The Shadow Hour

by Melissa Grey

  “Poison,” Ivy supplied in Avicet. It was her first tongue, but the Avicen at the Nest had taken to raising their young bilingual. It was hard to live in New York—even underground—and not speak English. Even now, the word felt strange in her mouth. It had been so long since she’d spoken Avicet to another person. The Ala had tried to force lessons on her, but as Ivy grew older, she discovered a growing list of reasons to slack off.

  The Firedrake smiled at her, a little sheepishly. Like Caius, he had a smattering of scales on his cheekbones that angled up toward his temples. They were faint in the dim morning light, but the dying fire in the hearth caught their slight iridescence. His face lacked the aristocratic angles of Caius’s; it was a soft face. A kind face. “Poison,” he repeated. His accent was terrible.

  “I see,” Ivy said in English. Could this be her contact? The phrase Dorian had taught her settled on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. What if she was wrong? It was meant to be an innocuous phrase, one that would fly under the radar if need be, but if she came off as suspicious in the slightest, then she might not even have three whole days left before she got a little friendlier with a burning stake than she ever wanted to be.

  “You speak English?” The Firedrake sagged with relief. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I was worried. My Avicet vocabulary is pathetic, to be honest.”

  Ivy didn’t find his linguistic shortcoming the least bit surprising, but she said nothing. Outside, the fog slowly descended on the water, like a curtain falling after a show. Ivy’s view was interrupted by the harsh black bars on the window. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and sent a silent prayer to the Avicen god of good fortune.

  “You can trust me,” the Firedrake said softly. His gaze held hers for a minute, as if he was trying to communicate something without words. He reached into his scarlet cloak and pulled out a white napkin folded into a bundle.

  “I heard the Avicen have a taste for sweets,” he said, settling the small bundle on the edge of the tray.

  Ivy met his eyes once more, searching their sunshine-yellow depths for any hint of malice or deception. She found none. Earnestness seemed to ooze from his pores. Ivy pushed herself off the window seat, her knees creaking from having been in one position for too long. Shaky legs carried her across the room. She knelt beside the table, sinking to the floor with a dull thud, and unwrapped the napkin. Cradled in the white linen was a small cake in the shape of a flower, glazed with honey and topped with slivers of almond. She popped the cake in her mouth to buy herself time. Nerves tied her stomach in knots, threatening to reject the sugary sweetness. She could do this. It was this or the stake.

  The Firedrake lingered. Ivy wiped the crumbs from her mouth, suddenly self-conscious. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Tanith’s gone,” he told her. “For a few hours, at least.” Running a hand through his dark hair, he took in the room. He seemed a bit awkward. Shy, even. “I told the guard on the door I’d take his shift.” His smile was a tiny bit crooked. “He’s got a girl down in the kitchens he never gets to see. And I think maybe you and I have something to discuss.”

  Ivy stared and tangled her fingers together. This was it. The Firedrake was either Tanith’s clever way of finding out if Ivy had ulterior motives or he was Ivy’s man. Only one way to find out.

  He smiled again, as if to encourage her, and she hated how she noticed the way his left cheek dimpled but his right didn’t. When he spoke, he kept his voice low, even though there wasn’t supposed to be anyone listening in on the other side of the door. “My name is Helios.”

  Helios. Like the Greek god. It suited him. His hair was black as the midnight sky, but his eyes were a bright yellow, like the crayon a child might use to color the sun. He was dressed in what Ivy now recognized as a less formal version of the Firedrake armor. Gone were the gilded metal and the fancy braided epaulets. Instead, he wore dark brown leather armor—it looked thick enough to provide protection from glancing blows while allowing for ease of movement that full armor would prohibit. A crimson cloak was fastened about his neck with a golden pin in the shape of a dragon coiled in on itself to form a circle, wings tucked close to its body.

  Ivy closed her hand around the pendant and wished for a certainty she knew she would never feel. She settled on the small sofa, and Helios followed suit. He was silent, waiting for her to speak. She thought of the phrase Dorian had told her to say when she was confident that she had found someone trustworthy.

