by M. J. Scott
I fought the urge to shiver as the memory of the look in Lucius’ eyes as I left returned. There was nothing good in that expression. He had always viewed me as a possession but a worthy one. What if I was now merely food?
No. I would not be. I would find a way to deter him.
Lucius had released me without giving me a target, so I assumed I was free. I wasn’t going to leave—that would merely give him a reason to find fault if he changed his mind and I couldn’t be summoned at a snap of his fingers.
So free but trapped here at Halcyon amongst the Nightseekers and the Blood. The masses amused themselves with the pseudocourtly intricacies of the Blood dances, but no one would ask me. No one ever asked me. It was no great loss. I didn’t dance even though I enjoyed the music. Tonight, my set-apart status was a blessing. I doubted I’d be able to stand the length of a set even if Lucius himself ordered me to take the floor.
My gaze fell on the curtained alcoves lining the walls. Private little spaces for couples and small groups to steal away and have sex or feed or partake in any number of other activities.
A perfect lair to lie low in for a while and catch my breath. There I could shadow, gain some relief from the pain and shock riding my body, and gather my thoughts. I scanned the row, looking for any that didn’t have a privacy lamp glowing red above the door. There. One almost on the end of the row was still dark
I sped up my efforts to get through the crowd, enduring the resulting small bumps and jostles with gritted teeth. As I reached the alcove, someone cannoned into me from behind. Pain flared and my temper along with it. I turned to see who was seeking an early death, only to find myself staring into an all-too-familiar pair of sky blue eyes.
“You!” My brain froze, then thawed, ratcheting into gear. I grabbed his arm and yanked him into the alcove, slapping the privacy lamp into life and triggering the spell for the aural shields a second after that. “What, in the name of hell, are you doing here?” He obviously had a death wish.
Simon—no, the sunmage; that was safer—looked slightly stunned. His hair was darkened by dye or magic to a shade near to black, but that only made his eyes a brighter blue against golden skin.
He smiled, his face filling with warmth in the dim light. “I came to return your dagger.”
My hand dropped to the empty space I’d been all too aware of all night. “And what makes you think I won’t just use it on you?”
“You didn’t kill me yesterday.”
He was so full of life and confidence part of me wanted to slap him. But another part wanted to let him show me how to feel like that. That part made me want to slap myself. Survival. That was the business I was in. The sunmage wasn’t an option. “That was yesterday. Perhaps I’ve been made to see the error in my ways.”
He frowned and stepped closer. “Did he hurt you?”
I moved out of reach. “No. But you should leave before he hurts you.” I watched him as I lied. I didn’t know a lot about human healers. Could he sense my pain? Smell the fear sweat still dampening my clothes? I didn’t want his concern. Or his help. Or his death on my conscience.
He needed to leave.
I looked around. Some of the alcoves had discreet exits to the rear, doors hidden in the velvet drapery, to facilitate covert meetings and departures. This did not appear to be one of them. Simon would have to leave the same way he’d entered. I gestured to the door. “Go.”
“Don’t you want your knife, then?”
“Dagger,” I corrected him, feeling its lack like I’d lost a hand rather than a mere weapon.
“Is there a difference?”
The idiot doesn’t even know a knife from a dagger. He stood there, hands in the pockets of ridiculous black leather trousers, preposterous black hair rumpled, watching me with a casual air as though he wasn’t standing in the middle of enemy territory. He even had a black metal disc—the latest fashion amongst the Nightseekers—hanging from a cord at his throat. He probably thought he blended in.
He shouldn’t have been let out on his own, sunmage or no.
And I should not be feeling a distinct urge to move nearer to him. The alcove smelled like sex and blood, both vampire and human. Enough, it seemed, despite the beating, to set my hated hunger prowling again. Simon’s scent cut a warm clean note through the musk.
It seemed to promise safety and ease and, yes, pleasure.
None of which was real. Anything I felt was due to Lucius’ blood still riding me. Nothing more. An illusion that I would fight, as always.
