Kailani’s eyelids fluttered. Her body heaved as she gasped, sucking down a breath of air.
Everyone around them—the other Browncloaks, the king’s guardsmen, onlookers who had gotten turned around in the panicked stampede—stood in shocked silence.
“It’s,” Kailani croaked, her voice raspy as she struggled to sit up, “it’s all right. I’m all right. Just help me up.”
The guardsmen rushed to her side while the Browncloaks clustered around Livia. Raising her to her feet in gentle, reverent hands.
“It’s a miracle,” cried an old man, his eyes wide as he fell to his knees. “A miracle!”
Whispers rippled through the crowd, whispers that became shouts of amazement and joy, spreading through the streets like wildfire. The onlookers pressed in, reaching, grasping, wanting to touch the impossibility they’d just witnessed. Wanting a piece of it for themselves. Livia’s vision was a blurry mess and she could only stumble along, leaning on a Browncloak’s shoulder, her balance and her strength long gone.
“Take me back,” she half pleaded, barely able to put any breath into her voice. Hands everywhere, groping her, tugging at her, pulling the sleeve of her gown hard enough to tear it. Babbling voices begged her to heal their gout, heal their aches, heal their babies, heal their lives.
I can’t, she tried to say, I’m just one person, but the words clogged in her dry throat. The aftershock of the spell still reverberated inside her skull like a tuning fork, making her bones itch.
Just get back to the keep, she told herself. Squirrel’s notebook. I’ll find some answers there. I know it.
* * *
A quartet of chambermaids gossiped, hands cupped to their mouths and cheeks blushing, about Livia’s new valet. He was an older gent, to be sure, with a mane of slicked-back hair as silver as tinsel, but he had a genteel manner and an air of roguish charm. He’d only started just that morning. The former valet hadn’t turned up to work.
And there he was now, sauntering down the stone corridor, wearing a lazy half smile on his bloodless lips. “Ladies,” he said, inclining his head and offering a casual bow.
He’d been instructed to fetch some paperwork from Livia’s chambers while she and her Browncloaks—dreadful people, those, all dourness and no fun at all—were out at the parade. Could they direct him to her door? Of course they could. He thanked them and said his goodbyes with a wink.
Alone inside Livia’s bedchambers, Fox leaned back against the door, flipped the latch, and grinned. The prize was so close he could taste it.
Who could have guessed that the mysterious “L.S.” was none other than Livia Serafini, Pope Benignus’s pious daughter? The pope herself now, he reminded himself. He didn’t give a toss about the Church, but he admired the power play.
“You would have made a passable apprentice,” he said to the empty room as he strode to her chest of drawers. “Better than the worthless little fool I’ve been cursed with. That is, until you went and doomed yourself. Pity, Pope Livia. I do hope you enjoy the days you have left.”
He rummaged his way through her gowns and smallclothes carelessly, patting the back of every drawer in search of a secret compartment. Squirrel’s book had fallen into her hands, no question about it. So where was she hiding it? The bedside table turned up empty, so did the chest at the foot of her bed.
He looked to the bed, one eyebrow arched.
No, he thought. It has to be in a camouflaged compartment or a secret room. Nobody could be that much of an amateur. Still, he got down on one knee and slid his arm under the mattress, feeling around—and closed his fingers on the hard, slender spine of a book.
“I stand corrected,” he said as he pulled the book free. Elation. The cover opened and he gazed down in triumph at Squirrel’s jagged, barely literate scrawls.
He slammed it shut and clutched the book to his chest. He didn’t stop until he’d left the keep, left the courtyard, and strode through the winding city streets to a nearby inn. A handful of coins bought him a private room the size of a closet for the night. He’d only need it for an hour.
As he filled a tarnished iron washbasin, the twisting, tangled words of an old spell rose effortlessly to his lips. The straight razor slashed just as effortlessly, slicing a scarlet line on his forearm, letting the blood flow in fat ruby drops that burst like tiny exploding suns as they hit the water.
