by Bec McMaster
“That’s your decision. I don’t need to know how many.”
“No?”
“No.” Goddess-have-mercy, but suddenly I’m right back there in his arms, trying not to feel the flex and pull of muscle as he holds me. Pouring myself a wine, I try to take my attention off him, but all I succeed in doing is nearly drowning on my first gulp.
Keir watches me with those hypnotic eyes as he stalks toward me. “All these princesses that fling themselves at my feet…. I’m almost starting to wonder if you’re jealous?”
“What?” I choke on my next mouthful.
“That is the plan, is it not? When they wilt at my feet, I’m supposed to be entranced.”
“Yes.” The way he looks, serving him up as a distraction is the best idea I’ve ever had. Nobody will be looking at me. Nobody. The males will see a challenge, the females will want to conquer him…. There is nothing about this situation that could be bad.
Except….
I drain the goblet. More wine. I definitely need more wine.
“The very idea I would be jealous is ridiculous,” I tell him as I go in search of another flagon. “Besides, that’s not our biggest problem.”
“No?”
“Ismena looked horrified to see me,” I point out. “Not merely shocked, but horrified. She knows something about me.”
“The last time she saw you,” he points out dryly, “Calliope was trying to kill her. Even Ismena suffers from nightmares of that time.”
I arch a brow at him. “Does she? Has someone been peeking into his potential bride’s heads?”
He crosses both arms over his chest. “I owe those women a debt. Calliope came to my halls to murder me. She killed several of those women out of frustration and left the others with the sort of nightmares that will haunt them forever. I chased the nightmares away, nothing more. I can give them that, at least.”
My eyes narrow. It sounds entirely too altruistic.
I don’t like any of this.
An emissary from the Court of Storms would have been bad enough, but my former nemesis?
“What did you learn tonight?” he asks.
“Malechus knew Soraya to look at. He took one look at my face and I would swear he recognized me.”
My glamor’s good, but the more changes you make, the more magic you need to wield. It’s easier to make subtle shifts here and there and to restrict them to elements that don’t move very often. My mouth remains untouched along with my brows. My cheeks are a little softer, my eyes not quite as blue, and my hairline lacks its distinctive peak.
All in all, you wouldn’t pick my face out of a crowd of beautiful women. I’ve designed this face to be pretty but unmemorable.
And Soraya taught me the art of glamor.
“You’re sure he’s never seen you before?”
“Never.” And Angmar’s reward poster won’t be circulated this widely.
Has Ismena seen it? Has she put two and two together?
I feel like I need to get a good look at this reward poster. When I stole the trident from her brother, I lured him back to his bedroom with a smile and a wink, drugged him the second we got to his rooms, and then left him snoring on the floor, naked. It’s not my fault he was so quick to shed his clothes that half the royal guard saw his flaccid cock.
Since I was playing at the seduction game, I would have emphasized my features with glamor. Soft mouth. Long lashes. Curves that would have made a man trip over his tongue. I’m fairly certain I’d been wearing a long, blonde wig, with golden curls the color of wheat, and a pink gown that was cut to reveal slashes of skin in strategic places.
I doubt anyone looking at the poster would see the resemblance to me, but the concern has to be noted. And Ismena is the one fae who might be able to knock a candle into all of my plans and set them on fire.
“Tell me about your sister,” Keir says.
I curl my fingers around the wine and kick off my shoes with a small groan. Bliss. Scrunching and flexing my toes, I fist handfuls of the skirt that has suddenly tumbled around my feet, and venture to the fireplace. “Why?”
“Why not?” He sinks into his chair, one boot hooked up on his opposite knee. For some reason, he’s looking at my toes. “She did try to kill me, after all.”
“Was this before or after she kissed you?”
Keir’s eyes narrow. “You know I thought she was you.” He pauses, those dragon eyes turning to full smolder. “And I’m fairly certain your interest in me was a ruse.”
Fairly certain? As in, he’s not entirely certain?
“Why was she sent here? To this court?” he demands.
There’s something in his voice that stirs the magic within me. I want to answer him. It’s an urge that bubbles up my throat, where I trap it behind my teeth. He may own my services for a year and a day, but he has no claim on my secrets.
“I don’t know. The wraith king said Malechus had something that belonged to him,” I say instead.
Technically… true. My father does believe the horn is his for the taking.
And Soraya’s been here for nearly three weeks, ingratiating herself within the court as per protocol. The wedding was announced far and wide, and two days later she was working her way inside the court.
“If you want to steal something, you send a thief.” Keir stretches his arm along the back of the chair, but he doesn’t force the magic. “Your sister is not a thief. You are. So why did he send her and not you?”
The thought occurred to me too.
“Maybe because he was too busy drowning me for my failure in cutting your heart from your chest” dies on the tip of my tongue.
I don’t share such secrets.
But it also doesn’t feel like the truth.
“Cauldron’s piss,” I whisper. He lied to me. My father looked me in the eye and lied. “Soraya wasn’t sent here to retrieve something. She was sent here to kill someone.”
