by Bec McMaster
I throw the pouch at him and he bats it aside, the spill of crushed bone and grave dust painting across his chest.
“You missed,” he says with a dangerous smile, before he vanishes.
“Did I?” I mutter, feeling him pop into being behind me. Dropping into a crouch, I spin and slice my second knife across his thigh—the one dipped in poison.
He sucks in a startled breath, but he’s a professional. He Sifts out of reach in order to regather himself, instead of coming at me again.
I straighten, pretending to wince. “That cut looks nasty. You’d better clean it before it gets infected. Or… before the monksflower on the blade starts to work its way through your leg.” This time, it’s my turn to smile. “I’d estimate that you have a good half minute before your leg feels like it’s on fire.”
He growls under his breath and plucks at his shirt, where my mixture of bone and grave dust paints the fabric. “You can track me.”
“Oh, please.” I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes. “My sister is a Shadow Walker. Did you think I wouldn’t have somehow accounted for someone of her skills?”
“Sister, huh?” Falion’s eyes narrow. “Ah, I thought the sweet Lady Merisel looked familiar. Well, if I’ve only got another twenty seconds, then I guess I’d best make them count, eh?”
He vanishes again.
My wards tug at me a second before he reappears to the right of me.
My knife cuts through the air, but he’s ready this time. Slamming a hand to my elbow, he blocks the blow, and then he’s angling his own knife straight toward my chest. I twist and block, but the tip slashes through my shirt.
I can’t move my fucking arm. The block he has on me is excellent, and he’s stronger than me, with a greater reach.
It’s a good thing I’m ambidextrous.
I drop the knife and catch it with my left hand, slicing a fine line of blood across his chest as he leaps back. Free again. But not for long. Our blades duel even as our bodies slam against each other. I throw everything I have at him, and he counters almost elegantly. My fist meets his cupped palm. His blade retorts with a stinging swipe across my cheek, even as I drive my heel into his instep.
It’s a blur of violence, carefully choreographed by long-gone masters who taught us our trade.
And I can’t find a fucking weakness.
We break apart for a second, both aware we’ve met our match as we circle each other like panthers. It’s been a long time since I’ve come across a foe who can keep me on my toes.
I’d almost be enjoying myself if I didn’t need to get out of here in a hurry.
I glance toward the bier, and Mistmark is stirring.
Dragon’s scurvy.
I cannot let him catch me here.
“Thought you were going to show me the error of my ways?” I taunt, lunging forward. “Looks like you’re just an average assassin when your feet are grounded in reality.”
“Do you want to know the best thing about your sister?” Falion muses as he flips me over his back and nearly puts a heel through my kneecap when I land.
“What?”
Falion holds out his palm toward me, before making a twisting move with his finger. “She’s a baby compared to me. She barely even knows what she’s doing. Sifting? That’s one of the first things we learn. But when you can make the shadows themselves walk….”
Something snatches my shirt, and I’m hauled back into the gloom along the wall. Ethereal arms wrap around me, and as I grab at them, my hands go right through them.
Shadows.
He’s somehow entrapped me with shadows.
One of them hauls my wrist back, slamming my knife against the wall.
I glare at him as he stalks toward me, smirking that smirky smirk.
“Oh, you want to play dirty?” It’s never bothered me to pull my punches, but I always like to hold back until the last moment—once you show all your tricks, you’ve got nothing up your sleeve for later. But now seems to be a good moment…. “Let me show you what I can do.”
I lock onto the suit of armor in the far corner and Summon it toward me. It’s a trick I learned when I was a little girl. But instead of conjuring it into my hand, I simply yank it through the air.
Falion Sifts a second before it hits him, but he’s moving a little slower now.
The shadows dissipate, and I’m free, driving toward the ring of torches that guard the bier. Mistmark stirs, as if he can almost hear us clashing, but the only safety to be found when you’re fighting a Shadow Walker is in the light.
Shadows ripple around the ring of light, some of them forming faces.
I dance on my toes, trying to keep them all in sight, but it’s the silvery-haired assassin stalking through them that earns my full attention.
I arch my eyebrow and point mockingly at the ring of light.
Falion merely smiles.
And then the torch to my right hisses out.
I spin, just in time to see a shadowy figure pinching the wick.
My protective circle becomes a little smaller.
Cauldron’s piss.
“When we Shadow Walkers openly walked this realm, every court in the land learned to fear us.” Falion takes a step closer and a second torch sizzles out. “They used to light torches along their walls to guard them from the night, but the greatest of our kind learned not to fear the light.”
A third torch hisses, and then there’s only one last torch remaining. I back around it, knife in hand and heart in my throat.
If he plunges us into darkness, then he’ll have the upper hand—
Or… will he?
My heart skips a beat. Shadows need light to exist.
And I’m a wraith.
I was born in darkness. I hate it, but to let yourself bear such a weakness is like offering your throat to an enemy, so I trained for years with a blindfold. It paid off. When Zemira and I were sent into our final testing, they dropped us in the mines of Wraithenghul for the first leg of the three-part challenge, and only those who managed to escape that darkened tomb were offered a chance at claiming our place among the ranks of the wraithen court.
