“I’m sorry?”
“That man there paid for your meal,” she said, nodding behind us. “With compliments, he says.”
We turned. A man sat at a table in the darkest corner of the common room, his furred hood drawn up, battered boots on the table and a mug in his hand. When he saw us, he lowered his feet and pushed back his hood.
Alastair rose. My fingers closed around my dagger hilt.
Wydrick smiled and beckoned for us to join him.
I followed Alastair across like a sleepwalker caught in a familiar nightmare, wanting to run, to fight, and finding my limbs had betrayed me. Wydrick drew up two chairs and we sat, no doubt looking to the rest of the inn like nothing more than three friends meeting for a quiet drink after a long journey. If they’d known the truth, I imagined few would stay.
“You,” Alastair said at last.
“I see you have the same way with words you always did,” Wydrick said. He tipped back the last of his beer and wiped the foam from his upper lip. “Yes. Me.”
Alastair drew his knife and rested it on the table. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you now.”
“It’d make a terrible mess.”
“A good reason.”
“Because you already tried that.” Wydrick unlaced the collar of his tunic and pulled it open. “Or did you forget?”
A wound gaped just above his left breast. The edges were raw and flayed-looking, and I didn’t need to see his back to know there’d be an identical mark beneath his left shoulder blade. Where there should have been blood, tendrils of darkness roiled and writhed. The skin around the wound was the bruised yellow of a new corpse.
Alastair stared. “You were dead,” he whispered.
“Possibly. I don’t really remember much of those last few minutes,” Wydrick said.
“I ran you through.”
“Well, you missed.”
“Ghastradi,” Alastair hissed.
“Now that’s not very polite,” Wydrick said. “Didn’t your father teach you manners?”
Alastair’s fist tightened on the hilt of his knife, but I put a hand on his arm. “I thought ghasts didn’t ride corpses,” I said.
“I can’t speak for the entire brotherhood, mind, but in my experience, they don’t.”
“Did you find yours on the battlefield?”
He laughed. It was a long, slow chuckle, building with the force of a wave and cresting over us with the mirth of madness. “Oh, Miss Aliza, my friend had reason to keep me alive long before the War of the Worm.”
I gripped the edge of the table. That ghasts had been drawn out from the dark and evil corners of the world by the waking of the Worm I was prepared to accept. That Wydrick had been ghast-ridden before that, possibly even when we first met . . . “Was that why you tried to kill my sister? That thing inside you wanted, what? Practice?”
He looked shocked. “You believe I wanted to kill Leyda? Don’t think so badly of me, Aliza. I was doing the sniveling brat a great honor—”
The force of my slap stunned even me. Several patrons stopped talking and looked in our direction as Alastair pulled me back to my chair.
Wydrick stayed still for a moment, head turned aside, one hand on his cheek. “Be careful, my lady,” he said in a quiet voice. “You’d best not wake him right now. He won’t be so eager to answer your questions.”
“Then choose your words about my little sister more carefully.”
He lowered his hand. Yellow like sulfur boiled up through the green of his eyes, but he drew it back, his smirk laced with poison. “Noted.”
“What did your ghast want with Leyda?” Alastair asked.
“Him? Oh, Ghethel didn’t want anything to do with her. We tried, but even a strong ghast can’t hold an unwilling heart, and in my eagerness I’d, ah, made her very unwilling. Pity too. Given her family connections she could have been useful. But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”
Alastair’s throat worked up and down. “Lyii-Lyiishen,” he said at last.
“Who?”
“The mermaid,” I said. “Her name was Lyii-Lyiishen. You killed her. Why?”
“She was curious. I needed her heartstone.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. She’d never been on land before. Didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“And the troll?” Alastair asked. “The will-o’-the-wisp? The centaur? You wanted their heartstones too?”
“That centaur, now. She did put up a fight.” Wydrick pulled his tunic open even further to show another ill-closed wound in his side the size and shape of a crossbow bolt. Shadows moved inside the arrow hole, dripping darkness like blood. “I wish I could’ve stayed to see her end. Alas, other Idar calling, other heartstones to collect. Honestly, I’m surprised you only found the two. I’d arranged more than a dozen surprises on the road from Pendragon to Lake Meera, though strictly speaking, they weren’t really for you.”