“But who? You must be able to guess,” he says. “From all my information, it seems she infiltrated the lady Anissa’s household as her maid. Was the Lady Anissa her target? Was she trying to fool her the way you fooled me?”
“It won’t be Anissa. And,” I point out, “I tried to avoid you. I tried to give you every reason to pursue some other princess.” Even though avoiding him earned me nothing more than his interest. “I was there for a job. I didn’t want to mislead you—if you’d just accepted my rebuff, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
It’s not the whole truth.
My heart is not mine to give. Without my soul, I’m my father’s puppet. I don’t even have the autonomy to allow myself to care.
And yet, I couldn’t stop myself from wanting him.
I couldn’t avoid the guilt that came with each lie I told him.
For the first time in my life, I yearned to be free to make my own choices. I’ve never been so envious of a fae princess in my life. The other potential brides might have been fools, but there was nothing standing in their way should Keir have looked at any of them.
Except, he was looking at me.
And I didn’t dare return the favor.
Something in Keir’s expression hardens. “You play an excellent part. Tell me…, does lying come so easily to you?”
“Yes. It does.” Learning to lie is the only thing that kept my head on my shoulders during my trials. And I can’t stop my eyebrows from rising. “You had twenty princesses kissing your boots. You were hardly lacking for female worshippers. Don’t tell me you bear a grudge because I didn’t wilt at your feet.”
“No grudge.” His voice roughens. “I just don’t like being lied to. Particularly when it comes to matters of the heart.”
“Oh, please. The only reason you decided I was the one you wanted to pursue is because I wasn’t kissing your boots. You had no personal interest in me.”
Keir’s finger circles the rim of his glass, and if he had a tail it would be lashing behind him. “Do you know the worst part of this entire deba
cle?”
“What?”
Our eyes meet.
“I would have married you,” he says coldly. “I would have taken you as my wife and I could have loved you. Forever. So thank you for revealing your true intentions before it was too late. Because it would have been the biggest mistake of my life.”
He drains his wine and pushes to his feet, turning to stir the hot coals in the fireplace with the poker.
“Take the room on the left, Zemira.” He strides toward the door. “I’m going to return to the ball.”
“The ball—?”
“You want me to be a distraction? Then I will be a distraction.” His smile as he reaches for the door handle is vicious. “After all, we’re both fae, are we not? Marriage is merely an alliance. Nothing more. Nobody will care whose bed I’m in. Yours… or someone else’s. I will be the best distraction you could have asked for.”
The door slams behind him, leaving me staring after him helplessly.
Someone else’s….
“Right,” I mutter under my breath, sitting on the edge of the mattress and then letting myself crash onto my back. “This is just a job. Find Soraya. Find the horn. Fuck them all.”
It’s so much easier now he knows the truth.
Now I don’t have to pretend.
It hurts the same though.
6
Keir would have married me.
I don’t know what to make of those words.
They torment my dreams, and when I wake in the morning, I find myself no better rested. I’ve spent hours being chased through the Court of Dreams by a rabid wolf, and every time I think I’ve escaped pursuit, I burst into a room and there it is again.
Waiting to devour me.
The sooner I find my sister and the horn, the better.
The first candidate on my list of suspects to question is Lady Anissa. Soraya pretended to be her lady’s maid. I don’t know what sort of deal she struck with the fae lady, but I do know Soraya prefers blackmail.
“Trust is a knife waiting for your back. I’d rather have a noose around their throats,” she once purred.
And yet Lady Anissa is clearly not Soraya’s target.
For one thing, she’s still alive.
For another, you don’t ingratiate yourself in the household when you’re planning to kill someone. You’d be the first suspect. No, you plant yourself in a household that will give you access to your target’s household.
So someone Anissa knows.
Soraya’s rooms are locked. I try the handle early the next morning before continuing on as though I’ve merely lost my way to the breakfast room. Also unusual, for she’s been replaced with a brownie that Lady Anissa spends half her days harassing, and it would be expected that the brownie would be given the rooms Soraya used.
But she hasn’t.
Which means I need to get inside to see what they’re hiding.
Maybe Anissa wasn’t Soraya’s target, but that doesn’t mean that the constantly vexed brunette didn’t ensure Soraya went missing.
I eye my target over teacakes and scones.
Anissa is a minor scion of the Court of Dawn; a random cousin of the king there. Her gown bares her shoulders—which appears to be the latest of fashions—but it’s made from silk that looks like last year’s pattern. Cut down perhaps, in order to appear new, which tells me she doesn’t have as much wealth as she pretends, and yet, she’s desperate to mingle with the elite and pretend to be one of them. Gossip tells me she’s ventured to the Court of Blood several times this year, ostensibly on trade business. There’s some suspicion she’s got her eye on Malechus and may even be in his bed already, but when the prince himself appears, she doesn’t even glance toward him.
Considering she was seated at the far end of the hall last night, I have to imagine Belladonna—who would have laid out the dining arrangements—has little liking for her.
Few have surfaced after last night, and so I spend the afternoon adding names and faces to my repertoire.
