a touch too fast. It made him wonder how well she knew Jasper and why she didn’t want her question overheard.

  “Now, now, Taeyeon, it’s rude to hog our guest’s attention.”

  Taeyeon stepped aside, her soot-black gown blending with the shadows. Caius couldn’t see the speaker right away, but what he did see was breathtaking. The exterior of the building had been as nondescript as those on either side of it, with a restaurant that appeared to specialize in a thousand kinds of dumplings on the ground floor, but Caius realized now that it was a front, fueled by magic. The far wall was dominated by an enormous clockface that doubled as a window, its wrought-iron gears and hands casting oddly shaped shadows on the hardwood floor as the city’s rainbow of lights filtered through the glass. Large pillows were scattered about the space, interspersed with couches bearing sinfully plush cushions and artfully draped fur throws. Candles mounted in sconces along the walls illuminated the room. Bodies, so like the ones carved into the crystal vase in the elevator, were gathered in groups on both the furniture and the floor. Some were practically nude, though most were dressed like Taeyeon: fully clothed, but with strategic areas of bare flesh, just enough to capture the imagination. A woman with hair the color of amethyst held a champagne flute to the lips of a bare-chested young man, her free hand trailing along the raw, raised skin of a newly inked tattoo—a stylized Q—low on his stomach, right above the jut of his hip bone. The woman threw back her head as she laughed, keeping the champagne just out of the young man’s reach. Caius could see part of the same tattoo on the woman’s neck, right under her ear. These were Quinn’s people, and he had gone as far as to brand them. The level of narcissism on display was so stunning it made Caius’s head hurt.

  A sofa shaped like an open circle dominated the place of honor in front of the clock. A group of men and women sat around a figure at the center, leaning into him like flowers craning for the sun. All of them were beautiful, but in very different ways, like a carefully curated collection of loveliness. Caius wondered if they had been chosen the way some people selected artwork with which to decorate their walls. The man at the center of it all, positioned like a modern-day Bacchus doted upon by faithful admirers, was bookended by two aggressively beautiful people, one male, one female. One of his hands rested on the woman’s thigh, fingers splayed on her leather-clad leg, while the other tangled with the man’s wavy platinum hair as they kissed. Everyone in the group, save for the man in the center, bore the same tattoo that marked the others.

  “You must be Quinn.” Caius was careful to keep his voice free of the distaste he felt. Two minutes in, and he already didn’t like the warlock. Jasper needed better friends. “If that’s your real name.”

  A lazy grin pulled at Quinn’s lips as he drew back from the platinum-haired man. “It is. For the time being, at least.”

  Quinn patted the woman’s thigh the way one would pet an obedient dog, and without a single spoken command, the group around Quinn dispersed, gravitating toward their brethren in other parts of the room. Quinn turned to Caius. Unlike nearly every warlock Caius had ever seen, Quinn’s eyes weren’t a sickly shade of white; his pupils were as dark as the night sky, sprinkled with pinpricks of light that looked like stars. With each blink, the stars swirled, orbiting each other like roving galaxies. Quinn’s eyes must have been white beneath the glamour, but the magic was so deftly done that it was impossible to tell it was fake.

  “And to whom do I owe the pleasure?” Quinn asked. “Most never make it past the elevator.” He ran his thumb along his lower lip, mouth shiny with what Caius assumed was saliva. Charming. Quinn’s black hair was cropped close to his head, and he was shirtless, golden skin gleaming in the candlelight. Dark jeans sat low on his hips, and his feet were bare. An intricate pattern of scars crawled up his arms and chest, reminding Caius of the way ivy crawled up the sides of buildings. The scars were deliberate, perhaps even self-inflicted. Magic came with a price, and Caius wondered if Quinn had carved his out in blood and pain.

  “My name is Caius. Jasper told me I could find you here.”

  Quinn tilted his head, mouth tightening into a thin line. “That’s true,” he said. “But you’re hiding something, aren’t you?”

  He snapped his fingers, and Caius felt the concealer pull away from his skin like a film, leaving a not entirely unpleasant tingling sensation in its wake. A few of the people sitting on the cushions closest to Caius twisted to get a better look at him. They were all human, and fascinated by his scales.

  “That’s better,” said Quinn. “Never try to trick a trickster.” He leaned forward to pick up a glass on the low table in front of him. With languid grace, he settled back against the cushions. “Now, how is Jasper? It’s been so long since I saw him last.” Quinn patted the seat next to him. “Come, sit.”

  The way Quinn’s dark eyes studied Caius made his skin crawl. He went to the sofa, taking a seat one cushion down from the one Quinn had indicated. Quinn snapped his fingers at the nearest of his acolytes, and within seconds, a glass full of something that smelled like brandy was presented to Caius.

  “He’s been better,” Caius said, taking the glass from the petite girl who offered it. She couldn’t have been a day over sixteen, and she was covered in ink from her shoulders to her ankles. “Otherwise, he would have come himself.”