Falion’s smile is a knife edge as he puts one foot on the step that leads to the bier.
But he doesn’t extinguish the last torch.
No, he’s counting on my fear to force me to make a preemptive strike—one he’s ready for.
This time, it’s my turn to smile back. “When your kind walked the world,” I whisper, “my kind learned not to fear the darkness.”
And then I Summon the last torch into my hand, close my eyes in preparation, and extinguish the flame with a single breath.
We’re plunged into utter darkness.
I hear his sharp inhale before I throw the torch behind him and move.
I had a moment to prepare for this. I don’t know if his head turns to track the sudden clatter the torch makes as it lands, but I’m crouching low, moving like liquid night in the sudden darkness.
I don’t have to move far. I just have to wait.
I slow my breath, my heartbeat. I let my body sink into stillness as I listen.
He’s good. He’s frozen in place too, waiting for me to make my move. I don’t know if he can Sift in this moment. Zemira needs some hint of a shadow to do it, but Falion’s already proven he’s well beyond her capabilities.
Mistmark stirs again, his breath loud in the silence of the tomb.
And I get an idea.
I reach out for his boot, trying to imagine it. I need to lock on to it first, before I can Summon it, and it’s ridiculously hard to do when I can’t see it.
But then I sense it quiver, and it tugs free of his foot, rattling across the floor toward me. Noisy enough to draw his attention.
Falion makes his move. But it’s not the one I imagined.
Instead, his skin suddenly lights up, illuminated from within just as I lunge toward him.
“Clever,” he mocks as the boot thumps into his back.
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Because he’s already turning to counter my strike, the light from his skin searing my vision.
It’s over in an instant.
I can’t see him—he seems a blur of light—and I miscalculate the blow. Then there’s a hand locking around my wrist, spinning me off balance as a strong arm curls around my throat from behind and draws me back into a fatal embrace.
“But not clever enough,” he whispers as his knife rises to strike—
“Don’t. Kill. Her.”
Both of us freeze as Mistmark sits up on the bier, sucking in a sharp gasp of breath.
Falion has me against his chest, his arm around my throat and the tip of his knife resting against my carotid. A tremor runs through him. He wants to finish this. He wants to end me. But to do so means going against what his lord and master has commanded.
The breath bursts out of me, and I see stars.
He’s gripping me so tight, but it’s relief that nearly sends me to my knees.
Two minutes ago, I never wanted to see Mistmark again. Right now, he’s my hope and salvation in one.
I nearly died.
Mistmark snaps his fingers, and suddenly all the torches burst alight. He sags back on one hand as if the poison still has its hold on him, and his lips are shockingly blue. “Don’t kill her.”
Falion releases a breath. “She’s going to ruin you. Let me end this foolishness before she makes a mockery of you again—”
“If you kill her,” Mistmark says, “then you’ll kill me.”
“What?” The word bursts out of me. Suddenly, the knife at my throat is the least of my worries.
“What?” Falion sounds just as surprised.
Mistmark slowly pushes to his feet, his gaze sliding over me. The flickering light from the torch gilds his olive skin, but it’s the look in his eyes that incinerates me. “I should have known who you were the second you walked down that aisle. Nobody else has that particular swagger.”
“I’m touched that you would remember it.” Somehow the words sound cockier than I feel. My heart’s still skipping beats, strangely out of rhythm. “Now let’s go back to that interesting little statement. If you die, I die? What in the cauldron’s name do you mean by that?”
And Mistmark smiles at me, holding up his wrist where the bloodred ribbon is still tied in a neat little bow. “It’s a little something I insisted be added to the vows. Let’s just say that I didn’t trust Belladonna.”
“But I’m not your bride,” I blurt.
“You pledged your troth to the goddess, as did I.” There’s a dangerous, predatory look in his eyes. “You bound yourself by the sun and the moon and the stars. It doesn’t matter if you weren’t who you said you were. Your blood still lingered with mine. You gave your word. The goddess heard it all. Did you not think about what would happen if you mixed your blood with mine and gave me your oath?”
Right now, my blood is draining out of all my extremities. No. No. I did not. “That scheming little bitch.” I know exactly who has to pay for this. Who trapped me. She knew. Zemira knew.
Maybe you’ll thank me some day….
I am going to wring her bloody neck.
“Like it or not, Soraya, you are now my wife. It doesn’t matter what name you used, or what face you wore. Your blood. Your pledge. Your oath. And now you’re mine.” Mistmark’s smile holds a thousand dangerous edges. “But the funniest thing about this entire situation is that you can’t kill me. You don’t dare let me die. ’Til we meet the endless night, my love… you are bound to me, body and soul.” His gaze lifts to a point over my shoulder. “Now let her go.”
“Fuck,” Falion grates out as he shoves me forward.
I don’t think we’ve ever agreed on anything before. “Fuck.”
But then his face tightens. “Hang on a minute…. If you’re here… then where in the blighted lands is your sister?”
Ooops.
23
Zemira
There’s one thing the best thieves have in common: Patience.
Pulling off a heist like this requires exquisite planning.
