Grave Destiny

by Kalayna Price

  “What’s your name?” I asked the shade, more from habit than need.

  “Kordon the shadow-sculptor,” the small shade answered, his voice much deeper than I would have expected for a fae so small. Just because he was the size of a child didn’t mean I should expect him to be childlike.

  I shot a glance at Falin. “You guys can hear him okay?” I asked. At his nod, I focused on the shade again. “How did you die?”

  “I was in my workshop, sculpting a particularly intricate shadow. I didn’t hear anyone enter, but I felt the hand land on my shoulder a second before the pain cut across my throat. I struggled, choking on blood. Darkness closed in on me.” The shade said all of this without a hint of emotion touching his voice or the horror he must have experienced changing his placid expression. “Everything went still and silent. I couldn’t move. Nothing sounded right. Nothing felt right. And then . . .” The shade trailed off as the memories ran their course to the end.

  Dugan’s brow furrowed. “And then what?”

  “Normally this is where I say ‘and then he died.’ But in this case, I think he died a while before the ‘and then’ because the memories I use to create shades record until the soul leaves the body. His body was dead, so time and sensation would have been harder for his trapped soul to process.” I gave a half shrug and then frowned at Dugan. “It sounds like he was murdered in the shadow court. You knew which of your fae was dead in winter before you walked into my office. Did you search your court for signs of foul play?”

  Dugan’s lips twisted, not quite a frown, but an expression that said either he was trying not to scowl or he was thinking about something that almost provoked a scowl. After a moment he said, “When rumors reached us that he was dead in the winter halls, I went to Kordon’s home and let myself in. Nothing looked out of place. I searched for his workshop but could not locate it.”

  “I’m assuming you don’t mean that you got lost?”

  Now he did frown. “Faerie taking his workshop was enough for me to believe he was indeed missing and that the whispers of his death were true.”

  So as Falin had warned when we’d been in Stiofan’s room, Faerie had begun reclaiming the deceased’s properties. That meant we might never find the crime scene, so we needed to get as much information as we could from Kordon.

  Dugan stepped up to the edge of my circle. “Kordon, you saw nothing of who attacked you?”

  The shade didn’t answer. Shades couldn’t hear anyone but the grave witch who raised them. I rephrased the question before I repeated it.

  “Did you see who attacked you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who attacked you?” I asked before Dugan could form his next question because shades, having no will or personality, tended to be very literal. He could know something but not tell us because I phrased the question wrong.

  “No,” the shade said again.

  So much for that theory.

  “Did you have any unusual commissions or clients recently?” Dugan asked, and I repeated the question.

  “No.”

  “Has anyone been displeased with your shadows?”

  “No.”

  Well, we weren’t making much progress.

  Dugan asked several more questions relating to Kordon’s shadow-sculpting, but there was no indication his death was related to his work. When Dugan finally ran out of questions, I interjected my own.

  “Did you know Stiofan of the winter court?”

  “No.”

  I frowned at the shade. Aside from learning the location of the first crime scene, he hadn’t been helpful and I was already starting to tremble from the grave chill seeping through me. I didn’t want to hold his shade much longer if he couldn’t tell us more. Stiofan’s body was going to be trickier and I didn’t want to be exhausted if his ghost emerged enraged.

  Falin stepped forward. “Goblins have exceptional noses—though you might not guess it from their poor hygiene. Ask him if he smelled anything out of place before the attack.”

  It was the first thing Falin had said since I began the ritual, and I repeated the question for the shade.

  “Honeysuckle,” the shade said. “I noticed it right before I felt the hand on my shoulder and noted that it was odd because honeysuckles don’t grow in the darkness of the shadow court.”

  I shot a glance at Falin as the shade spoke. He looked contemplative, but he didn’t offer any more questions. I didn’t think honeysuckles were any more likely to grow in the frost of the winter court than they were to grow in shadow. That definitely seemed to point to someone outside either court wanting winter and shadow at each other’s throats, but how had they moved so freely through both courts?

  “Any more questions?” I asked, glancing first at Falin and then Dugan. Both men shook their heads. “Rest now,” I told the shade, drawing back my living heat and magic with the words. The shade melted back into the body bag and then it was gone.

  I turned toward the other bag. With my shields open, the bag appeared tattered and worn, the body—and the silver glow of the soul—visible underneath. I reached outward with my magic, letting it sink into the body. The soul inside was warm and vibrant and didn’t like the frigid touch of the grave my magic carried. It fled from me but had nowhere to go, as the body around it was dead and just as cold.

  I shoved with my magic, and the tethers holding it to the flesh, which were already weakened by death, snapped. The soul rushed out of the corpse. It shimmered, almost too bright to look at for a moment. Then the brilliance faded and the soul transitioned to the land of the dead. The glow dimmed, the form solidifying into a ghost. Stiofan’s ghost’s arms flew up and he ducked, cowering as if hiding from a blow—which was likely the last thing he’d done before his body had died around him.

  I reached for the ghost with my magic, let my psyche’s invisible fingers tangle around him, ready to drain off energy if he charged me. At the same time, with the same invisible net of power, I exerted just enough magic to make the ghost visible to Falin and Dugan.

  “Stiofan?” I said, keeping my voice calm, level.

  The ghost jumped at his name, cringing back from me. He didn’t have many places to go. The circle was small and most of the space was filled with body bags.

