And that was when Dorian saw him.
A solitary figure picking his way through the dead and dying, turning over bodies with his boot. Looking for feathers or scales. Deciding who to kill and who to save. He was a lonely spark of life in a killing field. Dorian had opened his mouth, to plead for rescue or death. He hadn’t quite decided which. All he got for his trouble, though, was a mouthful of blood. He managed to croak out a single word.
“Help.”
The figure’s dark-haired head snapped around. When their eyes met, Dorian could have wept. Green eyes—rare among the Drakharin—shone through a layer of sweat and dirt that just barely covered a smattering of scales high on his cheekbones. The soldier made his way to where Dorian lay, gingerly stepping over broken bodies and shattered shields. It was strange to think that it would all be gone come morning. Mages, both Avicen and Drakharin, would sweep the battleground, like maids after an unruly party. It was the one thing both sides agreed on. They fought. They died. They left no trace for human eyes.
By the time the soldier reached him, Dorian was convinced he was already dead. No one could look that good after a long and brutal fight, but there the stranger knelt, breeches stained by the pool of blood that surrounded Dorian’s head like a halo. A gentle hand brushed Dorian’s bangs off his forehead. He tried to turn away, to hide the ruin of his face, but the stranger didn’t allow it.
“What’s your name?”
Dorian had been taken aback. Who asked for names at a time like this?
The thought must have shown on his face, because the stranger managed a weak smile and added, “I’m Caius.”
The more Caius spoke, the more Dorian’s awareness returned. He noticed the insignia on Caius’s armor and the green and bronze dragon pin that held his cloak around his shoulders. The mark of the Dragon Prince. Dorian had one foot through death’s door, and he was face to face with a prince. Through some wild magic, he was able to mumble his own name.
Caius gave a terse nod. “Can you stand?”
Dorian shook his head.
“Take my hand.”
Dorian took his hand.
Caius’s smile was weak, but it was the grandest thing Dorian had ever seen. “Do you trust me?”
It was the most ludicrous question Dorian had ever heard. Caius was his prince, and so long as there was blood in Dorian’s veins, he would follow him anywhere. Dorian answered with a shallow nod. With Dorian’s hand gripped tight, Caius closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The familiar tug of the in-between pulled at Dorian’s aching body, and soon enough, they were gone. They left the unforgiving rocky shore behind them as they fled to Wyvern’s Keep, a place that Dorian had only dreamed of seeing.
Nearly dying in his first battle wasn’t the most illustrious moment of Dorian’s military career, but it had been the most significant. He had found the person to whom he had pledged his sword and his soul, and every step he had taken since then had been by Caius’s side.
He was still rubbing at the empty socket that had once held an eye when a tap on his shoulder pulled him from the memory. Dorian turned. When he saw who it was, he looked skyward and asked the heavens, Why?
“Deep in thought, I see.” Tanith was still wearing her golden armor, and it made her shine even in the twilight. “Try not to drown.”
“Ah, Tanith,” Dorian sighed. “Please, observe my sincere laughter.”
Silence.
“Cute,” said Tanith. “Too bad my brother doesn’t see it.”
Despite his rank and station, Dorian was not, by nature, a violent man, but his hands twitched into fists at his sides. It would not do to strike the general of the entire Drakharin army. It simply would not do.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked. It was that, or start swinging.
“Oh, on the contrary.” Tanith smiled. “I came to ask if you needed any help for your trip to …”
And there it was. Strange how some people did nothing without an ulterior motive.
Dorian shook his head, turning his attention back to his guards. They were ready, waiting patiently along the shore for their captain to open a gateway to the in-between, watching with thinly veiled curiosity. It was the Drakharin way. If you wanted a conversation kept private, you had it in private. Public displays were fair game.
“If Caius had wanted you to know,” Dorian said, “he would have told you.”
“Right,” Tanith chuckled. “Far be it from me to interrogate his errand boy.”
“I am the captain of his guard,” Dorian said. “I do what he asks me to do.”
