She nodded. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course.’ He stood back to admit her. She took a surreptitious glance around the room as she entered it, hoping to find some trace of him, but it was as rich and as empty as Ayla’s. The only incongruous object was a picture on the wall: a simple painted thing, showing a flying bird silhouetted against a dawn sky. It didn’t fit with its ornate surroundings at all, but the yearning Serenna saw in it brought a lump to her throat.
‘My father hated it,’ Myrren said, following her gaze. ‘Sentimental drivel, I believe were his exact words.’
She looked sideways at him. ‘You painted this?’
‘Mmm.’ His mouth formed a self-mocking curve. ‘You can probably tell by the appalling workmanship. I’m no artist.’
Serenna turned back to the painting. True, it was unmistakably the work of an amateur, but the depth of emotion it conveyed more than made up for any lack of ability.
‘I think it’s beautiful,’ she said.
They looked at each other for a moment without speaking, and Serenna felt something quiver deep inside her. Then Myrren stepped away, gesturing to a nearby chair.
‘Please, take a seat.’
She obeyed him, curling her slippered feet up under her skirts and pushing back her veil – he’d seen her face before, after all. There was a small table beside her, and on it was a black metal device she recognised. She frowned at it.
‘Isn’t that Sorrow’s pistol?’
Myrren shrugged. ‘I thought it might be useful. But in the rush to get Elisse back to Darkhaven, I didn’t think to look for the equipment that goes with it. And there isn’t a supply of powder here.’ His lips tightened. ‘I could ask the Helm where I might procure some, but after the events of the past few days I’m not inclined to trust them more than I have to.’
He walked to the table and picked up the pistol, turning it over in his fingers. For an instant a shadow entered his eyes, as though he saw a future in the weapon that Serenna couldn’t see. Then he put it back down, giving her a rueful smile.
‘It’s a temperamental thing, anyway. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but I’d rather stick to the sword. Somehow it’s far less … random.’
Serenna nodded. Having seen him use a sword, she wouldn’t have expected anything else. She was still ashamed of the visceral thrill it had given her to watch the short fight in the fourth ring. She’d tried to tell herself that it was simply the pleasure she would feel on seeing any craftsman of such obvious skill wield his tools, but she knew it had been far more primal than that. With a sword in his hands, the precision he brought to everything he did became something far more dangerous, and far more exciting.
‘So, then, Sister Serenna.’ Myrren crossed to the window, staring out into the impenetrable darkness beyond. ‘Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?’
It clearly wasn’t going to be easy for him to show how he felt. Serenna kept her voice gentle. ‘I came here because I thought maybe you might want to talk to me. About what happened today, and what we learned from Elisse.’
There was a moment of silence in which tension vibrated like a taut string between them. Then Myrren’s shoulders slumped, his head drooping. ‘She was telling the truth, wasn’t she?’
‘I think so,’ Serenna said. ‘Neither her face nor her voice held any hint of a lie.’ No, Elisse had been almost brutal in the rawness of her honesty. It was impossible to believe she had been playacting.
‘When I first saw her, I thought …’ Myrren sighed. ‘But it isn’t Elisse who has Changer blood. It is the unborn child she bears.’ As if something had been unlocked in him, he began to pace, tracing a well-worn path from window to bed to door and back again. ‘Which brings us back to the inescapable fact that Ayla is the only person left in Mirrorvale who can Change.’
Serenna sat still and watched his agitated movements. She wanted desperately to come up with an idea, something that would give him a new path to follow, but her mind was blank. And besides, she was the one who had suggested that Florentyn Nightshade might have had another child. She was the one who had uncovered this little secret.
‘Perhaps not,’ she said, clutching at slender hope. ‘Elisse’s existence doesn’t rule out the possibility that our original theory was correct. That your father did have an affair before you were born.’
Myrren turned to look at her. The control she had noticed in him earlier was gone, stripped away; his face was naked with doubt. ‘Do you really think that’s likely?’
