“About you. About him not going to the Deadlands anymore, because I can’t sleep with the thought of him bleeding out someplace where I can’t save him.”
“Danial—”
“So if you don’t mind, I’d rather be alone right now.” He gently shuts his chamber door in my face.
I wander across the palace to Jax’s room, not wanting to be alone, but it’s empty. I notice several new holes in the wall above his bed.
My thoughts turn to the Deadlands as I stare at the shattered wall. If Master Cymbre hadn’t found me, I’d probably be dead. And as I brush pieces of wall off Jax’s quilt, I realize I’m glad I’m still here.
I just wish Evander were here, too.
Tucking my shaking hands into the crooks of my elbows, I hurry to my room and the promise of a calming potion’s bitter-apple relief.
It now takes three vials to get to the place I want to be, the place where closing my eyes and seeing his face—his real face, not the perfect apparition the potion sometimes brings—doesn’t make me feel like a giant fist is squeezing my heart, trying to stop it from beating.
No longer shaking, I pick myself up off the floor and put on a clean black tunic and trousers. My belt and sword hang in my wardrobe. I won’t be needing them anytime soon.
I slip into the hall and climb the tightly wound stone steps that lead to the rookery, where the palace’s messenger ravens are bred and kept. It appears to be empty, save for many sets of glittering dark eyes and rustling wings. The attendants who care for the birds are likely at supper, judging by the sky’s deep indigo and the crescent moon that shines down through the rookery’s glass ceiling.
As I poke my head inside, a rough voice calls, “Sparrow.”
Jax strides down the hallway toward me. As he moves closer, I steel myself against the storm crackling in his eyes. “I went to the healers’ wing, but you weren’t there.” His long, muscular legs close the distance between us, and his broad hands grip my shoulders hard. “And you weren’t with Simeon and Danial. Or in your room.” There’s something accusing in his tone as he finishes, “I thought you’d gone back to the Deadlands.”
“You’ve been talking to Cymbre,” I whisper, because whispering’s about all I can do with Jax’s weight pressing me against the outer wall of the rookery. “How is she?”
Jax shakes his head. “Not her best. She’s been drinking and pacing and drinking some more. But she’s still smart enough to know we’re nowhere near finding the missing nobles. And that she can’t tell King Wylding or anyone else but me and Simeon that you went to the Deadlands alone.”
“And killed three Shades,” I add, putting pressure on his wrist to free myself from his grasp. I use his momentary surprise to my advantage, shoving him against the wall and pinning his arms. Leaning in until our noses almost touch, I murmur, “Including the one that killed Evander. So you’re welcome. What’s the matter with you?”
Jax narrows his eyes, but they don’t stop searching mine. “You should’ve told me what you were planning. I would’ve gone with you. I would’ve helped.”
My heart picks up speed as Jax tries to twist out of my hold. “And risk getting you killed? You think I need any more nightmares?”
“What about my nightmares?” Jax effortlessly breaks my grip, like he was just struggling out of politeness before. He wraps his arms around my waist, his broad hands searing where they touch. I don’t stop him. I’ll be cold again without his touch, and I don’t want to be cold anymore. I’ve been cold for too long.
“You think I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep since he’s been gone, even with you beside me?” he growls. “You think I’d be fine and carry on like nothing had happened if someone told me you’d died in the Deadlands, too?”
I swallow hard. “Jax, we’ve been over this.” Despite the potion singing through my veins, I’m shaking from my hands down to my boots. “We’re just friends.” He’s just a friend whose lips are dangerously close to mine. Whose eyes are like the sea, wide and deep, churning with the pain of a thousand unkindnesses the world has shown him.
“Right.” Jax cups my face in his hands. His breath smells of sugary, expensive mead, overpowering the crisp scent of his evergreen soap. “Then listen, friend, when I say some of us still need you here.”
His lips collide with mine. I open my mouth, yielding to the pressure of his tongue, which he wields like a weapon to make me weak-kneed in his arms. I tangle my fingers in his dark hair as he deepens the kiss, taking us to a place where nothing exists but our mouths and the pulsing, luminous heat between us.