A face appeared in the murky red. Bear. The bulky, towering northman’s eyes were curious behind his mask of bone.
“Fox?” he said. “I felt you calling to me. Where are you?”
“Lychwold. Itresca. I’ve got something you’ll like.”
“What’s that?”
Fox held the book up beside his face and flashed a toothy grin.
Bear tore his mask off and leaned in as close as he could, his eyes looming in the reflection. “Is that—”
“Squirrel’s book. Found in the possession of—you’ll love this part—one Livia Serafini.”
“Who’s that?”
Fox’s smile drooped. “She’s the pope. Do you not get any news in Winter’s Reach?”
“A woman pope?” Bear rubbed the back of his head, tousling shaggy hair. “Is that even allowed?”
“It is now, apparently. More power to her, for all the good it’ll do. Did you feel that disturbance a few nights back? That burst of wild magic? It was her. She’s infected with Shadow.”
Bear winced. “Ugh. That’s gonna end ugly.”
“Not as ugly as things are going to end for a mutual acquaintance of ours.”
“The Owl.” Now it was Bear’s turn to smile. “This is it. Coven writings in the Church’s hands, and it’s all her fault. The Dire’s gonna kill her. She’ll have to.”
“And you and I, my burly cousin, will benefit handsomely from exposing her. Can you attend tonight’s sabbat?”
Bear shrugged. “I’m not supposed to, unless the Dire calls me—too dangerous to leave Winter’s Reach unwatched, I guess. But I can get there, sure.”
Fox chuckled, cradling the book in his arms like a precious treasure.
“Do come,” he said. “I believe it’ll be the party of a lifetime. Not to be missed, or soon forgotten.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Nessa Fieri woke with the dawn, stretching languidly under stiff, scratchy sheets while a cock crowed outside the dusty window. She sat up, pulling aside the covers, and arched an eyebrow. Mari Renault slowly pushed herself up from the floor just inside the closed door, her patchwork leathers and ragged blond hair making her look like a sleepy scarecrow.
“Mari.” Nessa glanced over at the other bed. The sheets were unwrinkled. “Did you sleep on the floor?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding over her shoulder. “In front of the door. So if anyone tried to come in during the night, it would wake me up right away.”
Nessa rolled her eyes. “That’s stupid. Who would even—”
She paused, watching Mari’s face fall and her head sag, just a little, along with her shoulders.
Nessa didn’t like it. That was the only description she could put to the sudden pang in her heart, the way Mari’s disappointment made her want to take back the last few seconds and say something, anything, differently. She just didn’t like it.
“I mean…it was unnecessary.” Her bare feet touched down on the cold, rough floorboards. She approached Mari in her dressing gown, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “We’re both very light sleepers, after all. But it was thoughtful of you. I’m pleased that you took the initiative.”
There it was, that tiny, puppyish smile on her knight’s lips. Nessa liked that better.
My knight, she thought. Mine. She liked that, too. She had explored the contours of the young woman’s mind, ferreted out all of Mari’s innermost hopes and dreams, and carefully, methodically, twisted them to her own liking. Breaking her had been a pleasure. Rebuilding her, though…that was a new kind of game to play.
All the ingredients were there. Mari’s obsession w
ith becoming some kind of storybook knight had laid the groundwork Nessa needed. Devotion, service, the hunger for a worthy liege. That oaf Werner, with his simpleminded piety and his drugs, had done his best to blunt Mari’s claws for good—but Werner was dead, and Mari had a new teacher now. One who could take her fantasies and illusions, along with the violent past Werner had tried to bury forever, and merge those two Maris into a new creature entirely.
A coven knight.
“Fetch my glasses,” Nessa said, her tone light. They were on the bedside table, closer to Nessa, but Mari didn’t hesitate to scurry around her and pick them up. Nessa beamed, standing still as Mari slipped the big, round wire-frame lenses over her liege’s eyes. The blurry world swam into sharp focus.
It was going to be a good day.
“Get yourself cleaned up,” she said, “while I contact my family. There’s just one last thing to do before you truly enter my service.”