The truth was, she didn’t – not after what she had read in the library. She still hadn’t told him about the precedent she had found: the Changer with two distinct personalities, two different creature-selves. Based on that idea, Ayla could be a murderer and not even realise it, plagued only by a dark shadow that haunted her dreams. But Serenna couldn’t bear to say that to Myrren, not when he was so vulnerable.
‘I don’t see why not,’ she said instead. ‘In fact, if anything, Elisse’s child supports rather than detracts from the theory. If Florentyn could do it once, why not twice?’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ With a troubled frown, Myrren began pacing again. ‘But everything pointed to Elisse. Everything! Without her, we have no more clues.’
‘We’ll find something,’ Serenna said with more confidence than she felt. ‘I’m sure we will.’ Then, as he passed her chair, she reached out to touch the back of his wrist. ‘Myrren, please –’
He came to an abrupt halt, looking down at her. His expression didn’t change, but something she saw in the depths of his eyes made her snatch back her fingers as though his skin had burned her. Yet even as she tried to retreat, his hand caught and held hers.
‘That’s the first time you’ve ever addressed me without my title.’ His voice was almost a whisper. She shook her head, confused.
‘I’m sorry – I –’
‘I’ve spent my whole life being judged.’ His fingers were warm around hers, sending a flush of heat up her arm and into her chest. ‘For what I am, and what I’m not. But you have never judged me, Serenna. Or if you have, it’s been on my own merits and not on other people’s expectations. Do you know how rare that is?’
Her heart was thudding in her breast, her lungs tight with the need to breathe. Excited and terrified in equal measure, she tried again to pull free of his grasp – and at that he released her, turning away.
‘But what am I, after all?’ The words were blistering in their self-loathing. ‘A lord of Darkhaven without the power to rule his country. Without the Changer gift, a Nightshade is just a man.’
Without any real awareness of what she was doing, driven both by a desire to comfort him and by the heat that was racing through her body, Serenna stood up. ‘Myrren –’
With a soft sound of frustration, he spun on his heel. His fingers closed on her upper arms, drawing her close enough that she could feel his heartbeat echoing hers. The hint of fierceness she had always sensed beneath his self-possessed exterior was clearer now, brought to the surface by emotion and by lust. Though she had no experience of such things, she couldn’t doubt the lust. She stared at him, knowing this was the last possible moment at which she could draw back, but not knowing whether she wanted to. The vows she had sworn were there in her mind, but so too was he: the shade of his eyes, the shape of his lips, the set of his jaw. She took a deep, uneven breath and tried to move – whether forwards or backwards, she wasn’t sure – only to feel Myrren’s arms tighten around her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he breathed. Then his mouth came down on hers, and her body responded as it had longed to since the first day she met him.
She had never done this before – any of this. She had been twelve when she joined the Altar of Flame and consecrated herself to a state of perpetual purity. Yet somehow, it felt entirely natural. The hardness of his body pressed against hers, the texture of his cheek as it grazed her skin, the taste of him – all was as it should be. Briefly she fumbled with the laces on his
shirt, but the new urgency that was driving her wouldn’t let her linger. Still clothed, they fell tangled together onto the bed, his hands awakening each new part of her in turn. Breasts, belly, hips, thighs: they came alive beneath his touch as though she had never truly been aware of them before. He pushed up her skirts and tugged at her undergarments, and she lifted her hips to help him. Then he was inside her, and her body tensed with a sudden sharp pain that was just as quickly gone.
‘Are you –’ Myrren whispered, but she pressed her fingers to his lips to silence him, and wrapped her legs around him to urge him deeper. They moved together, and now she could no longer tell where she ended and he began. She was aware of nothing except her own need, her own spiralling climb towards an elusive point. And then she reached it, and she was falling, and it seemed to her that this was flame as much as anything else was – that the heat and the rush of it was just another side of what she had dedicated her life to all along.
Afterwards they lay facing each other in the vast bed, their hands interlocked between them.
‘You know this can never happen again,’ she said, and he nodded.
