Wraith King

by Argyle, Amber

  The forest take her, Larkin just wanted him to be safe. Why couldn’t they just be safe?

  Denan knelt to press a kiss to her forehead and another to Brenna’s cheek and left with Tam.

  Larkin stared after him long after he’d left. She’d always felt safe in the Alamant. But now, little bits of danger were worming inside her safehold. And she had a sinking sense that it was all just beginning.

  Rain

  Larkin was in the White Tree of centuries ago. She knew this vision. She’d had it a hundred times before. It was the night the curse came into being. The night the mulgars had been born.

  All around her, creatures made of torn shadows ripped apart the barriers to reach the people inside. To tear down their throats and turn them into monsters. The mulgars, with their solid black eyes and forked lines marring their skin, turned on each other.

  Larkin didn’t watch. She’d seen enough death. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted rest. Peace. Maybe she wasn’t meant to have such things.

  Instead, Larkin went to Eiryss, who stood on the dais around the font. She wore her wedding dress, her gold-and-silver hair spinning about her as she wove the magic with her bare hands.

  This was Larkin’s ancestor, though Larkin could find no part of herself in the woman. Fighting beside her was Larkin and Denan’s shared ancestor of centuries ago. King Dray had sharp features and dark skin and hair.

  She watched Dray collapse. Watched him go to the font, beg the White Tree to help him. Watched as he died, all his sigils alight. Between Eiryss’s and his palms, light flared. Blood ran between their entwined fingers.

  “Use my light,” he gasped. “Drive out the wraiths.” His eyes rolled up, and he went perfectly still. He was dead.

  The queen panted, looking at the bloody thing in her hand in horror—an amulet that looked like an ahlea.

  “Little bird, let me in.”

  Larkin blinked awake to the darkness of deep night. Her hand gripped her amulet, blood settling into the creases of her palms. She released it, the branch slipping from her skin, and set it on her nightstand.

  “I don’t need visions,” she muttered, aware she was speaking to an inanimate object. “I need sleep.”

  She sat up. Her damp nightdress clung to her; without a breeze, the room was stifling. Across her bedroom, the doorpane rippled like a stone tossed into still water.

  Careful not to move her injured arm, she tapped the potted lampent on her nightstand, which sent bright colors racing along the edges of the petals, casting a faint light. Her room came into focus. Like almost all chambers, it had a large bed in the center with an armoire across from it and a pair of chests at the foot. On the far side of the bed were two doorways—one that led to a bathing room and the other to a nursery, which Larkin was eager to keep empty for a few years at least. A dining table took up the space by the main door.

  Larkin slipped out of bed and stubbed her toe on one of the dining chairs. Muttering curses, she twisted open the doorpane. West and Maylah stood on the other side, the corridor keeping the rain off them. Both guards kept their eyes respectfully averted.

  Denan stepped inside. Water trailed down his face. His hair was plastered to his head—it had grown since their wedding, so it covered his forehead. It made him look younger, less severe.

  “Sorry I woke you,” he whispered.

  “I’m glad you did.” She sealed the doorpane with a twist of her wrist.

  He studied her, his gaze lingering on her blood-stained palm. “The vison with Dray and Eiryss?”

  She nodded. “If only we had found that cursed amulet.”

  He sighed. “The druids scoured the Idelmarch. We searched everywhere we could think of.”

  She sighed and changed the subject. “You’re soaking the floor.” When had it started raining?

  He slicked his hands down his head and then flicked water at her.

  “Hey!” She blinked and wiped her face.

  He grinned, tugged off his shirt with a wince of pain, and tapped a lampent on the table. With the medicine still affecting Larkin, pulsing rainbows flared across the room. Everywhere except the angry, puckered scar and the jagged forks of black just below Denan’s ribs. His blight mark seemed to suck in light and color.

  Even now, the wraiths haunted them.

  But she would not let them stay. Not here. Not between them.

  She sat on one of the dining chairs; it was too hot to go back to bed. “How did your meetings go?”