Alastair was shaking in earnest now. The vein in his temple began to throb. “Why did you kill them?”
Wydrick smiled. “You still have no idea, do you? Suffice to say I offered them a choice; or rather, my master offered them a choice.” He spread his hands. “They chose wrong.”
“Why Idar?” I asked.
“Why do you think, Miss Aliza? They are the Indifferent. They’ve always needed to choose a side. All things will, even the Eldest.” He eyed the empty scabbard at Alastair’s hip. “I suppose I have you to thank for frightening away the Hag-of-the-Mists.”
“That creature was responsible for the death of a child,” Alastair said, straining to keep his voice even. “It nearly drove Lord Selwyn mad—”
“Yes, and he’d kept a selkie-wife for the better part of a decade. Don’t pretend he didn’t deserve it.”
“He—”
“How did you know about the Selwyns?” I interrupted. “How did you know what she was?”
A glimmer of yellow shot through the green of his eyes and a new voice spoke, one that turned the air in my lungs to ice. “We know a great many things of the Oldkind, Miss Aliza. We know of creatures older than them, creatures stronger and more ancient than you can imagine. Why else do you think our master sent us to this wasteland but to summon allies for the coming war?” The yellow faded but didn’t disappear entirely. “Though it wasn’t as easy as he promised,” Wydrick said in his human voice. “It took the refusal of many Idar to draw her from the Wastes.”
The pieces at last fell into place. “You brought the Green Lady here with the promise of vengeance—for what you’d done?”
“Oh, I’m sure she would have liked that, Miss Aliza, but even for ten thousand slain Idar she would not dare dispense her wrath on us. No, she knows whom we serve too well for that. But we were not ungenerous. She came south to avenge a great wrong; well, we gave her what she wanted, though not perhaps what she expected. She needed vengeance for the Idar. We gave her Selwyn.”
“And now she and Selwyn are gone,” Alastair said, “and it’s time for this to end.” He rose, gripping the edge of the table. “Their heartstones. Why did you take them?”
“What, isn’t that what Riders do? Hunt down the dangerous creatures of the world? Lay them open and take their heartstones as trophies?”
“Don’t you dare call yourself a Rider.” Alastair’s voice rose. “Riders don’t kill innocent creatures. Riders don’t kill children!”
“I’m as much a Rider as you’ll ever be,” Wydrick said, and his eyes flashed yellow again. “Your family may have denied me my dragon, but no human in centuries has done what I’ve done. I’ve tamed the things that haunt your nightmares. You have your tempest-bringer, yes; I ride the sire of all valkyries. And we’ve been watching you, Fireborn. For a long time now, we’ve been watching. Listening. From air above and from earth below. We’ve heard your plans. We’ve seen your weakness. You, who’ve known hate, who’ve tasted the lifeblood of one of the Great Tekari, who bear so proudly the heartstone of the Daireds. Surely you didn’t think there wouldn�
�t be consequences?”
Alastair and I were both on our feet now, but Wydrick didn’t move. His eyes were full yellow and smoldering with vicious delight.
“There is a war coming, a war of which the Battle of North Fields was only a foretaste. As the brotherghast in Hatch Ford told you—yes, I know of his ill-conceived attempt to sway you, Miss Aliza—you must also make your choice: stand aside and live. Fight us and die.”
“You know our answer, monster,” Alastair said through clenched teeth.
Wydrick’s voice gave way to a strangled whine as the ghast inside him spoke again. “Soon! Soon you will see. The summons comes for the House of Edan Daired and old things will be called into account. The ledger will be brought forth. Debts must be paid!” He leaned forward, his nails raking furrows in the table as if trying to claw his way toward us. “The days of your house are numbered, Alastair. You will all fall before the end. Everyone you ever loved: your sister, your wife, your whole family. When the moment comes, you won’t be able to protect them.” He smiled suddenly and looked at me, speaking once more in his own voice. “Just like you were not able to protect your child.”