“Name it,” Mari said, suddenly wide-eyed, “anything. Whatever I have to do, just name it.”
Nessa reached out, trailing a fingertip along the rugged line of the taller woman’s jaw.
“Your initiation,” she replied.
* * *
Mari paced the rustic cabin. The weathered gray floorboards creaked under her boots with every anxious step. Nessa had locked herself away in the back room an hour ago, maybe two—time was hard to track. It was hard to think at all.
I can have this, she thought. I can have everything I ever wanted.
But witches are evil. Everybody knows that.
But Nessa isn’t evil. She’s my friend. She helped me. Taught me. She was the only one there for me when…
The memory hit her like a fist. The knight from the Order of the Autumn Lance slamming her down into the mud. Trampling her dreams. Laughing at her.
“Get this through your head,” he’d growled into her ear after beating her bloody. “We don’t want you. Nobody wants you, and nobody ever will.”
But Nessa wants me, Mari thought, and the thought wrapped the wound in her heart with warm gauze. Nessa wants me.
She paced faster and faster, nervous tension driving her footsteps, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. When she’d become…agitated in the past, Werner always suggested she spend some time meditating. She unconsciously reached for her hip pouch, where the brooch she prayed upon rested.
Then she remembered throwing it into the river, watching it sink beneath the cold black waters.
Her weapons. Her practice. That solace was always there for her. She stopped in her tracks and drew her batons, dropping into a battle stance. She slowed her breathing, ignoring her pounding heart as she spun her arms in slow, serpentine motions, stepping through each of her fighting forms in order. The rhythms of her breath fell in line with the rhythm of her weapons. The sticks became an extension of her body, an extension of her will. No thought, no anxiety, only the dance.
The bedroom lock clicked. The door creaked open.
The dance ceased.
Nessa had traded her usual blue dress for a gown of ocher brown that blended with the tawny feathers of her cloak. Her lips were painted as black as her long, straight hair. Her eyelids, too, sapphire eyes bright behind her glasses.
“Are…are you a moonseer?” Mari asked.
Nessa gave a tiny shake of her head and gestured to her face.
“No, I simply find the affectation amusing. Mari, where do you think the Lady’s miracles come from?”
She tilted her head. “From the Lady. Where else?”
“Sweet, naive girl.” Nessa closed the distance between them, her cloak sweeping out behind her. “Mari, there are no miracles. The Lady of Five Hundred Names is as real as any other god, which is to say, not at all. It was only ever us. The art of the wise, in the hands of the clever. Simple witchcraft.”
“What do you mean?” Mari fumbled for words, her mind stumbling over a dozen questions at once. “Why?”
Nessa laughed, though kindly, and replied as if the answer was obvious.
“So they’d stop killing us for it. A man will accept from a god what he cannot accept from his wife or daughter. After all, how dare we have gifts that others do not? How dare we have avenues of power that self-styled authorities cannot control or steal for their own? How dare we be free? So much safer, then, to claim the mantle of a humble priestess, a helpless bystander to the power she secretly commands.”
Nessa slowly circled Mari, reaching out to brush a fingertip down her knight’s arm.
“All those years you spent in pious devotion. Praying to the Lady. Meditating on her virtues. Did she ever answer your call, even once?”
Mari shook her head. Very, very slowly.
“And tell me, Mari, what would you rather believe? That the Lady was never real…or that she is real, and she doesn’t love you?”
Nobody wants you, said the voice in the back of Mari’s mind, and nobody ever will.
Nessa took hold of her hand, fingers twining tight with hers.
“But I am real,” Nessa told her. “Have faith in me.”
“So…the moonseers hide what they really are. But you don’t,” Mari said softly. “You don’t hide. Not like that.”
“A true witch,” she replied, “is cautious, but she does not hide. She merely waits.”
“Waits for what?”
Nessa squeezed Mari’s hand, then let go.
“For a day like this. Are you ready, Mari? You don’t have to say yes. If you come with me, if you join us…that’s forever. You know that, don’t you? There’s no going back.”