Tanith stepped forward, red cloak brushing noisily over the pebbly shore. Her blond hair fell freely about her shoulders, and a few long strands were picked up by the evening breeze. Dorian eyed the billowing folds of her wool cloak. She could have hidden a blade or two in those depths. Knowing her, she probably had.
“You are the captain of the royal guard, it’s true,” said Tanith. “And so long as Caius is the Dragon Prince, you are his.”
Dorian went as still as stone. “What are you implying?”
Tanith stood before him now, close enough for him to feel her warmth. Fire was her element to call, and the scant few inches between their bodies radiated with her heat.
“I imply nothing,” said Tanith. “I’m merely stating that as captain of the royal guard, your allegiance lies with the Dragon Prince, whoever he—or she—may be.”
So that was her game. She had always envied Caius. People may have loved him, but they feared her. It was no secret that she thought she would make a better Dragon Prince than Caius, but this was brazen, even for her.
“Caius may be blinded by the brotherly love he inexplicably still harbors for you,” Dorian said. “But you’re no sister of mine.”
“No, of course not.” Tanith smiled, slow and poison sweet. “Rumor has it that it’s another kind of love that distracts you.”
Dorian tensed, and Tanith’s grin widened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. The words rang hollow, even to his own ears.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”
Dorian chose not to dignify her statement with a response. He stepped forward, one foot an inch deep in the water, another firmly on dry land. Half in the sea, half on the sand, he sprinkled a handful of shadow dust, summoning an opening to the in-between. Wisps of darkness arose from the ground and within seconds, his guards were gone.
“Have a safe journey,” Tanith said. Her face disappeared from view, swallowed by black smoke. Dorian didn’t need to see the look in her eyes to know that she didn’t mean a single word of it.
CHAPTER TEN
Echo threaded her way through the midafternoon crowd on Saint Mark’s Place, swerving around packs of female students from the Catholic high school nearby, plaid skirts rolled up past the point of propriety, cigarettes dangling artlessly from their fingers, filters tinged pink with cherry lip gloss. They glared at her as she walked past, as if she were a threat to their prime real estate in front of the falafel joint. Echo didn’t bother glaring back. In another life, she might have been one of them.
The street was an eclectic mix of old and new, gentrification clashing against a past that stubbornly clung to the dirty sidewalks of the East Village. A tattoo parlor that doubled as a crepe café was sandwiched between a brilliantly illuminated frozen yogurt bar and a store that seemed to sell nothing but ironic T-shirts. Above her head hung a three-foot-long plastic hot dog, marking the entrance to Crif Dogs, home of the trendiest frankfurters in the city. Echo pushed open the door and smiled at the girl behind the counter with booted feet propped up near the register, a long strand of blue hair twirled around her finger. The girl didn’t smile back. That was fine. Echo wasn’t here for hot dogs.
She made a beeline for the old-school phone booth at the back of the restaurant, its black wood and glass doors harking back to a New York that Echo was too young to remember. Once she stepped into the cramped square and pulled the
door shut behind her, the clickety-clack of laptop keys and the rattle of dishes from the kitchen fell away. Echo looked through the glass at the patrons seated near the phone booth, but no one looked back at her. If anyone had bothered to tear their eyes away from their glowing screens, they would have seen nothing more than an empty phone booth, good for little beyond ambience. But even if anyone had noticed a girl disappearing into the booth, they’d soon forget. The aversion spell cast on it was simple but effective.
Echo picked up the receiver and waited. When a click sounded on the other end of the line, Echo said, “Intrare in pace, relinquent in pace. Solum lex est aurum.” The password had been the same for as long as she could remember. Enter in peace, leave in peace. The only law is gold.