You have to get the lay of the land.
And you need to locate the thing you’re trying to steal.
You need information about what you’re going to encounter. Guards. Opposition. Vaults and magical deterrents. The wards you’re likely to breach…. Everything.
Then the magic happens: You create a distraction, something that’s going to pull everyone’s attention like an explosion. Something like… a wedding where the groom seemingly dies. Throw in a fake bride. An assassination of the prince of the court. Mix it with hundreds of wedding guests all trying to play their own power games, and you have one potent moment in time where nobody’s going to be thinking about the horn.
But the secret ingredient that binds everything together?
Timing.
You have to know when to make the grab.
I Sift along the hallway, alighting in each shadow only long enough to get my bearings before I vanish again. I can’t afford to have anyone see me, but what I really needed was to take Falion out of the equation.
Good thing I have his secret weakness up my sleeve.
He’s been itching to get the upper hand on my sister ever since the summer she tried to kill Mistmark, Soraya said.
She’s going to kill me when she discovers the truth about those wedding vows. But I’m starting to learn my lessons. I can’t trust anybody. Not truly. She’ll betray me the second she gets a chance, and so this time, I took the leap first.
Now how are you going to work your way around Keir?
Later, conscience. We’ll have this discussion later.
The whiny little bitch sighs, but she gives up. Maybe she knows this is not the right moment to be trying to get me to be a better woman.
Two seconds later, I’m standing at the entrance to the maze.
The questing beast lurks in there somewhere. I just know it.
There’s a reason the fae have been vanishing. It’s got nothing to do with the antics of the Court of Blood, and everything to do with an enormous chimera of nightmarish form who might not be getting fed as frequently as she’d like.
I think about everything I know about Mistmark and Falion.
The first time I saw them conspiring, they were in the checkerboard garden. And according to Mistmark’s letter, the horn is “right where the queen should be.”
Checkerboard.
Or chess board?
I Sift through the maze, bouncing between each dapple of shadow until I reach the magnificent checkerboard of lawn. Nothing moves but the whisper of wind through the trees, but I can smell something gamey.
Perfect. The beast must be close by.
Wrapping the shadows around me, I creep along the wall of the hedge as I scan the area.
There’s something hidden there in the shadows of the enormous bloodstar tree. I don’t think I’d have even noticed it myself if there wasn’t something about the way the shadows twist that catches my eye as wrong. And I certainly wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t looking for it.
Taking a slow breath, I ease toward it, hoping the beast can’t scent me.
It’s a casket woven of shadows themselves. They’re bound together so tightly I can barely see through them, and if not for my gifts, the golden chest beneath them would be almost invisible.
The Horn of Shadows.
Falion.
It’s incredible work, somewhat like that cloak of his. I’ve never even thought it was possible.
But how to pierce the shadows?
I can hear the questing beast’s breath writhing through its lungs like the sound of three dozen distant hounds wheezing. The echoing timbre of that sound makes it difficult to pinpoint, but I know it’s here somewhere. Each breath is slow and steady.
Asleep.
Sifting closer, I try and shield myself in the shadows.
Nothing moves.
But every instinct is on alert as I k
neel before the casket.
I tentatively touch the casket before me. It’s chill and cool and somehow impenetrable. And yet, it stirs beneath my touch, like a cat arching into a pat.
Somehow, the shadows meld around my fingers. It’s not unlike the way I can slip through them, but this time, I’m using them to coat my skin. Allowing them to part around me like a glove.
Is this how he does it?
I coax them to part, feeling the cool slip and slide of them. The chest appears, gold lock dulled by years of wear. It’s a simple thing to pick for a master thief.
I glance around as I slowly open the chest. The hinges squeal, and I freeze.
Only the wind stirs through the trees of bloodstar, but there’s a different timbre to that wheeze now. If the beast was asleep, then it’s only dozing now.
I ease the chest open, and my breath catches as I find the horn, nestled in a bed of red velvet.
The Horn of Shadows is cast of ancient brass, and you can almost see the marks where someone has lovingly polished it in the past.
I stroke the smooth curve of the horn. It was created by the same dwarf who crafted the cauldron. They say a single blow of the horn will bring the ghostly hunt to life, the hounds who guard the cauldron riding at the bidding of the horn blower.
But the horn can only be blown by one.
Your life will be tied to it forever—or at least, until death.
“Well,” says a voice behind me. “It’s all starting to make sense now. You’ve grown a little more ruthless, dearest sister. You lied right to my face. We were supposed to retrieve the horn together, but imagine my surprise when I came across that brainless little apparition that’s perched on Keir’s lap, eating sweetmeats.”
Leaves rustle as if something enormous is moving behind them. I slash a hand through the air in desperation as Soraya stalks into the clearing, trying to urge her to shut up.
It’s too late.
I finally realize where the bloody beast is.
It’s not hiding behind the bloodstar trees.
It’s been there all along, right in plain sight, the scales on its body rippling into a patterned background that matches the maze as it moves. Dapples of its hide appear. It has the body of a leopard, the head and neck of a serpent, and the legs and feet of a hart—though I didn’t know it could camouflage itself like that.
