by Melissa Grey
The warlock peered at Echo over his sunglasses, giving her the chance to see the one thing that marked him as no longer human. His eyes were entirely white, as though the pupils had been swallowed whole. The sight of them was enough to make Echo’s fingers itch for a weapon. Warlocks were bad news. She longed to reach for the dagger tucked into her boot. A nearby radio crackled with static as the announcer read off the hour’s headlines. A plane crash a few kilometers outside Sydney. The upcoming presidential election in the United States. The cloud of volcanic ash clogging the sky over New Zealand after an unexpected earthquake had caused an inactive volcano to erupt three months ago; apparently, it was still rumbling, still smoking. Bits of Echo’s dream flitted through her mind, but she pushed them down, as deep as they would go.
“These are some pretty serious healing supplies,” the warlock said. He handed the paper back, rising to his feet. “You in trouble?”
“Perpetually.”
“My kind of girl.” The warlock stepped around the table, into his stall, and began rummaging through the boxes beneath the table. He took his sweet time. He glanced up at Echo, a little too keenly, and asked, “Come here often?”
“Nope.”
She willed herself not to look back at Caius. The last thing she needed was to engage in a rousing bout of chitchat with the warlock. The more he kept talking, the more likely it was that he would ask questions Echo couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. She was beginning to think that maybe she should have listened to Caius and stayed at the warehouse, hidden behind the layers of wards that protected them.
With a shrug, the warlock said, “Most people who come to me are looking for something a little less…benevolent.” He popped to his feet, holding several ziplock bags full of herbs. He offered them to Echo, but when she reached out to take them, he yanked them back. “Payment up front, love. That’ll be five hundred.”
Highway freakin’ robbery, Echo thought, even as she swung her backpack from her shoulder to retrieve the wad of cash she’d taken from Jasper’s stash. Though the warehouse wasn’t the most welcoming place—the ceiling leaked, the pipes were rusty, and the heating was more hypothetical than real—it was remarkably well stocked with a variety of currencies. She slapped the money down on the table. “There. Gimme the stuff, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Ooh, feisty.” The warlock slid the ziplock bags across the table to her, but kept his hands on them. “I think I’d like to get to know you a bit better.”
Echo took the bags, ignoring the way his pinkie finger briefly stroked the side of her hand. “The feeling is not mutual.” She dropped the bags into her backpack, then zipped it back up and slung it over her shoulders. “I’d say it was a pleasure doing business with you, but that would be a lie.”
She turned, heading for the market’s entrance, the warlock’s bark of laughter ringing in her ears. Her skin felt slimy where he’d touched her. She rubbed her palm on her jeans as if that could erase the sensation.
A hand slid into hers, and she jumped, instinctively trying to pull away.
“Relax,” Caius whispered, breath warm against the shell of her ear. “It’s just me.”
Tension drained from Echo’s body, replaced with a tingly feeling in her gut that was a close relative of contentment. She liked the way his hand felt in hers. She liked the rough texture of his calluses combined with the softness of his skin. They’d grown closer over the past several weeks, though they hadn’t progressed any further than cuddling. A presence tickled at the back of her mind. She ignored it. It was getting easier to silence Rose, but whenever Caius touched her, that voice had a habit of piping up as if his proximity were a summons.
She tightened her hold on Caius’s hand, relishing the tiny smile that graced his lips. They walked toward the Camden Town tube station, where they could catch a train back to the warehouse. Completely non-magical travel had been another one of Caius’s ideas. That would make it harder for people to track them, if they were looking for signs of magic or the residue left behind by shadow dust. Echo couldn’t argue with the wisdom behind the idea, but she missed the convenience of traveling through the in-between, of walking through a door in one city and exiting into a completely different country.
She bumped her shoulder into Caius’s arm. “I thought we weren’t supposed to look like we were together. Isn’t this breaking the rules?”