The line clicked again, and Echo hung up. The back wall of the phone booth swung open, revealing a flight of stairs that would take her into the Agora, the underground market where Perrin’s shop was located. She kept her hand on the wall to her right. Echo knew the way as well as she knew the layout of her library, but there was something about the darkened labyrinth that unsettled her. The wall acted as her anchor until she reached the market square.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim, greasy light of the Agora. Gas lamps swung overheard, casting a yellowish glow over the carts and stalls packed into a space as long and as wide as the main concourse at Grand Central. Down here, beyond the wards that shielded the marketplace from the outside world, the sound was almost deafening. Avicen traders shouted out bargains as warlocks haggled over bleached bones that looked suspiciously human. Trolleys overflowing with a strange mix of cooking utensils and weaponry clattered over cobblestoned paths that had been worn down to slippery smoothness by years of trampling feet. A few warlocks glanced Echo’s way, their pupils erased by a sea of sickly white, and she dropped her gaze. Warlocks had been human once, but dark magic came with a price, and their humanity had been the cost of their power. The first time the Ala had brought Echo down here, to show her the bustling market beyond the Nest, she had made sure Echo understood that it was best not to make eye contact with that sort. A cluster of them crowded around a stall, arguing over the price of stillborn fetuses in jars. At least, Echo hoped they’d been stillborn. It was hard to tell with warlocks.
Perrin’s shop was at the other end of the market, occupying one of the highly coveted storefronts that lined the walls. Echo wove through the crowd, waving at a few vendors she recognized. An Avicen with golden skin and deep scarlet feathers nodded back, his table piled high with clockwork gears and brass doorknobs. Another Avicen with brilliant purple plumage waved a bottle of something that was most certainly not a legitimate love potion under Echo’s nose. She ducked so as not to inhale any of it and made her way to the other end of the Agora where a familiar sign—PERRIN’S ENCHANTING ESSENTIALS—dangled.
Pushing the door open, Echo was assaulted with the pungent scent of mixed incense and whatever potions Perrin was brewing behind the counter. The staticky crackle of a baseball game drifted from the small stereo sitting on the counter. Most of the Avicen were wary of human electronics, but Perrin’s stereo was as much a fixture of the shop as his stacks of atlases detailing gateways to the in-between and the curio cabinets bursting with oddities from all over the world.
This far below the streets of Manhattan, there was no reception, but Perrin never missed a Yankees game, even if he had to listen to it on tape. It was old-fashioned, but the Avicen weren’t the most technologically savvy people. Sometimes, Echo would record the games for him on a small radio she’d found at a flea market, trading the cassettes for shadow dust. The tinny sound of the commenter’s voice announced the score—bottom of the ninth, 5–4 Boston—and Perrin’s short, sharp feathers stuck up in irritation. He was not a Red Sox fan.
Perrin glanced up as the bell above the door jingled a chipper tune. “Ah, Echo,” he said. “My favorite human friend.”
“I’m your only human friend,” Echo said, slapping her nearly empty pouch of dust on the counter. “I need to restock.”
“Everything in this world has its price,” said Perrin, head cocked toward the stereo. Yankees at bat. Bases loaded. Two balls. One strike. He made no move to pick up the pouch and wouldn’t until she paid up front.
“Yeah, yeah.” She slipped the small teal box out of her backpack’s side pocket and placed it next to the pouch. “Here are your macarons.”
Perrin eyed the box but made no move to accept it. Swing and a miss. Two outs. Two strikes. “Did you get the special seasonal flavors? And the chocolate one with the vanilla cream filling?”
“Yes,” Echo replied. “I made sure your painstakingly detailed directions for the long-suffering staff at Ladurée were followed to the letter.”
Curveball. High and inside. And a grand slam. With a soft chuckle, Perrin opened the box to reveal a neatly packed row of pastel pastries. He took out a single delicate macaron and waved it under his nose, closing his eyes in bliss. “A flawless combination of chocolate and vanilla. It is a symphony of flavor. One cannot have light without darkness to temper it.”
“Simmer down, Socrates, it’s just a cookie.” Echo pushed the pouch toward him. “Can we get this show on the road? I have places to go, people to steal from, you know how it goes.”