Then he changed. Shadows seethed in shapeless mass behind his back, wrapping red and yellow and green in a cloak of living nightmare. The darkness deepened. I squeezed my eyes shut, and in that space between frantic heartbeats, quiet as the breath before a scream, I heard their voices together, slithering like windblown snow over the bones of the dead.
“When this war is over and all Arle kneels before our master, then you’ll know I’ve won.”
I opened my eyes. Wydrick and the ghast were gone. Alastair stood over his fallen chair, breathing hard, his knife in his hand. The common room was still and silent. One by one, all heads turned from the door. All eyes fixed on us.
“Did you hear it?” I asked Alastair.
“Yes.”
“Er, begging your pardons, milord and lady,” one of the quartermark players said, “but what in Thell’s name was that?”
Alastair sheathed his dagger. I picked up the fallen chair. Shutters banged against the front of the inn and the wind howled in the chimney, making the fire sputter. Somewhere in the distance I heard a shriek overlaying the sounds of the storm, ancient and hate filled and familiar. A valkyrie’s cry. And now, more than a cry. It was a challenge.
Alastair reached for my hand. I laced my fingers with his.
“Our next contract,” I said.
Acknowledgments
Thanks first belongs to God, who gives life and breath and makes all things possible.
Despite being unforgivably belated, I’d like to acknowledge Jane Austen and the masterpiece that is Pride and Prejudice, which inspired the original story of Heartstone. Ms. Austen, thank you. I am in your debt.
Thanks also to Thao Le, my wonderful agent; Priyanka Krishnan, editor extraordinaire; and the entire Voyager team who helped shape this story into everything it could be.
To Kelsey, Stephanie, Bailey, Colleen, Arleen, Leanna, Amanda, and the rest of my beta readers: you guys are incredible. Thank you for your honesty, your thoughtfulness, and for staying up late to read every draft I threw at you. I owe you all the coffees.
To the Nuhfers: thank you doesn’t begin to cover it. Without your encouragement this story would not exist.
And lastly, to the Plaza Restaurant, for graciously putting up with the odd girl in the corner booth hammering away at her laptop until closing time, and for always having plenty of tea.
About the Author
ELLE KATHARINE WHITE grew up in Buffalo, New York, where she learned valuable life skills like how to clear a snowy driveway in under twenty minutes and how to cheer for the perennial underdog. She now lives in Pennsylvania, where she drinks entirely too much tea and dreams of traveling the world.
www.ellekatharinewhite.com
Twitter: @elle_k_writes
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Praise for Heartstone
“If you’re into Austen retellings, or if you like talking dragons with your regency romance, or if you’re just looking for an upbeat, lighthearted change to your fantasy routine, Heartstone is for you.”
—The Book Smugglers
“Wow, where do I even start? I must address the stunning world-building that lies within these pages. This is White’s debut novel, but her imaginative and addictive world feels as if it was written by a seasoned writer. Elle Katharine White is an author to watch.”
—The Speculative Herald
“Somehow though, Elle Katharine White has managed to blend the classic elements of Pride and Prejudice—the characters, the social commentary and financial issues, and the conflict between Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy—with wonderful, monster-filled fantasy. It has all the lovely romance with a hint of heartbreak from the original, but combines it with fantasy in a way that feels utterly unique.”
—All About Romance
“Honestly, pick up and read Heartstone. Even if you don’t much like Pride and Prejudice, this fantasy retelling is accessible, does a very nice job creating a fantasy world, and has a fine analogue Elizabeth Bennet in the form of Aliza Bentaine.”
—Culturess
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that adding dragons to Pride and Prejudice is the best idea I’ve heard in a while.”
—B&N Sci Fi and Fantasy Blog
By Elle Katharine White
Heartstone
Dragonshadow
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
dragonshadow. Copyright © 2018 by Laura Katharine White. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Harper Voyager and design are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers LLC.
first edition
Title page art © Mathee saengkaew
Cover design by Lex Maudlin
Cover illustration by Larry Rostant
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition NOVEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-274797-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-274796-9
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