Caius smiled again, looking down at their joined hands. He ran a thumb along her knuckles, right where the warlock had caressed her, as though he were erasing the last trace of that unwelcome contact. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from spending time with you,” he said, leaning down so she could hear his quiet words, “it’s that some rules were meant to be broken.”
The lights of Camden High Street twinkled behind his head, casting a soft golden glow on the strands of hair that escaped his baseball cap. Echo wished that he didn’t need to hide his scales; she wanted to watch the light dance along his cheekbones, catching the scales’ slight texture and shine. He looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to respond. His eyes were a brighter shade of emerald than human green, almost as though they were lit from within.
He’s beautiful, isn’t he? said the voice inside Echo’s head.
Shut up, Rose. To Echo’s eternal surprise, Rose complied, but not without a flutter of sensation in Echo’s mind that felt suspiciously like ghostly laughter. It sent a tremor through her body.
Caius gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Echo? Are you all right?”
She cleared her throat and looked away from him. Rose’s thoughts may have been unwanted, but Echo couldn’t exactly argue with her. Caius was lovely to the point of distraction. But he didn’t know that Rose had felt the need to point it out. He knew Rose was there, buried deep somewhere inside Echo’s head, her soul inextricably linked to the firebird’s energy, but the extent to which Rose had made herself at home wasn’t something Echo was prepared to share. She had power now, responsibilities. There were people depending on her, and hearing voices wasn’t a character trait that screamed dependable. And so she kept Rose’s comments to herself. Maybe there would come a day when old ghosts kept their silence and left Echo alone in her own head. A girl could dream. But until that day, the fewer people who knew, the better.
They were nearly at the tube station. They’d hop on the Northern line and be home in less than half an hour, but the thought of going back to the warehouse, of returning to those too-familiar walls and too-thin mattresses strewn across the floor, was suffocating. Echo needed more time away, more time to pretend that the weight of the world wasn’t resting squarely on her shoulders. Her stomach rumbled again, and she had an idea.
“Yeah.” She squeezed Caius’s hand back, eliciting another small grin from him. He smiled more these days, though it wasn’t quite the same as the unguarded smiles she knew from Rose’s memories.
Mágoa, Echo thought. Portuguese. The residue left behind by sorrow.
The traces of long-ago grief clung to Caius, affecting every gesture, influencing every detail of his behavior, however minor. Rose’s Caius had been a different person, though Echo found that she liked this version of him just fine. But even then, questions still plagued her. She wanted to ask if what he felt for her was real. If all he saw when he looked at her was a dead girl. If she was insane to think that a history as tangled as theirs—hers, Caius’s, Rose’s—could ever have a happy ending. But all she managed to ask was “You hungry?”
Caius’s smile wilted, turning down at the edges. “We really should get back.”
Echo skipped ahead, using her hold on his hand to guide him toward the kebab place on the corner. London was riddled with them, and the quality was always a bit hit-or-miss, but she was willing to take the risk. “Oh, c’mon. A wise man once said some rules were meant to be broken.”
With a quiet chuckle, Caius said, “He doesn’t sound very wise to me.”
But he didn’t fight as she tugged him along, leading him toward
the siren song of kebab. Strolling down the street looking like a couple was most certainly against the rules, but the night was young, and so was she. This moment was hers, and she would cherish it, even if—or maybe because—she knew it wouldn’t last.
CHAPTER THREE
When they returned to the warehouse, bellies full of greasy kebab, it was almost exactly as they’d left it. Candles sitting in puddles of wax were scattered about the large room on the top floor, illuminating the space with a soft yellow glow that reflected off the black-painted windowpanes. On the ancient television in the corner, a BBC host interviewed an expert on climate change, their voices overpowered by the occasional rumble of a passing train. Half a dozen mattresses had been pushed to the corners of the room and were surrounded by piles of clothing in varied states of disarray, from absolute chaos (Echo’s) to military neatness (Dorian’s). Jasper’s clothes fit Dorian and Caius, though the latter’s broad shoulders meant the borrowed shirts stretched across his chest in a way that was impossible not to notice. Echo had lasted two days living in Jasper’s oversized sweats before she couldn’t handle it anymore and snuck out in the night. She’d broken into a vintage boutique—they were all over East London—and absconded with an assortment of clothes for herself and Ivy. The talking-to she’d received from both Caius and Ivy for going out alone had been worth it. You never quite appreciated the fit of a decent pair of jeans until you didn’t have any that weren’t bloodstained or ripped.
