by Bec McMaster
“Tried what?” he snaps. “Tried to tell me the truth? Was that before or after you kissed me? Before or after you fucked me?” He breathes out an incredulous laugh. “Did you even want me, or were you just trying to lure me where you wanted me?”
“You make me sound like some sort of conniving witch.” It’s just one blow after the other. “I kissed you because….”
His gaze sharpens with savage intensity, and he leans closer. “Because… why?”
It’s all there in his face. The want. The need. The… hope.
“Because I wanted you,” I breathe. “Because for once in my fucking life I wanted to pretend it could be this way. You want to know the truth?” My voice lifts, right there at the end. “I know what my future holds, and it’s not you. But I just wanted to believe in it for a moment. Every time you kissed me… I couldn’t stop you. I couldn’t stop you because I wanted you too much. And I hate it. I hate that you make me feel this way.” The words come thick and choking. “I’m a wraith-born bastard of a murderous king. I don’t belong in this world, Keir. I don’t belong in your world.”
I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, turning away from him. It’s better this way. It has to be better.
“Mira—”
“No.” I hold out a hand, cutting him a sharp look. “I have a job to do. That’s all that remains between us now. And my half brother is still out there with his murderous little sycophants.” I can’t stop the tide of anger rising within me. “I’m done running. I’m so fucking done. You want to help? Then get her out of here!” I shove Soraya into his arms.
Keir flashes me a heated look. “Mira—”
“Don’t.” There’s no time to talk about what could have been or what we both want. It was a dream. It was always a dream. And girls like me don’t get to live those kind of dreams. “Just get her out.” And then I say the one word I’ve never allowed myself to let past my lips. “Please.”
“You’re leaving me with him?” Soraya demands, as if she’s well aware he still hasn’t forgiven her for trying to kill him.
“I trust him.” I stare into his eyes. “He won’t hurt you. I know he won’t hurt you.”
It’s a breathtaking moment.
Because it’s the truth.
I trust him.
Even if he can’t trust me.
Keir glances toward the rocks behind me. The look he gives me is absolutely furious. “And what are you going to do?”
I gesture with Soraya’s goblin-forged blade. “I’m going to kill Ruhle.”
Soraya grabs my wrist, hauling me toward her with a strength I didn’t expect. “You can’t. He’s the heir apparent. Father will destroy you.”
These are dangerous games.
I rub my thumb over the hilt of her dagger. Ruhle is my father’s favored child. What Soraya’s saying has merit. Father won’t care if Ruhle attacked us.
But I care.
I am done playing these games. “Maybe it’s time for a new heir then?”
I’ve never been ruthless enough to kill easily. Not the way Ruhle and Soraya are.
I’ve never wanted to before.
But as my hand closes over the hilt of the blade, it’s surprising how easily it fits there. I have nothing left but this.
“Zemira!”
“Complicated,” I grind out, taking a step back into the forest. “I’ll tell you everything. I promise I’ll tell you everything when I return. Keep her safe for me,” I beg Keir. “I’ll take care of them and then come back to you. I promise. I promise.”
And then I Sift out of existence, before either of them can grab me.
25
The caves. They returned to the caves.
Of course. Ruhle knows I secreted the horn within them, and he won’t give up until he’s got his hands on it.
When we were in the training camps, we played a game. An ambush, really.
It was called Shadows and Assassins.
Soraya and I were the best at it.
But I’m alone now as I hunt my brothers. I have to draw them away from the horn. Soraya is counting on me. I don’t know how long she has left until the blight eats away at her—the healers within Castle Blackrock will be able to give me a better idea.
The main cavern is full of a lingering sense of silence.
I know that silence as I slip from shadow to shadow.
One little raven, perching on a rock…. I mark him and move on. Patience isn’t only a virtue for thieves. It’s also the best weapon in an assassin’s arsenal.
Another raven, his spine pressed against the tunnel wall as he watches the cavern.
Two of Ruhle’s seven.