‘I know. But … thank you, Serenna. For everything.’
She tried to smile, but tears were gathering in her throat and behind her eyes. ‘I’m glad I came here. I’m glad I met you.’
‘I’m glad I met you too,’ he said. Then he drew her tight against him, and she cried a little in the circle of his arms before, unable to resist the warmth of his embrace, she slipped into welcome darkness.
Once Serenna was asleep and breathing deeply, Myrren brushed a kiss across her forehead before getting up and crossing to the window. Pushing it open as wide as it would go, he sat on the sill and gazed out at the full moon high above the city. He was tired – the events of the day would have been enough to drain anybody, mentally and physically – yet he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest. There were too many thoughts bouncing off each other in his head for that.
He shouldn’t have done what he had with Serenna, he knew that. No matter that she’d been a temptation to him from the moment she stepped within the walls of the tower, he’d had no right to touch her. She was a priestess. He should never have looked at her in that way. And though she’d seemed more than willing, he couldn’t see how what he’d done to her was any better than what his father had done to Elisse. The thought made him feel sick and ashamed. Was that what it meant to be a Nightshade? To take what you wanted, and let others suffer the consequences? He couldn’t forget the way Serenna had cried in his arms before she drifted off to sleep. Whatever happened, her life had been changed forever. And he, in his arrogance, was the one who had changed it.
Yet despite all that, he couldn’t regret it. She was the only good thing that had happened to him since Florentyn’s death – in fact, if he were honest, since long before that. Alongside his guilt unfurled a sneaking small hope that when all this was resolved and the elusive killer found, she might leave her temple behind and join him in Darkhaven. He would never ask it of her, of course. It would be unfair to put her in a position where she might feel she had to agree because of who he was and what had happened between them. But if she came to the decision of her own accord – if she cared for him enough to abandon the life she had chosen – he would never want for anything else. He would step down from the position that his father’s death had forced on him, letting Ayla take the throne to which her gift entitled her, and devote his life to making Serenna happy.
If, that was, Ayla could ever come back to the tower.
That was the core of his circling thoughts, the crux around which all the rest revolved. Serenna had tried to comfort him, first with her words and then with her body, but still he kept returning to the same cold, unalterable fact: all their work had led nowhere. Elisse had nothing to do with the attacks that had taken place. The killer was still out there somewhere, under the very same moon that Myrren was looking at now. And there was nothing to tell him where, or even what kind of person he was searching for. It was as if he were dealing with a ghost or a shadow, a creature of mist and smoke.
Unless, of course, it had been Ayla all along.
Myrren tipped his head back against the wall, feeling the start of a headache behind his eyes. The Helm believed it. Even Serenna was beginning to believe it, though she’d done her best not to show it. Why look for another explanation when one so obvious was right there in front of him? What evidence did he have to set against it? Only the fact that Ayla’s creature-self didn’t match any of the witness descriptions, and his own heartfelt belief that his sister couldn’t be a murderer. And if somehow it turned out he had been mistaken about the form she took … why, then all he’d be left with was a feeling. He could just imagine the look on Travers’ face if he presented that argument.
‘Where do I go from here?’ he whispered to the moon. ‘Where do I go from here?’
And as if in answer, he felt the unmistakable shiver of a Change happening somewhere in the city. Not the formless nightmare of the unknown Changer, but a far more familiar sensation …
Ayla.
TWENTY-FIVE
Elisse was startled out of sleep by a sound. Lying still for a moment, she tried to work out what it had been, but it was all mixed up with the dream she’d been having. Something like a nail being hammered into a wall, perhaps, or the metallic clunk a spade made when it hit a rock beneath the surface of the soil …
She struggled into a sitting position, looking around for the source of the noise, and saw the heavy drapes stirring as though caught on a breeze from the open window. She’d never seen such large windows as they had in Darkhaven; it was the one thing she liked about the place. Maybe one of the drapes had knocked something off the table. Could that be what she’d heard?