Jasper lay on his mattress, one hand dangling over the side, the other draped dramatically across his forehead. The vibrant colors of the feathers on his head, cropped short enough to look almost like hair, were dark in the candlelight, but their deep purples, velvety blues, and speckles of warm gold were still visible.
Echo riffled through her mental lexicon for the right word to describe Jasper. “Pavonine.” That was it. “Of or resembling a peacock.”
Dorian sat cross-legged on the floor by the mattress, running a rag over the steel of his sword. His silvery bangs fell across his eye patch as he tilted his head toward Jasper so he could hear whatever the Avicen was saying. Echo had come to realize that Dorian cleaned weapons the way some people bit their nails: absently, when there was nothing better to do. The blade hadn’t seen action for months, but Dorian polished it daily, keeping it pristine.
Caius locked the door behind them and started checking the wards around it, testing them for weaknesses. It was the only entrance to the hideout. One way in, one way out. Caius had insisted it was safer that way, and when he insisted, it had the tendency to feel more like a royal edict than mere suggestion. If their little group were found, he could whisk them away through the in-between. Caius was one of the few people Echo knew who didn’t need to bother with shadow dust or thresholds to access the in-between, though the effort it would take to transport four other people would cost him dearly. All magic came with a cost, no matter how powerful you were. As far as emergency plans went, it wasn’t the absolute worst, but Echo hoped they’d never have to use it.
She dumped her backpack on the floor beside the door. “Children,” she called, “I’m home.”
Ivy popped her head out of the bathroom door on the opposite side of the room, long, snowy hair-feathers gleaming in the dim light. “Oh, thank the gods,” she answered, wiping her hands on a washcloth as she walked over to Echo. “If I had to listen to Jasper whine about his poultice one more time, I was going to gag him.”
“Excuse me, young lady, I do not whine,” Jasper said, angling his head to glare at Ivy. “I lament.”
Ivy rolled her eyes. “You’re nineteen, Jasper. Don’t you ‘young lady’ me.”
Echo knelt down, fished the bags of herbs out of her backpack, and handed them to Ivy. “No bickering. This is a bicker-free zone. Bickering is an offense punishable by death.”
“Don’t mind, Ivy,” said Jasper. “She’s still mad I bought Park Place right out from under her nose.”
“And here I was thinking that what happened in Monopoly stayed in Monopoly,” Echo said. The board game had lasted only a week before Caius had confiscated it and hidden it somewhere deep in the bowels of the warehouse. Their last game had nearly come to blows.
Jasper exhaled a pained laugh. “Oh, you sweet little fool.” He struggled to sit up, succeeding only when Dorian slipped a hand underneath his shoulder to help prop him against the wall. Ivy went over to his bedside, laying out the ziplock bags in the order she needed them. “And honestly, Ivy, can’t you fix me any faster? I’m sick of lying around like a lump on a log.” Jasper winked at Dorian. “Though at least the nurses are cute.”
Pink suffused Dorian’s fair skin, inching past the eye patch all the way up to the dusting of scales on his temples. A tiny smile teased at his lips. Jasper had taken to showering Dorian with compliments the same way Dorian cleaned his sword and Caius checked the wards. Habitually.
Ivy was less amused. She ripped open one of the bags so forcefully that dried green herbs scattered across the floor. “I’m a healer,” she said through clenched teeth. “Not a wizard.” She shoved the herbs at Dorian. “Grind these.”
Dorian accepted the herbs because when Ivy told you to do something in that tone of voice, you did it. Catching Echo’s gaze, Ivy said, “Can we talk?”