There’s no sign of the Lord of Mistmark, who is someone else I want to acquaint myself with most desperately. Nor is the blushing bride here.
And Keir is currently making several women laugh. Maybe he said something outrageously funny, but I doubt it. The ruse is working. He’s barely looked at me. I am out of favor, left on the sidelines to my own devices. One of the women cuts me a sidelong glance as she daringly strokes his sleeve.
He didn’t return last night.
I know, because I spent half the night tossing and turning, before I finally slammed the pillow over my head and fell asleep.
I make my excuses and leave the tea party.
Before I punch her pretty white teeth through the back of her head.
Find what happened to Soraya, and you find the horn.
I haul my mask over my face as I climb through the window in my room, and then look toward the bridal suite in the eastern tower that the Lord of Mistmark has been given. The mask is glamored to make me invisible in the night, even when I’m not Sifting.
I barely saw the Lord of Mistmark today. Just a distant figure dressed in strict black as he swung a pretty blonde in a red gown around the dance floor tonight. There were too many nobles between us—every fae in the kingdom trying to gain his favor, for he’s the toast of the court this week.
Perhaps it’s a good thing.
I’m a little too curious about him.
What sort of man conjures mercy in my merciless sister’s heart? What kind of lord could even capture her attention, let alone any tender feelings?
I need to find out.
Night is the time I come alive. There is nothing more than shadows here, and they’re my home. I Sift toward the Lady Anissa’s rooms, flickering into being on one rooftop and then the next, until I’m sitting on her window ledge. There’s no one inside her rooms. I can tell when a room is empty, and so I dart along the ledge, leaping from window to window with effortless grace until I fetch up alongside the window that leads to the rooms Soraya was using.
I pick the lock and ease the window open. A second later, I’m inside.
Maybe it’s being in the Court of Blood, but I feel uneasy as I enter. A shiver runs over my skin, lifting all the tiny hairs on my body. Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to my instincts and they’re all telling me to run, but a swift visual inspection reveals no sign of a trap.
And I have the shadows if I need them.
Servants’ chambers are small and tidy, in general, but the sheets on the bed are rumpled. A trunk rests at the foot of the bed, clothes hastily strewn inside it and the lid slammed shut, with half a gown sticking out.
My sister is organized. Tidy. Not like me. Every morning she folds her clothes and makes her bed, until you’d barely know she’s even been in the room.
Something happened to prevent that.
I examine the trunk again.
Did someone search it?
I squat down to examine the lock, and that’s when I see a splash of something dark on the floor.
Blood.
It’s long dried, and as I lean down, I can see where someone’s mopped up more of it. The patch of floor in this corner is suspiciously clean, whereas hints of grime beckon along the rail that dissects the floor from the wall. They missed this one fleck.
Maybe it’s a whisper of sound or a glint of light beneath the door, but my senses suddenly scream at me.
I punch into shadows, hovering on the edge of form just as the door explodes open. There’s a knife in each hand.
Two shadowy figures sweep inside, garbed in cloaks. Women, I think.
One of them gestures with a hand—definitely a woman from those elegant fingers—and bloodied orbs of glowing light follow her around the room.
It’s the pretty blonde from the ballroom. The one who floated in the Lord of Mistmark’s arms.
Belladonna of the Blood Court.
The Blood Lily, they call her.
She lowers her scarlet
hood, and I finally get a good look at her face. It’s like seeing her sister, Narcissa, in the flesh again. There’s an insolent curl to her painted red lips, and her blonde hair tumbles in elegant curls around her face.
“What is it?” whispers the ethereal brunette who follows on her heels. Lady Anissa.
Ah, so they’re friends or allies, or… working together either way.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Belladonna whispers. “Don’t you know who I am? I can burn the blood in your veins, little thief. And I know you’re here.”
I press my spine to the bed and stay still, barely feeling my heart beat.
Belladonna sweeps closer, her angry red orb floating over her shoulder hungrily. “That tugging feeling you can sense on your skin? It’s a ward layered over the window. You tripped it the second you entered.”
Curse it. I knew something was wrong.
And I let my desperation to find my sister distract me.
“Do you think it’s the kidnapper?” Anissa whispers.
Belladonna cuts a sharp hand in her direction, which is interesting.
Kidnapper?
Damn it, Soraya. Where are you? What happened to you?
“I think,” Belladonna whispers, her gaze cutting right through me before it searches on, “that someone has returned to finish the job.” She steps closer to me. “What are you searching for, little thief? Didn’t you find it the other night?”
I glance toward the open window. It’s a temptation and a lie, because she’ll be expecting me to go for it. And Anissa stands between me and the door.
Anissa starts tugging the sheets out from under the mattress, lifting the corners of the bed. “The letters have to be here somewhere.”
I just need her to move a fraction to the left—
There it is.
I Sift toward the door. The only problem with my magic is that it’s restricted to line of sight, and so, if I wish to escape the room, I need to be able to open the door to see past it.
“There!” Belladonna cries, and something—a slash of magic—cuts into my back. “There’s blood! Near the door!”