  Quinn smirked into his glass. “Oh, I highly doubt that. We didn’t exactly part on good terms.”

  Caius had assumed as much, judging from the tight set of Jasper’s jaw as he told Caius exactly where to go. There was history between them, but Jasper had been convinced that Quinn would respond to a summons if it came from him, even if indirectly. “He’ll help
you,” Jasper had told Caius. “Trust me.”

  Caius set his glass down on the table. Accepting food or drink from warlocks was flirting with trouble; one could never be quite sure what type of edible magic one was ingesting. “Jasper is the reason I’m here. He’s been hurt. Badly.”

  “Is that so?” Quinn’s fingers marched along the length of Caius’s thigh. “And how might I be of assistance?”

  “There’s a curse I need undone,” Caius said. He removed Quinn’s hand. “It was cast by a warlock and it can only be undone by a warlock.”

  “Why come to me? Any warlock worth his salt could do that, and for far less than my asking price.”

  “Jasper seems to think you’re the best person for the job. I’m inclined to trust his judgment.”

  “You must not know him very well, then.” The warlock’s eyes narrowed. “Who hurt him?” Quinn raised his drink, and Caius noticed that his grip on the glass was so tight his knuckles were turning white.

  “Firedrakes,” Caius said. “Sent by the Dragon Prince herself.”

  Quinn paused, glass halfway to his lips. “Firedrakes?” he asked, voice oozing incredulity. “What the hell is Jasper doing messing around with Firedrakes? He has more sense than that. Though judging from the company he’s keeping”—Quinn gave Caius a pointed look over the rim of his glass—“maybe I overestimated him.”

  “The past three months have been chock-full of adventure. Jasper acquired his wound in defense of a friend.”

  “Huh,” Quinn huffed. “Jasper engaging in heroics. Now, that I would pay to see.” He knocked back his drink in a single swallow and then leaned in, encroaching on Caius’s personal space. Though he appeared to be young, in his early twenties perhaps, magic clung to him like cologne. For power to stick like that, it took years—decades—of immersion. If a warlock kept his reserves of magical energy well fed, he could defy the natural progression of time, shedding his humanity over the years. There were any number of ways to do that. Most warlocks opted for blood and violence, buying their youth and power with someone else’s pain after growing immune to their own, but now Caius understood why Quinn surrounded himself with a bevy of sensual sycophants. There was a certain magic to the element of attraction, found in the way one’s heart beat faster when closing in for a kiss or the pounding of a pulse when love—or something that felt like love—was in the air. Quinn fed on their energy, or at least the promise of it, the way a vampire fed on blood.

  “So you and our mutual friend Jasper need me to undo a spell only a warlock can break,” Quinn said. “But before I agree to anything, I need to know one thing: how Jasper landed himself in the middle of a skirmish with Firedrakes.” He canted his head to the side, his uncanny gaze raking across Caius’s face as if seeking out the seeds of a lie. “And don’t try to deceive me. We’ve already established that I’ll see right through a fib.”

  “We were looking for the firebird.” If Quinn wanted the truth, he could have it. Though Caius was under no obligation to provide him with the full truth.

  The warlock’s hand gravitated toward Caius’s knee, slowly, as if expecting Caius to flinch. As if Caius would ever give him the satisfaction. He knew his grin was a little mad, but perhaps a little madness was what they needed. The encroaching hand froze, stalled by whatever Quinn saw in Caius’s face.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Quite.” Caius picked up his glass and swirled its amber liquid around.

  After a beat, a smirk cracked Quinn’s face. “You’re insane,” he said. “I like that. Adds a little spice to life.” He stood and offered Caius a hand, which was pointedly ignored. “Let’s go. Jasper is a dear friend, and I would so love to see him again.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jasper watched as Dorian struck a match against the side of the box, the scent of sulfur and smoke rising in the air. The candles beside Jasper’s bed had melted down to short, fat stubs, and Dorian had taken it upon himself to fetch a few more tea lights from the bag in the old-fashioned chest that held most of their survival necessities. The warehouse had always been a hideout of last resort; it was never intended for anything more than a quick ducking in and out as one ran from the law—human, Avicen, or otherwise. If Jasper had known that their ragtag group of runaways was going to wind up camping out for months, he would have spruced the place up a bit. Maybe even brought in a sofa. An honest-to-goodness place to sit. But no, such opulence was but a pipe dream for the time being.

  He picked at the peeling paint on the baseboard beside his mattress and heaved a sigh, the tea in his other hand going cold. Ivy had brewed it for him. It had some kind of medicinal property to it that was supposed to stave off infection, but it tasted earthy and rotting. It did keep the wound in his abdomen from killing him, at the very least.

  “Who’s Rowan?”

  Dorian’s question drew Jasper’s attention. He’d arranged the tea lights in a little semicircle on the floor, nestled in a pool of wax from the larger candles. It hadn’t escaped Jasper’s notice that Dorian had been rather stingy when it came to monitoring everyone else’s gratuitous use of the candles, but Jasper had been allotted three tea lights each night instead of two. The favoritism wasn’t subtle, but Jasper wasn’t about to complain. Thawing Dorian’s outer shell was a long and arduous process, but it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. Humble progress was still progress.