Echo nodded, not liking the sound of it. Whenever someone said “Can we talk?” it was always followed by something deeply unpleasant. That was a universal truth.
They made their way to a corner of the loft, as far from the others as they could go. Caius shot Echo a concerned glance, but she waved him away. Ivy pitched her voice low so she wouldn’t be overheard. “Jasper’s not healing.”
And there was the deeply unpleasant something.
“Well,” Echo said. “It was a really bad wound, right? It’s going to take a while.”
Ivy shook her head. “I mean, it’s not healing. At all. The herbs I’m using are fighting infection and keeping it from getting worse, but it’s just not healing. I think there might be some bad magic involved, but I don’t know how or why or what. I haven’t reached that part of my training yet.” Ivy rubbed her arms as if fighting a chill. “I was sort of distracted by getting kidnapped, then rescued, then whisked away on a globe-trotting adventure with our merry band of misfits.”
Caius drifted to their corner, despite Echo’s silent instruction that he leave them be. “Is this about Jasper’s injury?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Echo said. “It’s not healing. Ivy thinks there might be some bad mojo happening.”
With a slow nod, Caius said, “I think our resident healer is right.” He looked over his shoulder to where Dorian was grinding herbs while Jasper watched, naked adoration in his amber eyes. “It was a Firedrake sword that wounded him.” He grimaced. “My sister—or should I say, the new Dragon Prince—once approached me with a plan for making her regiment even more lethal. Tanith wanted a warlock to curse their weapons so that even if a wound wasn’t a killing blow, it would still kill its intended victim.”
“Like a poison,” Echo said.
Ivy let out a string of un-Ivy-like curses.
“Exactly like that,” said Caius. “I forbade Tanith to do it. After my last few experiences with warlocks, I had little desire to involve myself with them.”
“What happened to sour you on warlocks?” Echo asked. “Other than the fact that they’re pretty much evil incarnate.”
Caius’s grimace deepened to a full frown. “I don’t think they’re particularly fond of me, as a matter of fact.” He rubbed the nape of his neck, a gesture Echo had learned meant he was about to confess a truth he would rather keep to himself. “Shortly after my election to the throne, I called in a team of warlocks to strengthen the wards around Wyvern’s Keep. Our mages were good, but there’s nothing stronger than the type of dark magic warlocks traffic in. I promised them untold riches after they completed their task. I didn’t exactly deliver on my promise.”
“And what did you deliver?” Echo a
sked.
Caius met her eyes, his expression guarded. “Death. I couldn’t have warlocks on the loose with detailed knowledge of the keep’s fortifications.”
“Christ,” Echo said. She knew about Caius’s past. He had done terrible things. That was not news. But it was easier to see him the way Rose had: as a person who wanted to use his power for good. Who didn’t want to hurt people. He had changed in the century after her death, and the years since had seen his hands soaked in more blood than Echo could imagine.
As if he could read her thoughts, Caius said in a soft voice, “I never said I was a good person.”
Ivy shifted uncomfortably beside Echo. “What happened to the warlocks who kidnapped me from the Agora?”
A moment passed in awkward silence before Caius said, “I killed them, too.”
Echo watched the play of emotions on Ivy’s face. She knew the abduction had been the most traumatic event in Ivy’s life—up until the battle of the Black Forest—but Ivy was a gentle soul. Relief and guilt warred in her expression. “I see” was all she said.
This wasn’t a conversation Echo wanted to have at that moment. Or ever. “So we can’t go to those guys to ask for help,” she said. “What are we going to do about Jasper? We can’t just leave him like this.”
“His wound will kill him,” Ivy said. “Eventually.”
Caius let out a wary breath. “If it’s truly dark magic, then the only way we can fight back is with dark magic.”
“And the only people who practice that are warlocks,” Echo said.
Caius nodded. “I’ll talk to Jasper. He might know one or two who would be willing to help for the right price.”