Anger rose. It was safer than the desire and let me forget the pain. “Do you care?” I asked, not troubling to keep the edge from my voice.
“Do you?”
I hissed and ripped one of the stilettos from the sheath at my thigh. One quick move and its point lay against his throat, precisely at the place where his skin pulsed with the beat of his heart. “This is a stiletto,” I said. “Thin. Sharp.”
I increased the pressure. Hard enough to make him see I was serious but not enough to cut him. Not yet anyway. I didn’t know if the blood of a sunmage would smell different from a normal human’s—different enough to stand out in the stink of human blood that filled the Assembly and call attention to us—but I didn’t want to risk it. “This has a point. My dagger has two edges. A knife typically has one.”
“And you?” he said casually as though my blade wasn’t testing his skin. “How many edges do you have?”
His eyes glinted at me. Humor and something else lurked in the blue. Something that called to me. The steady beat of his pulse vibrated up the blade. I wanted to feel that beat skin to skin.
Not real. I shook my head, trying to free myself of the illusion. It didn’t exactly work. My hand trembled slightly against the stiletto. Though maybe that was just from the pain in my arm. “Believe me, Simon DuCaine, you do not want to find out.”
“Oh, but I do,” Simon said. Then his eyes narrowed. “You know my name.”
“Yes. Not that it makes any difference to me.” I tightened my grip, increased the pressure ever so slightly. If I were smart, I would do it. Plunge the blade into his neck. Spill his blood all over this room. Complete my mission and redeem myself.
Become the weapon again, not the prey.
My hand clenched tighter. Do it. Do it now!
The words shrieked in my brain. I felt like a chasm had opened beneath my feet, miles deep. If I took this step, if I killed this man whose name came so easily to my tongue, this man who had done nothing to me but offer kindness, offer choice, then I couldn’t return. I would fall. I would be Lucius’ creature completely. Nothing but darkness.
As soulless as the Fae termed me.
But I would be alive.
“If you’re going to do it, make it fast,” he said, voice still completely calm.
I snarled, not liking that he knew what I was thinking. “Tell me why I shouldn’t?”
“Because you’re not who you think you are. You’re not who they think you are,” he said. There was no lightness in his tone now. “You can be more.”
I snarled again. But I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the one who killed him. I had always offered Lucius my obedience for his protection, for survival. But something had shifted between us tonight, perhaps shifted in me as well. And right now the thought of doing his will was unbearable.
I stepped away and sheathed my stiletto, balling my fists. My hands still trembled and I knew I couldn’t hide my hurts much longer. My vision was growing blurred at the edges and my head pounded. I had to get him out of Halcyon. Out of my head. “Do not think you know me, sunmage.” I was careful not to use his name again.
“Does anyone, Shadow?”
I ignored the question. “If you want to survive another night, I suggest you give me my dagger and leave.”
He shrugged, then bent and slid my dagger free of his boot. I wanted to reach for it but forced my hand to remain where it rested on my hip.
“I’m surprised the guards
at the door didn’t take it from me.”
“They would sense no silver.”
“And a knife with no silver can do no harm here?”
“At night, here in a Blood Assembly, you would need to be very, very lucky to harm a Blood or Beast Kind with a knife made of anything else.” Not with just a human’s strength anyway.
“My brother always said I was lucky.”
“Did he mention stupid too?” I asked, watching the blade. I wanted it. But I did not want to have to take it from him. Hurt as I was, I wasn’t at all sure I could.
He grinned, the smile lighting his face the way it always did. “Frequently.”
I looked away. No letting myself be caught by the light and warmth in his face. “He must be a good judge of character.”
“He likes to think so.” He tilted the dagger in his hand, turning it to catch the light. “Not silver. Iron perhaps? Does he set you to hunt the Fae?”
“Most of the Fae have good sense enough not to anger Lucius.”
“Most? Do you hunt your own kind, then?” The dagger glinted in the lamplight as he twisted it.