Semirhyn is dead; Rhyvaen is injured, which leaves five. But where are the other three?
And most importantly, where is Ruhle?
I flit across the cavern, knife held low as I stalk the wraith sitting on the rock. Nothing moves. His attention is focused purely on the cave mouth….
I step out of the Sift, grabbing a fistful of his hair and jerking his head back even as my knife finds his throat—
Light sears the cavern. A thousand bats overhead rustle and scream, their voices too high-pitched for fae ears, but perfectly attuned for mine.
I try to Sift, but the light is everywhere.
And then I’m surrounded by a cloud of bats as they flee for the opening of the cave. Tiny bodies whipping past me. Little claws catching in my hair. And through it all, the light burning, burning, burning….
And then it’s all gone.
Seven seconds of misery, all in all, but my knees hit the floor as I try to blink away the afterimage. I can barely even see the shadows…. All I can hear is the soft crunch of footsteps stalking over the gravel floor of the cave toward me.
Ruhle.
He materializes in front of me, just as my eyes finally recover.
Ruhle stares down at me, his teeth bared. “You little slut. You think we weren’t prepared for you?”
A web of finely spun spider silk from the demorari on the Gilded Isles is flung into the air above me. I recognize it from the gilded gleam of that silk; the enormous, bloated spiders weave pure light into a net so tight that nothing can break the strands or escape.
Not even a shadow.
I punch into nothing, but I’m too late.
Thin razor-fine wires of light sink over me—through me—and then I’m gasping on the ground like a beached fish, landing back in my corporeal body with a heavy thud.
It hurts. I can feel those little burning lines all over my skin, but it’s the dull ache in my bones that warns me that the jarring thud hurt me more than I immediately suspect.
A boot drives into my stomach.
The shock of such pain wrenches a gasp from me, but I barely have time to absorb it, because another one replaces it.
“I’ve spent years waiting for this moment,” Ruhle whispers, advancing on me menacingly. He grabs a fistful of my shirt and the net, his knee sinking into my stomach even as he presses the tip of his knife against my throat. “Beg me for mercy.”
Sharp iron trails down my throat, leaving behind the wet slide of blood.
I grab his wrist, but it’s like straining against steel. He’s always been stronger than me.
I can’t escape. I can’t even feel the shadows here. All I can feel is those thin strands of light seeking to sink right through my skin.
The burn of the light. And the kiss of the knife.
“Beg,” he insists, and the knife cuts a little deeper.
“No!” I slam a palm into his arm. Desperately. Uselessly. “You think… I don’t know that nothing will come of it?” I kick and strain, but his weight’s too heavy to move. “You like them to beg,” I gasp. “You like to have us… on our knees before you. You want us to have a moment of hope…. Before you take it away from us!”
He laughs. “Maybe. Now where’s the fucking horn? I know you hid it here somewhere.”
“I’ll never tell you! I’ll never be
g!” I scream, even as the knife drives through my chest with slow, inexorable pressure. It hurts. It hurts so much. I kick and scream, but there’s no stopping him.
Until the wraith right next to us suddenly slumps to his knees with a gasp, clasping at his throat before he slams face-first into the stone beside us.
Ruhle pauses.
“What the fuck?” he demands, pushing to his feet.
I grab the knife, gasping against the feel of it embedded just below my collarbone. Hurts…. Fuck. I don’t want to die, but even as I drag the knife out of my flesh, my vision wavers.
What happened?
I blink and find Karseem’s wide eyes staring blankly at me as Ruhle rolls his friend over.
His throat bleeds red. Someone cut it open to the spine.
I scramble upright, holding onto Ruhle’s bloody knife.
“Karseem?” This from Gwyvaen.
Ruhle draws another knife, his gaze cutting around the cavern. “Who did this? Show yourself.”
“A pity I don’t obey the whims of wraith born bastards,” a voice mocks.
Ruhle freezes, his knife hovering in his hand.