As her eyes got used to the low level of light in the room, she made out a figure at the foot of the bed. She gasped, clapping a hand to her mouth to stifle the small sound, before realising it was Sorrow. The other woman turned her head, the moonlight glinting off her hair.
‘Sssh,’ she breathed. ‘There’s something out there.’
Elisse nodded obedience, her insides cramping with fear. She slid down from the bed, searching through the shadows for something to use as a weapon, but all she could see was the walking cane that the priestess had left propped in the corner by the door. She grabbed it anyway, feeling rather silly, and went to join Sorrow.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘Don’t know.’ Sorrow gave her a sharp glance, which softened into amusement when she saw the cane. She herself was holding her new pistol; Elisse could see the gleaming metal. ‘But maybe –’
Before she could finish her sentence, the moonlight flickered and was gone, hidden by a dark shape that loomed at the window. Then the thing was through and into the room in a scrabble of scales and claws, bringing with it a wave of heat and a choking metallic smell as though it had come from the heart of a foundry.
The Changer creature.
Its barbed tail moved round as swift as a whip, knocking Sorrow off balance. She fell hard, her head hitting one of the legs of the bed with an audible thud, the pistol dropping from her hand and skidding across the polished wooden floor. The creature paused a moment, watching to make sure she wasn’t going to get up. Then it turned and stalked towards Elisse, blending into the shadows so completely that parts of it disappeared with each step it took. Only its eyes were constant, shining in the darkness; they tracked her every movement with a kind of mad intelligence.
Fear shooting up her spine in a cold rush, Elisse backed away on legs that felt as though they didn’t belong to her. The hot scent of the creature filled her lungs, reminding her of the first time she had met Florentyn Nightshade. She should have run, back then. She should have escaped while she still had the chance.
‘Go away!’ she tried to shout, but her voice came out thin and cracked. ‘Leave me alone!’
In response, the creature’s neck arched. Fire bloomed
in the night, a flare of it like the jet from a welding torch, dazzlingly bright. Elisse dodged as fast as she could, but her pregnancy made her heavy and awkward on her feet; the blaze scorched her cheek, a sting so hot it was almost freezing. She swallowed down a cry of pain, blinking back tears, and realised she was still gripping Serenna’s cane in her sweat-slick hands. As the creature came closer she swung the stick with all her strength, but it shattered against the impenetrable scales and left her hands ringing with the impact. Then the creature reared up, lifting one clawed foot to rake at her, and agony ripped her arm from shoulder to elbow. She stumbled back and sat down with a bump, clutching the welling scratches with her other hand.
Get a grip, Elisse, she told herself. It’s no worse than grazing ya shins or catching ya finger in a piece o’ machinery. Jus’ find something ta fight back with. But the truth was, there was nothing left. The creature had driven her into a corner of the room; there was no way out. She stared up at it and knew, with cold certainty, that she was looking at her death. Her insides contracted in another twinge of pure terror.
Then Sorrow was there, scrambling across the bed, landing light-footed between Elisse and the creature. She didn’t waste time on talk. The pistol was in her hand, and as the creature reared ready to strike again she fired it. Elisse didn’t see where the bullet struck, but it must have hit somewhere; the creature erupted in a low, bubbling hiss, retreating swiftly across the room in the direction of the window.
‘Clipped it,’ Sorrow muttered. ‘Bloody pistol throws left. I was aiming for the throat.’
She advanced a few steps towards the creature, lifting the weapon as though she meant to fire it again, even though that wasn’t possible until she reloaded. And it seemed the creature recognised the pistol as the one thing that could harm it. As Sorrow approached, it scrambled back through the window and disappeared into the night.
Panting with mingled fright and relief, Elisse dragged herself back to her feet, using the bed as a climbing aid. She would have expected her fear to subside now the creature was gone, but instead it was growing stronger, gripping her entire body. Her muscles clenched harder and harder with every breath she took; waves of tension washed up and down her body, all originating somewhere in her middle. She clung to the bedpost, a whimper of pain escaping her lips.
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