He tastes sweet, and a little smoky, like the honey we eat in the Deadlands. And like the honey, his kiss reminds me of how very alive I am, makes me dizzy as blood rushes from my head to lower places that are suddenly aching.
When I shove him in the chest with my shoulder, wondering if this is really happening or if I’m having my most vivid hallucination yet, he grabs my hands and twines his fingers through mine. He kisses my hands and my shoulder, then nuzzles the curve of my neck where my pulse beats an erratic rhythm against his mouth.
I tip his chin up with my fingers, then gently catch his lips with mine. I’m falling deeper into his eyes as he lifts me into his arms and carries me down the stairs to his room.
This is probably a bad idea. Someone’s going to get hurt. But I don’t tell Jax to stop.
It isn’t until we’re in his room, as he’s laying me gently on the bed, that his face shimmers and blurs into Evander’s and I come to whatever senses I have left.
“I’m sorry,” I say in a rush, blinking hard until Jax is Jax again and my head is clear. “It’s still too soon . . .” I kiss his tattooed shoulder before he pulls away to grab the tunic he’d just thrown off.
As he puts it back on and smooths his wild dark hair, my body turns cold all over. Things between us have changed so much now. It’s all my fault. I didn’t mean to make Jax look at me that way. All I wanted was a few moments of selfish pleasure.
Jax starts to rise from the bed, but I grab his wrist. “Where are you going?”
He answers without meeting my eyes. “I don’t know. Anywhere.”
“I can’t kick you out of your own room. Stay.” Even as I say it, he starts to pull away. I squeeze his wrist, startling him into looking at me. “Please?”
Jax sighs, but he turns away from the door. He settles himself behind me on the bed, like he sometimes does when neither of us can sleep, and wraps his arms around me. His breathing has slowed, but his heart’s still pounding hard. Just like mine.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder to study his sharp profile in the shadows.
“You.” His breath warms my hair as he exhales heavily. “And killing things.”
I quirk a brow and shake my head. “I’m so glad I can’t see inside your head.”
Finally, he grins a little. “I was just thinking, now that the giant Shade is gone, maybe Simeon and I can finally get back to work. Were the others you killed as strong or as fast as . . . the one we’d been hunting?”
He’s gone out of his way not to mention Evander, which is fine by me. Still, this is the first time we’ve talked about what happened that day.
“I’m not sure. The whole thing was strange, seeing three monsters together like that. They’ve never hunted in packs before. And we still don’t know how that one got so strong.” I turn in Jax’s arms to face him. “I don’t want you going back to the Deadlands until we find those missing nobles and figure out what really happened to Nicanor. Then we can go in a group and make sure it’s safe to do more raisings. Just . . . one trouble at a time, all right?”
Jax rubs his fingers across the tattoo on his left shoulder, now covered by his tunic: a lone black wolf like the ones that roam the cold forests of his home province, Lorness. “I can’t speak for Si, but I think we should keep t
aking jobs. Since we don’t know if the danger’s passed, we could charge a little extra.” He smiles, razor-sharp. “For risking life and all the good things that come with it.”
I immediately think of the little girl I met in the Ashes, sitting outside a crumbling house and clutching her doll, the only reminder of her lost mother. I know she’s just one of many.
“I don’t need all that gold,” I murmur. “Do you?”
“Of course I do.” He blinks like he’s surprised by my scowl. “Mages are like gods among men. It might kill her, but Kasmira could stop a hurricane. Danial could pull someone back from the brink of death. And you and I give life to people who have already spent theirs. That’s worth our weight in gold, at least.” His wolfish grin surfaces. “And it’s easier to come by than I used to think. Some girl who came to us this morning was willing to pay her entire fortune. We turned her down, but there’ll be others.”
“What was her name?” I demand, aware of my voice rising. Meredy Crowther was looking for a necromancer. And she didn’t seem to hear my warning about not going into the Deadlands with or without me.