  “I spent most of my time with the quartermaster, writing decrees for food production. Everyone is going to have to pitch in.”

  “Any sign of the assassin?”

  Denan unbuckled his armor. “The constables are conducting interviews—hoping someone saw something—and making lists of everyone who attended. Chances are, it’s an Alamantian. The Idelmarchians were too tightly controlled.”

  The thought made her sick.

  He dropped his trousers. The light reflected off his damp skin; an aura of color danced around him. Soft shadows lingered in the valleys of his body, which highlighted the hard planes of muscle. Light, he was beautiful.

  She swallowed hard. “We’ll find them. And then we’re going to march on Valynthia and cut that cursed tree down.”

  He stared in the direction of Valynthia, and she knew he was thinking about his blight. About the wraiths. But there was something new there too. Toweling off, he sat beside her.

  She rested her chin on his shoulder. “What is it?”

  “Just rumors. Whispers, really.”

  “Tell me.”

  He shivered. “You’re warm.” He pulled her into his lap and nuzzled her chest.

  Reveling in the cold damp of his skin, she stroked his hair. “Denan?”

  He sighed, his breath tickling the tiny hairs on her arm. “Gendrin and I grew up together; he’s like a brother to me. His father was at all our tournaments and ceremonies, cheering me on as much as my own parents.”

  She hadn’t realized how long the Denan had known the king. “You’re grieving him.”

  “It’s not just him. It’s the horrible way he died. Gendrin and Jaslin saw his murder. Jaslin couldn’t get to him. They’re both devastated and angry and—”

  “Surely they don’t really believe we had anything to do with it.”

  “Not Gendrin. Jaslin, though. And the populace . . . I am the king now, Larkin, and people must always have someone to blame. I have to find Netrish’s killer.”

  Before the populace started to blame him. The assassin posed more than one kind of danger to them.

  She held her husband close, drawing every bit as much comfort as she gave. She stroked her fingertips up and down his back and arms and hummed one of the calming songs the pipers played.

  Soon, he turned toward her. But now it was a different kind of comfort he sought. His palms skimmed up her sides and pulled her closer still. The tip of his nose trailed along her jaw. He inhaled the scent of her and moaned. “Light, you’re perfect.”

  Something hot and shivery settled in her lower belly, something that grew hotter still as he kissed her neck, his lips so soft against her sensitive skin. Enough of teasing. She wanted his mouth—the taste of him on her tongue.

  She tipped his jaw back and kissed him, gentle and slow like the drizzle of honey. He tasted like rainwater and summer nights. She nipped his bottom lip, pulling it back before gently releasing.

  His searching fingers found the edge of her nightgown, slowly pulling up. His touch left a burning trail up one pale calf and then curving around her thigh. Higher still. She gasped.

  He paused. “Your arm. Maybe . . .”

  She pinned his wrist in place. “I don’t need my arm. Not for this.”

  Pipe music winnowed through the trees like cold, clean water through trailing fingers. It tugged Larkin along, spinning her this way and that beneath the dense canopy of trees. Crisp leaves crunched under her feet. Beams of light speared slantwise through the high canopy, th
e brilliant emerald dazzling Larkin’s eyes, blinding her.

  She spilled out of the trees into a deep meadow, the tall grass swaying gently. The light grew murky, blocked by a dirty, smoky sky. Larkin nearly turned around and went back to the forest, but the music had its hooks in her deeply now.

  And it was reeling her in.

  In the middle of the meadow, a man sat on a rock. His back was to her, but the breadth of his shoulders, the sheer massiveness of him was achingly familiar.

  Talox.

  Talox, who had saved her life at far too high a cost.

  Talox, who was now a mulgar.

  Larkin dug her heels in, her feet sliding in the muck. She grabbed handfuls of meadow grass, but it was soggy, coming apart into a slimy mess in her hands. She clawed at the ground, her fingers leaving deep gouges.

  Faster and faster, the music reeled her in until she lay at Talox’s feet. He lowered his pipes, then slowly rose to his full height and looked down, down, down at her.