  Jasper swirled the pungent contents of the teacup. Bits of something herbaceous stuck to the sides. Delightful. “He’s Echo’s boyfriend. Or was, I suppose. Not quite sure what’s going on there.”

  Dorian’s silvery brows drew together. His eye patch shifted slightly, and he reached up to adjust it. Jasper had never seen him without it, not even when the Drakharin was sleeping. He wondered if it was fused to his head. Surely whatever scarring it hid couldn’t be that bad. “Boyfriend?”

  “Suitor. Gentleman caller. Romantic interest of the male gender.”

  “I know what a boyfriend is.” Dorian rolled his one perfectly blue eye. Today, it was the color of the sky on a winter’s day, bright and speckled with white, like snowflakes. Jasper had been trying to suss out a pattern in its ever-changing shades, to see if he could decode it like a mood ring.

  “I just didn’t realize Echo had one,” Dorian said. “I wonder if Caius knows.”

  “Whether or not he does is Echo’s business. Let’s not meddle.”

  The corners of Dorian’s lips twitched into a smile. “I’m surprised. You seem like the meddling type, especially when you’re bored.”

  “Yes, but I’m also the self-serving type, and I don’t know if I could survive another day in this hellhole if we stirred up a fight between forty percent of its inhabitants. I would kill everyone.” Jasper studied the curve of Dorian’s lower lip, the way the tips of his hair brushed the navy blue of his eye patch, the faint scarring on his cheek that spread from beneath it like a spider’s web. “Well…maybe not everyone.”

  It was hard to tell by the paltry light of the candles, but Jasper was pretty sure that Dorian was blushing. As with his eye color, Jasper had developed an extensive catalog of Dorian’s many blushes. The one that started at the base of his throat, peeking up from the collar of his shirt, was often found when Dorian was frustrated. The scarlet tinge at the tips of his ears belied anger. And the vaguely coral hint of blood rising in his cheeks was often a sign of embarrassment. Gods, Jasper could write a book about Dorian blushing. An encyclopedia. A multivolume encyclopedia.

  Jasper set the teacup and saucer down by the mattress, chipped china clattering. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “Or I’m gonna lose my frickin’ mind.”

  Dorian reached behind Jasper to fluff his pillow. The move was so domestic that Jasper half wanted to giggle like a schoolgirl. “If you can stand up and walk out that door under your own power, I won’t stop you.”

  Now, that was just mean.

  “This is payback, isn’t it?” said Jasper. “For the first time w
e met. When you were the one with the life-threatening wound and I was the one doing the harassing.”

  “Would I stoop so low?” Dorian said with another smile. He was freer with smiles lately, less self-conscious about the way they distorted the scarred flesh of his cheek.

  “Oh, absolutely.” Jasper rested back against the freshly fluffed pillows. “Hard to believe that was only a few months ago.”

  Dorian rubbed at his eye patch absently. It moved a centimeter, the band catching some of Dorian’s light gray hair and rucking it up in the back. “Hard to believe we’re the same people we were then.”

  “I don’t think we are.” Jasper smoothed down the disobedient tufts of hair on Dorian’s head. Dorian stiffened, but he didn’t move away immediately. Humble progress indeed.

  Only when Jasper’s hand lingered, fingers gently carding through the silky softness of Dorian’s hair, did the Drakharin pull back. Jasper’s chest tightened. This dance was getting old. “Why do you do that?”

  Dorian retrieved a worn paperback from the small stack of books near Jasper’s bedside. Since arriving at the warehouse, he’d read them all, but he started on this one again, curling up with it when he begrudgingly let Caius take the first night watch. Jasper angled his head to read the cover. Wuthering Heights. Forbidden love without the happy ending. Utter dreck.

  “I’m not doing anything,” Dorian said.

  Jasper sighed. “I just thought we were moving past that.”

  “Past what?”

  “Your emotional constipation.”

  “I am not constipated.” Dorian looked down at the book in his hands. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  Jasper had learned to wield charm like a weapon from an early age. When he wanted something, he knew how to get it. He could sweet-talk a nun out of her habit if he wanted to. But that wasn’t his goal with Dorian. No, that would have been a gross oversimplification of the yearning that had dominated his every waking moment the past several weeks. Jasper had never felt want like this before. Lust, he understood, but this wasn’t the kind of desire that could be satisfied so easily. He wanted to crawl inside Dorian and count his bones. He wanted to know him, inside and out. He wanted to make him blush in a million different ways. He wanted to make Dorian smile, bright and true, without the faintest hint of a shadow lurking behind it. He wanted Dorian to stop hiding behind an eye patch and a century’s worth of angst. But he didn’t know how to say that. What he could say was “I want you to be honest with yourself.”