I watched the dagger. In truth it was neither silver nor iron despite its color. No, it was a Fae-wrought thing, gold and other metals shaped by their magics, stronger than any human alloy. Lucius had given it to me. Another way of taunting the Fae. “The Fae would say I am none of theirs.”
“So you do hunt them?”
I met that clear blue gaze. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t know,” he said, truth ringing in the words.
“If I don’t need a silver knife to hunt Blood or Beast Kind, what makes you think I would need iron for the Fae?”
I wanted to unsettle him, shake off some of that confidence. Maybe then he wouldn’t pull at me so.
“From all I hear, the Fae are hard to kill.”
I smiled, baring my teeth. “For a human perhaps.” Let him think what he would of that. In truth, Lucius had never set me on one of the Veiled World. The few of them weak enough to need to fear him were not stupid enough to cross him. And in truth the relations between the Fae and the Blood were tied and cross-tied with history and a healthy respect for the power of the Veiled World.
Simon stayed silent. He didn’t make any move to pass me the dagger. Perhaps I should take it from him after all. I could hear his heartbeat, not entirely at a normal pace for all his air of ease and bravado.
“A waltz,” he said finally.
“Pardon?”
He cocked his head toward the door. “They’re playing a waltz.”
The aural shields kept our conversation private but the sounds of the Assembly were still audible. “Yes. Lucius prefers waltzes.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “Strange. So do I.”
I didn’t want to think about him dancing. Moving with someone, free and clear beneath a sunny sky. “Perhaps you should ask him to partner you. Since you seem intent on destruction.”
“I’ve survived thus far.”
“Then you shouldn’t continue to tempt fate. Something tells me the Lady won’t keep rolling in your favor.”
His knuckles whitened against the dagger’s haft. “Has he asked you to try again?”
“Why would I tell you if he had?” I tried to sound menacing. I wanted him to go. The longer we stood here, the more I struggled with the pain and the need. I wanted to either sink to the floor or fall into his arms. And would rather die before I let myself do either.
“Would you do it? Kill me?”
No, was the immediate protest that sprang to mind. But it would be completely foolish to let him see that. “I generally do as Lucius wishes.”
“Why?”
“Because I am his.”
His face darkened and I had to set my teeth against the urge to try to bring back the smile instead.
“People don’t belong to anyone.” Certainty and something close to anger deepened his voice.
“I’m not a person—”
“Not a human,” he corrected.
And why, by the lords of hell, had I been unlucky enough to cross paths with one of the few humans who could make that distinction? “No,” I agreed. “Regardless. I don’t live in your world. Trust me, in the Night World the rules are different.”
“Then you should leave it.”
My mouth dropped open. “Did this brother who thinks you’re so lucky drop you on your head when you were small perhaps? No one leaves Lucius.”
His mouth quirked slightly. “There’s always a first time.”
“Unlike you, I have no desire to die. Now give me that, and go. Forget you ever came.”
“And spend every night wondering if I’m going to wake up with your blade at my throat?”
“If you don’t leave, you won’t have to wonder. You’ll be dead.”
“Come with me.” His face was now devoid of humor.
I could only stare at him as the words hung between us. Go with him? Did he truly live in a world where he thought there was any way under the sun or moon that such a thing could end well? “Then we’d both be dead. Go.” I held out my hand.
Simon ignored my gesture. “I’m serious. You could leave this place.”
“And what exactly is it that you think I would do in the human world? I doubt anyone would welcome Lucius’ former assassin into their lives.”
“Acceptance takes time. But it can be earned.”
I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face other than he seemed to be serious. I frowned. “It’s hard to be accepted if you’re dead. Lucius will not let me go. You need to leave.”
He pressed his lips together, then sighed. For a moment he looked almost guilty, his hand toying with the disc at his neck, but then he straightened, face clearing, and passed me the dagger. As I took it, his other hand snaked out and circled my wrist. It hurt, but beyond that, it felt good. Warm human skin against mine. I wondered if I felt cold to him. I hoped so. Anything to make him stop making me want things that could never be and go away so my world would return to normality. To safety.