  Despite the fact that the sky had been as cheerful as a slab of granite for the past three days, Ivy looked at Helios and said, “Lovely weather we’re having.”

  She waited, hope and anxiety churning her stomach. Her nerves were so frazzled and her heartbeat so loud that she almost missed his response.

  “I’m sure the gardeners will appreciate it,” said Helios.

  That was it. The response Dorian had told Ivy to expect. Standard call-and-response, he’d said. Relief washed over her, so powerful that it felt a bit like drowning.

  “We have to move quickly. Caius”—Ivy paused, noting the way a crease of confusion formed between Helios’s brows—“the former Dragon Prince,” she amended, “hasn’t abandoned you. He wants his people to know that their prince is with them, and that the firebird is on their side.”

  Her wording was deliberately vague. Saying the firebird was on their side wasn’t necessarily the same as saying the firebird supported the Drakharin in the war, but Caius had stressed the need for a “flexible truth,” as he called it. It wasn’t entirely false, but it felt like a lie—yet even Ivy had to admit that swaying enough Drakharin to form an alliance with Echo and the Avicen to defeat Tanith would be easier if they got the full story from Caius directly, and not some Avicen prisoner.

  Helios nodded. “I can do that.”

  “And we have to get me out of here before Tanith kills me.”

  “Yes, let’s avoid that.”

  “Dorian is close and he’ll come to help get me out, but we have to move fast.” Ivy pictured the map Dorian had drawn for her, the one she had stared at for hours while the others were sleeping, a small tea light her only illumination as she committed each twist and turn in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath Wyvern’s Keep to memory. There was the possibility that Helios would know the way to the tunnel opening at the back of the keep, but she didn’t want to divulge that detail just yet. He could be a triple agent, for all she knew, pretending to work both sides. If she divulged her escape route and was wrong about him…then there would be little chance she’d live to see sunrise.

  Ivy reached behind her neck to undo the clasp on the pendant’s chain. On its mirrored side were two red dots: Dorian’s message, written in his blood, asking if she was okay. She swiped her thumb over them and they disappeared, clearing the way for her response. She pricked her finger on the tiny needle hidden inside the clasp and dabbed two drops of blood on the mirrored side. They soaked into the glass and disappeared. Dorian would receive her message; she had made contact. Now all she had to do was risk life and limb to find and abscond with valuable information on Tanith’s schemes and escape the keep. No big deal.

  “Here,” she said, offering the pendant to Helios. “Dorian told me to pass this along once I’d used it to contact him so we can get messages into the keep without anybody else having to be kidnapped.”

  “I’ll see that it gets to who it has to get to,” Helios said as he accepted the pendant. It disappeared into the folds of his cloak. Part of Ivy wanted to snatch it back—without it, she had no way to contact Dorian. Its absence left her even more vulnerable than before, but a plan was a plan, and she had sworn that she would stick to this one.

  Helios seemed to pick up on her anxiety. He took her hand in his and gave it a quick squeeze. Ivy’s pulse thudded in her throat. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “You’re going to get out of here. I’ll come back for you, I promise.”

  He stood up and made his way to the door.r />
  But Ivy needed to know one thing before she let him go.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Helios turned to her. He was silent for a few moments before he said, “I was there. When Tanith called the vote.”

  Caius hadn’t talked about that night much, and Ivy had been left to wonder about the turn of events that had led to him on the run and Tanith on the throne.

  “Most of the nobles voted for her,” Helios continued. “I think they were afraid. Some abstained and a few brave souls even voted against her.”

  “What did Tanith do to them?” Ivy asked. She almost didn’t want to know.

  “She lined them up in the throne room and asked them, one by one, if they were interested in changing their votes.”

  “And did they?”

  “Some did. Some didn’t. When she got to the end of the line, she set them on fire with a snap of her fingers. Every single one of them.” Helios swallowed thickly before continuing. “I’ll never forget the way it smelled.”

  “But if they changed their votes, why did she do it?”

  “She said there was no room in her court for those of questionable loyalty.” Helios twisted a bit of his cloak in his hands. “I watched them burn. And I did nothing.”