The breath I inhaled leaves me in a rush as I slowly lower my hands. My heart pounds fit to tear through my ribs. I recognize that mocking drawl. And while I don’t dare call the emotion I feel hope, I can’t help feeling as though… there may be a way out of this.
“Serruen?” Ruhle hisses. “I thought these caverns were secured?”
Serruen straightens, drawing the vicious scimitar he prefers. “They were.”
He takes one step toward where the voice came from and then he jerks back, as if something grabs him by the hair. A hiss of movement glints, and then blood spatters through the air as his throat is cut.
Serruen goes down like a bag of wheat. He slams to the floor, grabbing at his throat and choking. Blood wells and spurts through his fingers. His heels kick the floor. A death rattle echoes in his throat.
Cauldron’s piss. I kick my way free of the net of demorari silk, still bleeding like a stuck pig. A shadow grabbed him. A fucking shadow.
Falion.
I try to shove to my feet, but the world sways around me. Curse it. I have to get out of here. Ruhle wants my head. And who knows what Falion wants of me.
He surely didn’t just save my life because he likes me.
It happens so slowly, I almost think my eyes are playing tricks. A shadow forms, one tapping a knife against the stone wall.
“Blast it,” Ruhle snaps to the side, toward Rhyvaen.
“I can’t,” the light bringer returns. “I need time to recover.”
Grabbing a torch from the wall, Ruhle shoves it toward Rhyvaen. “Then fucking light this. Lights! Everyone get a torch!”
“All the better to see you with,” says the shadow, as three torches flare into flame. The light only paints it larger across the walls.
“Who are you?” Ruhle demands.
“I’m your nightmare, little wraith princeling,” Falion mocks. Suddenly there are a dozen shadows circling us. One of them actually holds a knife, which I thought was impossible.
Is he half-Sifting?
How is he holding that knife?
“Two down,” says the disembodied voice, as the knife draws sparks as it trails down the granite. “Four to go. Interesting to find a horde of wraiths daring to walk among the fae lands…. I wonder what brought them here?”
“Kill it,” Ruhle says.
One of his wraiths lunges forward, driving for the floating knife.
The shadow simply vanishes, and then the wraith is screaming—a brutal, tortured sound as if something drove a hand through his chest and grabbed his windpipe.
He dies with a gurgle, blood spilling from his lips as he falls but no other apparent injury.
The glimpse I catch of Ruhle’s face will warm my heart for centuries. He is actually shitting himself right now.
Falion steps out of the shadows, wiping at his hand with a linen handkerchief. His shock of silvery blond hair gleams in the light, and he’s still wearing the elegant silvery-blue doublet he wore for the wedding ceremony.
“No matter,” says Ruhle, cutting me a sharp look I have no trouble interpreting, considering it lingers on my face and hair. Clearly, he sees the resemblance as he steps back toward the mouth of the cavern. “We’ll deal with this development later. Retreat.”
“But we were just getting acquainted,” Falion mocks, spreading his hands.
Ruhle and his remaining companions flee, and while I’ve always thought I’d enjoy the sight, I can’t turn my back on the real monster in the room.
The smile falls off Falion’s face. “Get up.”
“What do you want with me?” I demand, shoving to my feet.
His eyebrow quirks and then he rakes me over with a disdainful look. “Where’s the horn?”
“Somewhere you’ll never find it. Stay back,” I warn, waving my knife at him.
He stills, but there’s a dangerous look in his merciless blue eyes. “I’m not here to kill you.”
“No?”
“If I wanted you dead, all I had to do was wait. You were about to have your throat slit by that two-bit wraith,” he sneers.
I stare at him, but there’s no hint he’s lying. He wants something from me. It’s not the horn, or he wouldn’t be here. It’s not to see me dead, or he could have merely waited.
“Fine,” I say, flipping the knife and sheathing it at my hip. “I’ll play. Why did you save my life? What do you want?”