“She didn’t tell us, but that’s not unusual.” Jax shrugs. “I was about to take her money, but when Simeon pointed out that the giant Shade was still loose in the Deadlands and she could get killed, I . . .” He grimaces. It must cost him something to admit what he’s about to say. “I couldn’t go through with it. There’s been too much death lately.”
I have a sudden urge to kiss away Jax’s pain. But I won’t. I’ve done enough damage there already, and besides, I doubt even the best kiss will help ease the sting of Evander’s absence for Jax any more than it would for me.
“From the look of things, though, she’s not one to give up easily,” Jax mutters.
My heart skips a beat. The girl he mentioned could be anyone, but I need to be sure she’s not Meredy. “What do you mean, from the look of things? Jax, what did this girl look like?”
“It was the same girl who was searching for you at the party—I saw her again when I was trying to find you at the healing house. She was farther down the hill, coming up from the Ashes. She had dark red hair and a scar—”
“Across her cheek . . .”
Jax nods and frowns, looking puzzled by my reaction. My skin prickles with alarm for cool, calm, distant Meredy. “Yeah,” he says. “And there were a couple of men with her, and an older woman, following her to the cemetery near the healers’ place.”
“Shade-baiters.” My heart races faster at the thought of the false necromancers, blue-eyed Karthians who never receive any formal training to raise the dead, but offer cheap trips into the Deadlands to search for loved ones—trips from which the client rarely ever returns. Shade-baiters almost always take a person’s money and leave them for dead where no one will ever find a body. “And you let her go with them?”
“Sparrow, who the blazes is she?”
I turn to meet Jax’s gaze, and I can tell by the look he gives me that my face betrays my worry. “Meredy Crowther. Evander’s little sister.”
“What?” Jax groans. “How was I supposed to know? And what could I have done to stop her from going with them, anyway? I’m not her father.” He sounds as guilty as I feel. I shouldn’t have been so eager to see the back of Meredy, even if I didn’t want to help her. I should have told her exactly why she couldn’t go to the Deadlands. Scared her away from the idea for good, even.
“She gets to make her own choices, just like us,” I say softly, more to ease Jax’s guilt than mine. Nothing but finding Meredy safe and sound will make me feel better now.
I leap off the bed and scramble to throw on my boots. I can’t believe I didn’t realize how determined she was to go to the Deadlands. I was too preoccupied by my potions and my problems to see how desperate she was.
If she dies, her blood will be on my hands.
I grab one of Jax’s many knives, testing its grip in my small hand. It’ll do. I shove the dagger in a spare sheath and hand Jax his sword, earning a wide grin from him. Shades are a deadly threat, but I’ve sparred enough to know fighting humans is much easier.
“You don’t have to come,” I say breathlessly as Jax rushes to the door with me, already armed. “I’ve been to the Deadlands alone, and I came back. I can do it again.” I smirk at him as I add, “Besides, I can’t offer you your weight in gold for risking your life.”
“No way am I missing a chance to make something bleed.” Jax bangs his shoulder against mine, making me grin, too. “You’re stuck with me, partner.”
“Fine.” I fling open the door. With a guilt twisting my insides as I think of Danial, I add, “We might as well grab Simeon if he’s willing, too. We could use the extra help.”
Meredy might be a painful reminder of Evander, but I can’t let her die like this.
I just hope we aren’t too late.
XVI
Standing outside the Crowther manor in the dead of night, I’m beginning to think my idea was a bad one. Jax and Simeon, flanking me on either side, are in total agreement.
“I don’t see why we need to bring a grizzly bear to the Deadlands when we’re packing enough steel and fire to raze an entire province,” Jax growls.
He glances over his shoulder at the nearest glowing gateway, which hovers in a neighboring manor’s yard. I hope the baron who lives there won’t hear the commotion we’re about to cause and send for a guard. This will be difficult enough without several curious nobles poking their noses in our business.
“We’re wasting valuable time,” Jax mutters, jarring me from my thoughts.