  Ivy hugged her knees to her chest, appetite forgotten. She couldn’t wrap her head around how wretched it must have been to see people you knew burned alive for daring to stand up for what they believed in. The world was full of cruelties, both small and large, but Helios’s story was a special kind of terrible.

  “There was nothing you could have done,” she said.

  “Strange how that doesn’t make the guilt go away.” Helios met her gaze, his eyes shining like liquid sunshine. “That’s why I’m doing this. Because I did nothing before, and I can do something now.”

  With that, he left. And all Ivy could do was wait.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Dorian sucked in a deep breath, relishing the crisp night air. The woods near Wyvern’s Keep smelled like home. After months of being cooped up in a London warehouse, the scent of the forest was a relief. He brushed his fingers against a tree, tracing the cracked veins in its bark. He and Caius had ridden through these woods so many times. They would skulk out of the keep alone, without the retinue of guards that normally accompanied the prince outside its walls. Dorian had objected the first time Caius had proposed they sneak out unguarded, but the prince was persuasive. It hadn’t taken much to whittle down Dorian’s defenses. A pleading look, a pout that Caius would never admit to, a promise that they would be gone for only an hour, and Dorian was putty in the prince’s hands, just as he’d been since the moment they’d met.

  He cast a backward glance at the Avicen and the warlock following him through the thicket near the lake. Quinn had rejoined Dorian and Jasper after delivering Ivy to the keep, which took longer than Dorian had expected. Quinn claimed Tanith had taken her sweet time negotiating the terms of his reward, and Dorian grudgingly admitted that it was precisely the kind of pettiness he’d expect from Tanith. Jasper was less than pleased at the prospect of a night spent in the woods, but they had little choice but to approach the keep on foot. Should they try to reach the keep through the in-between, alarms attuned to the wards around its outer walls would announce their presence and a contingent of Firedrakes would be on them in minutes. Dorian had overseen the establishment of the wards himself. He knew their strengths. They were sound, but no fortress, not even Wyvern’s Keep, an imposing stone edifice that had stood unbreached for centuries, was impenetrable so long as one knew where to look.

  “Dorian,” Jasper whined as he slumped against a tree, “are we there yet?”

  Quinn sidled up beside Jasper, exasperation written in his every weary move. The warlock hadn’t broken a sweat despite their daylong trek through the woods, but his patience appeared to be running thin. “Jasper, I swear to every god in every pantheon, if you ask that one more time, I will hex you.”

  Jasper stuck out his tongue. Quinn responded with a lecherous wink.

  “Keep your wand in your pants, warlock,” Dorian said. “We’ll make camp here for the night and proceed in the morning. Patrols don’t run through this part of the forest.” Or at least they didn’t as far as he knew. His information was admittedly a touch outdated. He hoped he was still right. “We should be safe so long as we stay to the trees.”

  Setting up camp was a simple affair. Since the smoke from a real fire would broadcast their location to anyone with eyes, Quinn built one from dry wood and magic that emitted nothing but a cold, odorless glow like embers of coal. Dorian might not trust him, but the warlock did have his uses. Jasper busied himself with picking burrs out of his feathers while grumbling under his breath about the indignity of nature. Quinn offered to help, but Jasper brushed him off. Dorian pretended that watching Quinn be rebuffed—again—didn’t bring him an inappropriate amount of joy.

  After carving a circle of protection runes in the dirt around the camp, Dorian pushed a log toward the fire and took a seat, unstrapping the sword at his back and resting it against the tree beside him.

  “That’s a mighty big sword there,” Quinn said as he waved a hand over the fire. Warmth began to emanate from it. “One might suspect you’re compensating for something.”

  “And I bet you’d know all about compensating,” Dorian said.

  “Ooh, burn,” Jasper said with a soft chuckle. He met Dorian’s gaze and some of the tightness fled from his smile.