“Want?” His gaze hardens. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? I want answers. I want to know who you are and where you came from. And I want to know how you can walk in my shadows….”
26
“Who I am?” Of all the things I expected, it wasn’t this. I spread my hands wide. “I’m Merisel of Greenslieves, the beloved betrothed of Prince K—”
“You’re wraithenborn,” Falion says, his lip curling. “With fae magic in your veins. You’re an impossibility. You should never have been bred. But you….” He takes a dangerous step toward me, making me regret the impulse to sheathe the knife. “You are an abomination.”
The words strike me where they hadn’t been able to hit earlier. “Like I had any choice in the matter. I was born into this body. I didn’t choose it.”
“Who is your father?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It’s Raesh, isn’t it?” Every step he takes is tight with menace, but it’s the unsettling intensity in his eyes that unnerves me.
I don’t know what he wants.
I don’t know why he’s looking at me like that—like he’s one step short of violence—but this is personal for him, somehow.
He’s a Shadow Walker.
A gift granted to me by my mother.
And she was…. She was…. The heat bleeds out of my face. It’s impossible, but then fae magic tends to run through family bloodlines.
“Answer me,” he snaps. “Your father is Raesh Ghul, the King Beyond the Shadowfangs, isn’t he?”
“What do I get if I say yes?” I drown my sudden terror in a smirk. “A sweetmeat?”
His thumb rasps over the hilt sheathed at his hip. “Maybe I don’t kill you.”
“Maybe you can’t,” I taunt. “You seem to be having some difficulty killing wraithenborn today, considering my sister is walking free.”
Oh, yes, he’s definitely still feeling the weight of losing to Soraya.
We circle each other, and he chokes down the emotion lighting bonfires in his eyes. “Who was your mother?”
It’s an old hurt, but it lances through me like an arrow to the chest. “I don’t know.”
“I overheard Keir call you Zemira,” he says, sauntering toward me nonchalantly despite the wraith blood dripping from his knife. “What’s your real name?”
“You want my name?” I blurt. He’s got to be joking. My father’s the only one who knows my three names, and the givin
g of such a gift is merely another manacle to shackle myself with.
“Did your mother name you?” Falion demands.
“That’s none of your business.”
“No?” He gives me an evil smile as he spreads his hands. “You walk the shadows. There’s only one fae bloodline that can do that.”
“Two,” I point out. “The Court of Shadows and the Court of the Moon and Stars.”
“One,” he says coldly. “The Court of Shadows took one of our Shadow Walker’s as queen long ago, but her bloodline has long-since died out. I would know. My people kept immaculate records. You shouldn’t exist.”
And then he disappears.
I’m so used to being the only one who can do that, that I hesitate a fraction of a moment too long. Idiot. I spin, driving my knife toward where I expect him to appear, but it merely cuts through the air harmlessly.
Instead, something swipes across the back of my calf.
I scream as I fall, my shadow bleeding across the floor in some amorphous shape. He didn’t cut me. He cut through my shadow, and now it’s untethered and leaves me feeling dizzy.
“You wraithblighted asshole,” I growl.
Falion suddenly reappears, flipping his dagger from hilt to blade and back again as he circles me. “You’re a Shadow Walker,” he confirms, “but you barely know the basics. You’re barely a baby.”
I hiss and lunge toward him, ungainly and heavy in my flesh.
He vanishes again, but this time so do I, even if it’s like clawing my way through quicksand.
The world turns to shadows.
I try to Sift, but something grabs me by the hair and then I’m staggering back into cold, merciless arms.
“You know nothing,” Falion says in disgust, his voice an odd echo in my ear.
I’m little more than a mass of black smoke, a shadow rippling and straining to escape his arms. He wrestles with me, but he’s far more skilled than I am. My inky form keeps breaking away. Instinct wants me to Sift again, but he’s holding me here, like two shadows tangled in each other.
I slam back into reality and hit my knees.
For the first time in my life I have no idea where my knife has gone.