“Patience is a virtue, my child,” Perrin said, but he took her pouch anyway, refilling it from the large barrel of shadow dust behind the counter. The Ala had once explained to Echo that the dust was the darkness of the in-between made tangible, and creating it was a highly specialized skill. Perrin was one of the few shopkeepers in the Agora who could boast of having his own blend.
“Why is patience a virtue?” Echo crossed her arms, leaning her elbows on the counter, mostly because it bothered Perrin when she did it. “Why can’t hurry up ever be a virtue?”
Perrin chuckled again, the gray feathers at his neck ruffling. “Ah, youth. Where are you off to next?”
“Official Avicen business,” Echo said, tapping her fingers on the glass countertop. The long case was full of an assortment of oddities: rough-cut jewels, silver pocket watches, and more than a few ornate weapons, some of which Echo herself had bartered off. “Top secret. I’m just that important.”
“Secret? Nonsense.” Carrying the pouch, now full of shadow dust, Perrin returned to the counter. He held up a hand near his knees. “I’ve known you since you were this tall.”
“I was never that short,” Echo said, pocketing her shadow dust. “I simply materialized just as I am now.”
Perrin huffed, indignant, and smoothed down the graying feathers on his forearms. “You know you can trust me, right?”
Echo smiled at him. “Of course I do. But duty calls, and I have to run.” She waved at the shopkeeper as she turned back to the entrance. “Later, Perrin.”
She was halfway to the door when Perrin called out to her. “Before you go, Echo, take this.”
He shuffled around the counter and pressed a woven leather bracelet into her palm. The elaborate braiding was punctuated with small rounded crystals and shot through with a single feather from Perrin himself. “For help, just in case you need it. If you’re in trouble, I’ll be able to find you.” He pointed at the feather woven in with the leather. “Think of it as my Bat-Signal. It’s not right that you should be out there on your own without knowing there’s backup if you need it.”
Something twisted deep in Echo’s chest, and she would later swear that her smile had not wobbled quite so much when she took the leather band. It was nice to be reminded that she had an extended family, even if it was a weird one. “Thanks, Perrin. Wish me luck.”
With a flick of his feathered hand, Perrin waved her off. “Good luck,” he said. “And try not to need it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kyoto was one of Echo’s favorite cities in the world. The first time she’d visited—on an errand for Perrin to pick up a specific type of seasonal mochi—she’d marveled at the clash of old and new. Temples sat
beside glass skyscrapers, while certain streets, like the one she currently stood on in the Pontocho district, were so well preserved that they were like portals back in time. A hundred years had passed, and still the teahouse to which the map had pointed stood, exactly where Echo had expected it to be. But as she stared at the sentries posted outside the building, her confidence shriveled up. The day had been so lovely, too, with the sun shining down on the narrow alleys of Pontocho, glimmering off the blue-green surface of the Kamo River, and illuminating the paper lanterns that swung gently in the breeze.
“Crap,” she whispered. She’d been standing across the street, half-hidden by the trunk of a cherry blossom tree, for a solid fifteen minutes. The line from the poem scribbled on the map ran through her mind. Where flowers bloom, you’ll find your way. Echo huffed. More like you’ll find your untimely demise. She’d almost waltzed right into the teahouse before spotting the sentries. They looked human enough, two eyes, two legs, no visible scales. She’d never seen a Drakharin in the flesh before, but there was something off about the way they moved, as if they were on alert. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. She was in their territory, after all.
Guards, Echo thought. Great. She’d watched the sentries long enough for them to have rotated a full three times. The teahouse was being watched by no fewer than three of them, maybe four.
“One does not simply walk into Mordor,” Echo mumbled. But that was what she was about to do. Steeling her nerves, she stepped around the tree and marched toward the front door. The guards shared a look as she approached, but the door to the teahouse slid open before they could intercept her. A wizened old woman, back stooped and face as wrinkled as tree bark, stood in the threshold, flashing a mostly toothless smile. She inclined her head in a shallow bow as Echo climbed the stairs.
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