Mari’s gaze flicked away. Memories of the past washed over her and pooled on the floor at her feet. Her refugee years, a war child in Belle Terre. Winter’s Reach. Meeting Werner. Losing Werner. Her dream, beaten out of her. Her faith, drowned in a river.
She shook her head, leaving it all behind.
“I don’t have anything to go back to,” she said.
Nessa smiled. “Then let us begin.”
She reached under her feathered cloak and drew out a knife. Copper-bladed, with a handle of cherry-stained wood. She balanced it between her outstretched fingers, so Mari could see.
“I own many blades, Mari, but this one is special. It’s called a Cutting Knife.”
Mari peered at the blade. “All knives are cutting knives.”
“Not like this. Watch.”
Nessa turned to the side, brow furrowed in concentration as she pointed the knife’s tip at empty air. She whispered, a singsong chant that Mari couldn’t quite make out spilling from her lips in a sibilant stream. She didn’t seem to inhale at all—the whispered chant went on and on, without pause, one impossibly long and twisting word drawn from the witch’s lips like an endless stream of colored handkerchiefs from a street performer’s pocket.
Mari’s vision slipped into a dreamlike haze. Or maybe that was the cabin itself, the sunlight turning to shades of sepia and silver, the air growing sluggish and thick. So thick she could barely move, the air pinning her arms to her sides, her breath flowing like molasses in her lungs.
The last syllable of the one-word chant slipped from Nessa’s lips and wriggled through the open air as she drove the knife forward and pierced…nothing. The gleaming tip vanished, impaled inside something Mari couldn’t see.
Then Nessa dragged the blade downward with both hands, scowling with utter determination, and cut a gash in the world.
The air sagged, curling at the edges of a midnight void. A tear in the fabric of reality, some five feet long and a few inches across. Wide-eyed, Mari stepped to one side, circling it like a wary cat. Nessa sheathed her knife and wrapped her fingers around the edge of the tear, pulling, stretching it wider.
“Don’t be afraid,” Nessa said. “It’s just a doorway. A shortcut, through the Shadow In-Between.”
“In between what?” Mari said, her eyes fixed on the tear.
“In between everything.”
Nessa reached out to her,
fingers outstretched, holding the tear open with her other hand.
“Mari. Come with me. Take my hand.”
She took a halting step backward.
“I…I don’t know if I can.”
“You can,” Nessa said, “but it has to be your choice. You have to want it. I’m going to the coven glade, Mari. With you or without you. You can take my hand, or you can say goodbye forever, but you have to choose for yourself.”
The ragged edges of the tear whipped like flags in a windstorm, agitated, the world trying to knit itself back together again. Nessa held it fast in a white-knuckled grip.
“Do…do you really want me to be your knight?” Mari asked her.
Nessa smiled. “Oh, Mari. More than anything.”
Mari reached out and took her hand. And Nessa pulled her into the darkness.
CHAPTER SIX
There was velvet shadow, and the scent of roses, and the faint far-off sound of wind chimes.
Then Nessa and Mari emerged into a forest clearing under the sliver of a new moon, dew-damp grass under their feet. Standing torches dotted the clearing, casting their yellow glow across towering pine trees. Mari still clung to Nessa’s hand, even as the tear at their backs whipped shut with a scratching, sucking sound.
“How is it nighttime?” she asked. “It was just morning when we left.”
“This,” Nessa said, “is a faraway place.”
Mari looked up to the moon, and the world dropped out from under her feet. Her mouth hung open as she stared at the night sky. The canopy of stars was one thing too many, one step too far, and it paralyzed her.
“Nessa,” she breathed.
“Yes, Mari. What is it?”
“The stars. You’ve been teaching me the constellations.”
Mari raised a trembling finger to the sky.
“Those aren’t our stars.”
Nessa gently pulled her hand from Mari’s grip and touched her shoulder.
“I told you,” Nessa said, “this is a faraway place.”
Terms of Surrender (The Revanche Cycle Book 3) Page 3