  Dorian didn’t return the smile, but he wanted to. Instead, he rolled up his sleeves and unsheathed the knife in his belt. He pressed the blade into his forearm, fighting back a wince when it pierced his skin. He angled the blade so the metal caught the blood welling up from the wound. It wasn’t a deep cut. The message he planned to send wasn’t long. He drew two dots on the blade with his own blood, then wiped it clean and waited for a response. Two dots from him meant “All good?” Two dots from Ivy would mean “All good, proceed.” He prayed he’d see two dots soon.

  Quinn’s lip curled in disgust. “How barbaric.”

  Dorian ignored him. Once their mission was completed and Ivy had been retrieved, safe and sound, he would be glad to see the back of Quinn.

  “You know,” Jasper said, “since I met you, I’ve done more camping in the woods than I have in my nineteen years of existence.”

  “Should I apologize for that?” Dorian asked.

  Jasper smiled. “Probably, but you’re cute, so I’ll let it slide.”

  Quinn retched. “I’m gonna throw up.” He stood, wiping his hands on his trousers. “I’m going to find us something to eat. Try not to do anything stupid while I’m gone.” He sauntered off. The fire crackled merrily, but as Quinn had promised, not a single wisp of smoke rose from it.

  Jasper settled on the log beside Dorian. He crossed his arms and hunched over as if he were cold. While July evenings in the Scottish Highlands rarely ever approached what one would call warm, it wasn’t nearly cold enough to justify Jasper’s huddling.

  “What’s wrong?” Dorian asked. He couldn’t look away from the blade, not for any extended period of time, but his gaze flicked to Jasper, just for a second.

  Jasper shrugged and kept his eyes on the fire. The light made them shine like topaz. “Nothing.”

  Dorian arched a brow. Jasper ignored him, but the source of his trouble was obvious, and it had been since Quinn arrived, bringing with him a shared past full of hurt and regret. “You let him have too much power over you,” Dorian said, attention back on the dagger.

  “I know,” Jasper said quietly.

  One dot appeared on the bloodied steel of the blade. Dorian waited, his heart in his throat. If that girl had been sent into the Dragon’s den only for the plan to go awry, it would be on his conscience. But then a second, fainter dot materialized next to the first. The mission was on. Dorian was more relieved than he could say, since their plan relied on a great deal of luck. A contingency plan had been in p
lace from the first day of Caius’s reign; Tanith was not the first Drakharin to make a grab for power, simply the only one who’d been successful. The network of loyal Drakharin Caius had spent decades building operated on anonymity. Not even Dorian knew whom Ivy would encounter within the keep’s walls. At seemingly random intervals on the hike toward the keep, Dorian had left groups of three stones arranged in small pyramids at the base of blackthorn trees he knew were on the standard patrol route. They wouldn’t mean anything to someone who didn’t know what they were looking at, but for those in Caius’s network, the rocks were a signal. Watch for me, they said. Any unusual activity in the keep would be noticed. Any arrivals would be questioned—in secret, of course—to determine if they came bearing messages from their erstwhile prince. Ivy’s arrival—or her abduction, rather—was the tacit signal that Caius was trying to contact his supporters. One of them would make contact with Ivy, and judging from her message, someone had. Dorian only hoped that whichever loyal subject came to her aid would help her carry through the next—and most dangerous—part of her mission.

  So far, their plan had gone off without a hitch. Dorian hoped, with a desperation he would never vocalize, that the rest of it went as smoothly. If Quinn did his part and Ivy succeeded, they would be home free in a matter of days, though every time he saw the way Jasper reacted to Quinn, Dorian’s misgivings grew. The warlock was not one to be relied on, and yet, here they were, relying on him.

  “Why Quinn?” Dorian asked, no longer able to keep to himself the question that had been plaguing him for days. “I don’t get it. He’s not exactly brimming with good qualities.”

  Jasper shrugged. “I guess it’s just nice to feel wanted sometimes.”

  Ridiculous. People like Jasper were chronically wanted. They were beautiful and charming and irresistible. They were flames to which mere mortals were drawn like flies. For the first time, Dorian considered that maybe Jasper’s confidence was an illusion, a mask. He rubbed at his eye patch. He knew a thing or two about masks, having hid behind one for the past century.