“Your time is valuable? I had no idea,” Simeon drawls. It’s good to know his sarcasm is alive and well after all we’ve been through lately. I catch his eye, and he grins as he sweeps back his sandy blond bangs. “But really, Sparrow. I think we’re strong enough to take three rogue necromancers without a thousand pounds of muscle and claws backing us up.”
“Three on three,” Jax agrees, squaring his shoulders with an expression as hungry and wild as the wolves inked into his skin. “A fair fight.”
I shake my head, then pound on the manor door. If there’s ever a time I need a vial of calming potion, it’s now, when I’m about to willingly plunge into the well of memories contained by these imposing walls.
“The bear isn’t a weapon,” I hastily explain as I wait for Lyda or Elibeth to appear. I knock again, harder. “As a beast master, Meredy’s tied to the bear somehow. He can track her scent, too. Maybe he can even tell us if we’re chasing a lost cause.” I knock a third time, nervousness humming in my veins.
“And what’s to stop him from, you know, eating us instead of doing all those helpful things?” Simeon demands, his teasing grin not entirely covering his apprehension. “Danial’s already unhappy with me. Just think how he’ll yell if I get turned into bear chow.”
“From what I understand of beast masters, their animals are tamer than wild ones. They pick up some of their master’s humanity in the magical bonding process, which is why they don’t just attack people in the streets.” I shrug, hoping I’m right. I’ve never had a conversation with a beast master about their magic, despite knowing Elibeth for years.
“I dated a beast master last year,” Jax says in an offhand voice. “Remember Tabathy? Older, gorgeous, taller-than-me Tabathy? Best six weeks of my life, except she insisted we keep things secret. Oh, and her beast was an owl. It liked sitting on her wardrobe and watching me while . . .”
I press my ear to the door, listening for the patter of feet inside the manor. But all I can hear is Simeon snickering and slapping Jax on the back. “No, I don’t believe it,” Simeon gasps between laughs. “You and Tabathy. That’s about as likely as you and—”
A harassed-looking maid flings open the door. Peering over her shoulder is Elibeth, barefoot and in her nightgown, her face soft with sleep. Her eyes go round at the s
ight of us, staring first at Jax and Simeon armed with knives and swords, then at me and the heavy chain coiled around my shoulder.
“Your sister’s in danger,” I say to Elibeth, and she and her maid step aside to let us in.
There’s no sign of Lyda as we follow Elibeth across the manor and down a flight of stairs to the cellar door, explaining all we know as we go. I can’t imagine how the baroness is sleeping through the commotion, unless she’s taking a potion to help her rest.
“Meredy shut Lysander in here before she left this afternoon.” Elibeth holds a torch aloft, bathing the cellar door in warm light. “She didn’t tell me where she was going. She never does. If I’d had any idea . . .” Her eyes shimmer. “She seemed fine when she left, though I did think it a bit odd she put Lysander away when he usually remains by her side.”
Simeon squeezes her shoulder and murmurs something soothing. He’s had years of practice, growing up as the only boy in a convent of Death’s often-brooding nuns.
“Don’t blame yourself, Elibeth.” I slide the chain off my shoulder, hoping we’ve looped the end into a collar wide enough to fit around the bear’s neck. “Meredy’s not exactly easy to talk to.” As Elibeth’s frown deepens, I hurry to add, “If there’s any chance of bringing her home, we will.”
As I reach for the cellar door, she calls, “Be careful! Lysander shares Meredy’s moods, like my hounds share mine. She says he’s never attacked anyone without her permission, but if he’s upset . . . there’s always a risk.” Her voice is hoarse as she adds, “I’d put the chain on him for you, but it’s better that you bond with him here and now before taking him to the Deadlands.”
I nod, taking a deep breath to brace myself for what’s waiting behind the door.
“It’s a good thing Master Cymbre’s not here,” Simeon mutters.
I shake my head, wishing we’d woken her after all. She’d probably have fetched the bear and found Meredy in half the time it’s taken us just to get here.
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