  She’d seen him as an ardent before. But she still wasn’t prepared. How could she be prepared for solid, beetle-black eyes in Talox’s gentle face?

  “You can stop this, Larkin.”

  She panted hard, the mud bitterly cold beneath her body. “Stop what?”

  “It’s in your blood. In his blood.”

  If she just held still enough, maybe he wouldn’t attack. “What’s in my blood?”

  Talox’s eyes met hers. In an instant, he wasn’t Talox, but the Wraith King. Robes like torn shadows and a crown like black, broken glass. The blackness where his face should be sucked her in.

  She screamed and clawed, trying to escape. The wraith bent over her, reached toward her. “You’re mine.”

  Larkin woke to a whimper. Her whimper. Denan held her tight. Tears leaked from her eyes onto his chest. Their bed dipped and swayed with the wind. The soft gray of early morning filtered through the branches, sending crisscrossing shadows across the top of the panes that made up the roof.

  “Easy, Larkin. It was just a nightmare.”

  The nightmares came every night. This was the latest she’d managed to sleep in weeks.

  Denan squeezed her tighter, his voice gruff with sleep. “Are you awake now?”

  She buried her head into his chest and nodded.

  “What was it this time?”

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to remember. She wouldn’t risk going back to sleep—doubted she could if she tried.

  He stroked her hair, and she loved that he didn’t pry.

  “How do you deal with it all?” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve sent men into battle—your friends. Watched them die. But you’ve never let it break you.”

  He sighed heavily. “I imagine locking my fears and worries in a chest. If that doesn’t work, I throw that chest to the bottom of a deep, dark lake. Then I seal them inside with a layer of ice.”

  She turned in his arms. “Really?”

  He pushed up on his elbow. “When I need to deal with them—when I have time to deal with them—I pull them out. If not, they stay put.”

  “And it works?”

  He kissed the side of her face, his hand stroking up her bare side. “It’s . . . one of the things that helps.”

  She bit her lip to hide her grin. “What’s the other thing?”

  He kissed her mouth, his hands moving lazily over her skin. “Can’t you guess?”

  She giggled. “Nope. No guesses.”

  He grinned. “Well, let me show you.”

  Murders in the Night

  Larkin lay tucked against Denan’s chest. On a normal day, she would slip out of bed, dress, and pad down to the training platform. She’d been working on her archery skills; she was terrible.

  When Denan woke, he’d join her, and they’d spar. Unger would bring them breakfast. Then they’d dive into the lake to cool off and bathe in one of the cordoned-off nooks. They’d try to keep their hands off each other. Most likely fail.

  But not this morning. This morning, they would don their armor and plan a war. But for now, she let herself hold and be held by the man she loved.

  Denan’s bare skin pebbled. She reached down to tug the blankets over him when her gaze caught on his blight. Even as she watched, it moved, the shadows sharpening and digging deep. Denan’s breathing abruptly tightened as if he were in pain.

  Even here, we’re not safe. Maybe we never were.

  She pulled the blankets under his chin and sat up. A sharp shout brought her to her feet. Denan was out of the bed in an instant—years of surviving in the Forbidden Forest had honed his instincts. He snatched his tunic from the floor. Larkin reached for her trousers, ignoring the sharp tug in her arm.

  “Breech!” a familiar voice shouted.

  The sounds of running feet. The tree shivered beneath their steps. Where are my cursed boots?

  “Healer!” the voice again, this time a wail. “I need a healer!”

  Larkin recognized the speaker that time. It was Tam.

  Ignoring the sharp twist of her arm, Larkin hauled on her tunic. Denan was already fully dressed. No time for her boots now.

  He grabbed his sword and shield from their hooks by the doorpane. “Stay here.”

  “Healer!” Tam cried again.

  Tam, who had saved her life more times than she cared to remember. She would answer his call, no matter the consequences. Larkin shoved past Denan and through the doorpane.

  West moved to block her. “Majesties, please go back inside.”

  “Are my mother and sisters secure?” Larkin demanded.