“Come with me,” he repeated.
“Perhaps there was a whole tribe of brothers who damaged your brains repeatedly?” I pulled tentatively, braced for the inevitable jolt of pain, hoping he’d release me. His grip stayed fast. “You don’t know me, sunmage. If you did, you wouldn’t want me anywhere near you.”
He shook his head. “You’re wrong about that.”
“What you think doesn’t change anything. Go.”
“No.”
“Come with you and what, warm your bed? Is that what you want?” I didn’t know what else he could seek to gain from me.
He looked away—just for an instant—and I knew I’d scored a hit. He wanted me. Foolish. He should learn to think with his head. If he knew the truth about me, knew my dirty little secret, he wouldn’t want to touch me.
“I want to help you.”
The words hurt. I was trying to be logical, but he kept slipping under my defenses. “You can’t. So please go.” We’d been talking too long now. Sooner or later Lucius would call for me. He loved to flaunt me, his tame wraith, his blade over his enemies—particularly when he knew I didn’t want to be flaunted. It would be typical of him to call for me tonight when he knew I would struggle to hide what he’d done to me.
I twisted my wrist, trying to make Simon let go. Instead, I only managed to succeed in making my sleeve slide from beneath his hand, baring my forearm and the bruises starting to bloom against my skin.
Simon froze. Then his hold gentled. His other hand started to rise, then dropped back. His eyes blazed heated blue. “What did he do to you?”
“How do you know that isn’t from you restraining me?”
He leaned closer, studying my wrist. “I was careful and I know fresh bruises when I see them.” His voice had deepened again, rumbling with anger. “What. Did. He. Do?”
“You don’t—”
From outside the chamber came a crash of b
reaking glass followed by an earth-shattering roar.
Simon’s grip slackened, his hand lifting to tap the disc at his neck again. “What was that?”
I pulled my hand back, sheathing my dagger with the ease of long practice. Another roar shook the air. “It’s probably Pierre Rousselline and his pack. Trouble. You really should go now.”
“I’m not going anywhere by myself,” I said as the sounds of fighting grew louder. I knew exactly what had caused the disruption. When I’d triggered the charm at my neck, its twin, fastened round Guy’s, would’ve let him know that we were moving to Plan B. He’d have set whatever diversion he’d planned in motion and be on his way to help me take Shadow out of here any way we could.
Though I had to admit, the gap between me triggering the charm and the fight seemed almost too quick. Perhaps Shadow was right. Perhaps it was a Beast Kind riot, breaking out right now. Which would mean she was wrong about the Lady not rolling in my favor for much longer. Though just what interest the Veiled Lady of the Fae—goddess of luck and fate—might have in me, escaped me right now.
No matter. I figured I had only a few minutes before Guy arrived and I’d be forced to knock her out. Five minutes to try again to convince my reluctant shadow to come away with me. I couldn’t tell her the truth of what we wanted from her. That would only ensure her resistance, and fighting our way out of Halcyon would hardly constitute a stealthy getaway.
No point letting Lucius know exactly who Shadow had left with. Because she would be leaving with me. I wasn’t going to leave her here to be hurt again.
To be beaten again. Lucius’ work, no doubt. Nausea rolled through my stomach. How had I missed the signs initially? Gods.
The rigid posture she’d maintained during our . . . discussion wasn’t rejection of me, or a warrior’s alert wariness; it was the careful stance of someone who didn’t want to move too far because it hurt. I knew that look. The same way I knew the too pale color of her face and the faint sheen of sweat on her brow.
Not heat from the lamps.
Pain.
And I’d kept her standing there arguing for how long now? Too busy admiring the sleek lines of her body in dark leather and black linen, the contrast of her fire-touched hair against pale skin, to notice what any first-year student healer would have discerned.