  “As far as I know, Majesty,” Maylah said.

  “Now please—” West began.

  “Lead the way,” Denan barked.

  West and Maylah jogged through the paneled colonnade toward the guest chambers on the other side of the tree. The colonnade’s passageways were all sealed panels. There was no danger from bolts. It irked her that the guards had argued with her and obeyed Denan without question.

  Another pair of guards left the guest chambers at a run and headed toward the main bridge. Where were they going?

  Larkin reached Tam and Alorica’s chambers twenty or so running steps later. A crush of guards jammed the entrance.

  “What happened?” Denan asked.

  “Two people were injured,” a tall enchantress said. “The attacker disappeared. We sent for a healer and are searching the tree.”

  Attacked who? Tam? Alorica? Both of them? Are they all right? How did someone get in? “Move!” Larkin demanded. They scattered, and she burst into the room.

  Tam knelt on the bed, his hands pressed into Alorica’s middle. Blood seeped through his fingers, soaked Alorica’s nightgown and the sheets beneath her, and puddled on the floorboards. She was unconscious. Tam didn’t appear hurt.

  Tam’s desperate gaze met Larkin’s. In a flash, she remembered all he had done for her. All the times he’d made her laugh so she wouldn’t fall apart. The times he’d cheerfully followed her into danger on nothing more than her word. She could not let him lose Alorica. Could not watch him bear the burden of his heartsong’s death the way Talox had.

  “Denan.” Larkin pushed him toward the door. “Fetch my mother.” She was a lot closer than any healer from the healing tree. “And stay behind to protect my sisters.” Mama wouldn’t leave them with anyone she didn’t trust.

  Denan clearly wanted to argue. Instead, he stepped outside. “You two, come with me. West, Maylah, stay here and don’t let anyone else in. The rest of you, search for intruders.”

  The floorboards trembled with their departing steps.

  Larkin stepped closer to Alorica. Mama would know what to do. The guards had said someone else was injured. “Are you injured?” she asked Tam.

  Tam shook his head, a spasm of guilt shuddering over him. “I was showering. I heard a fight. Her screaming. Unger is hurt.” He motioned to the other side of the bed. />
  Unger! Why hadn’t anyone told her? She rounded the bed in time to see Unger fist the sheets with his hand and haul himself up to his knees. A wicked knot bulged from the side of his head.

  The attacker must have hurt the two of them and fled when they heard Tam coming. Larkin went to help Unger, but he shoved her so hard she fell on her backside. Only then did she notice the knife in his hand. A bloody knife. Larkin’s mind tried to fight it—deny it. But his gaze fixed on Alorica with a predatory focus Larkin knew all too well.

  Unger had hurt Alorica. Was trying to hurt her again.

  Larkin’s weapons automatically filled her hands. Lunging to her feet, she slammed the edge of her shield into Unger’s face. Alorica moaned in pain as the bed shifted beneath her. Unger skidded half a dozen feet before coming to a stop before the desk.

  Larkin charged after him, her sword cocked behind her shield. But she hesitated to kill the man who had so gently tended her and her family all these months. He was her friend.

  He’s not a friend. He’s an assassin.

  But Unger wasn’t a threat. Not anymore. Judging by the impossible angle of his head, Larkin’s blow had broken his neck. But even with such a grievous injury, his eyes still fixed on her.

  She lowered her sword. “Do you know who killed the king?”

  “No,” Unger said.

  West burst into the room. “What’s going on?” He hustled up behind her. She blocked him from doing anything to the assassin.

  “Why have you done this?” she asked Unger.

  Despite the horrible pain he must be in, he made not a sound. And then Larkin noticed that the trickle of blood sliding from the corner of Unger’s mouth was not red.

  It was black.

  West swore.

  All the air left Larkin.

  This was not Unger. At least not anymore.

  “He’s a mulgar,” West said.

  A cut from a wraith blade poisoned people. Turned them into mindless monsters that were little more than puppets for the wraiths. But some retained their cunning. The curse twisted those mulgars into something different, something wicked: ardents.