  “Stiofan, you’re safe. No one here wants to hurt you.” Which was true enough. He’d already suffered pretty much the worst thing that could happen to him. I could pull the very energy from his soul, but I wouldn’t as long as he didn’t threaten me. So, aside from the already-being-dead part, he was in pretty good shape.

  Stiofan lowered his arms, peeking over his clenched fists, but he remained crouched. His nearly translucent eyes were wide, flickering quickly as if he was trying to look at everything, but likely seeing nothing in his panic. I didn’t hold that against him. He’d been murdered recently. If there was ever a reason to panic, that topped the list.

  Unlike Kordon’s shade, who’d manifested looking like the very last memory his body recalled before the soul vacated, Stiofan’s ghost showed no sign of the trauma he’d suffered before death. His clothes were clean of blood and were some sort of dated court ensemble I could only summon the world “frippery” to describe. The ghost sported no visible wounds and, aside from the cowering, looked like he’d been through nothing worse than the strong wind still whipping through the circle. While shades were a corpse’s memories given shape by my magic, a ghost was a soul’s energy given shape by their own willpower. Ghosts tended to be how a person saw themselves instead of a true representation of how they looked. They had all the knowledge and personality of the person they had been—were the essence of the person they had been, sans body. And just as with a living person, my magic had absolutely no control over them.

  “Stiofan,” I said again, crouching down to his level. The bag holding Kordon’s body was between us, and I had no intenti
on of stepping over it. One, I didn’t like the idea of crawling over a dead body, and two, I might need that extra space if Stiofan switched from flight to fight in his panic. I could have touched Stiofan, offered that very human reassurance of a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. But neither of us was human, and just because I was a grave witch and he was dead didn’t mean I had any more ability to comfort this stranger than if he had been alive. “Stiofan, can you hear me? No one here is your enemy.”

  His frantic gaze landed on me and caught long enough that he actually saw me. He jumped, scrambling back until his ass hit the edge of my circle, stopping him. Being stopped by what likely seemed to him to be nothing more than thin air jolted him again, and he fell back against it, his shoulders and head slamming into the barrier.

  A permanently etched and frequently used circle was stronger than a temporary one, even with my weak mastery of witchy magic, so while I could feel the feedback in the barrier, it didn’t so much as shudder. That didn’t mean I wanted the ghost to stay plastered against the edge of the circle. Stiofan would eventually overload the circle, and probably get a lot of his energy sapped in the process.

  “I’m Alex Craft. I mean you no harm.”

  The ghost blinked at me. The panic was still written in every tense line of his face and jerky movement of his hands, but a spark of recognition lit in his eyes. He stilled, wrapping his arms across his chest, and thankfully leaned away from the edge of my circle. “You, you’re the queen’s planeweaver.”

  I opened my mouth to dispute the Winter Queen’s claim to me, but then I squashed the urge. The distinction wasn’t important for this interview. I forced what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

  The ghost’s gaze moved past me, and I saw the small cringe, the slight hitch of his shoulders, and the compression of his lips when he spotted Falin. If he’d reacted to almost anyone else that way I would have been suspicious that they might be involved with his death, but I’d seen the court fae around Falin before. While the independent fae feared him because he enforced the queen’s will, the court fae despised him because he carried the entire court’s shed blood. Every death from every duel or execution throughout the court’s history had been passed to the queen’s knight and then from knight to knight, leaving the courtiers spotless. It granted Falin, as the current knight, some magical benefits in everything from endurance and healing to strength, speed, and skill. But it made him the pariah of the court. He was a reminder of the fact that while the fae may be extremely long-lived, they were not immortal. That unfair stigma and disdain was what I saw in Stiofan’s face when he looked at Falin, a prejudice he’d likely held for centuries and long before Falin was born or became the current Winter Knight.

  Little late to fear mortality now. But some habits were too entrenched to let a little thing like his own death interfere or change.

  His gaze moved on, and as soon as it landed on the Shadow Prince, his shoulders slammed into my circle again as he tried to backpedal.

  “Stiofan, this is Prince Dugan of shadow. I am helping him and the winter court get to the bottom of what happened to you.”

  Stiofan glanced at me, and for a moment, incomprehension animated his features. Then he straightened and stood. The movement was graceful with no sign of the jerky panic that had flooded him the moment before. His hands moved to the frilly ruffles peeking out from the cuffs of his coat, straightening and fluffing them. As he did, I could all but see the layers of arrogant confidence close around him like a type of armor. By the time he looked up again, it was to scan the room and its occupants with the aloof disdain I was quite familiar with seeing on the faces of court fae.

  “What manner of horrible little hovel have you brought me to? I demand to know the reason I am here.”

  “This is my office. You’re here so we can ask you some questions.”

  Stiofan sneered and flicked—almost certainly imaginary—dust from his fine jacket. “I have no interest in answering questions and I demand you return me to the court at once. Either way I will be taking this up with the queen, but perhaps my language will be kinder if you release me quickly.”

  Good luck with that one. Not only would the queen not be able to see or hear him without me, but without a land of the dead, he couldn’t exist in Faerie. I glanced at Falin and Dugan. The former scowled at Stiofan, not aggressively but as if he considered the dead fae’s disdain a waste of time. Dugan, on the other hand, looked so carefully blank and unconcerned that his expressionless mask betrayed that he was hiding his reaction. Shock? As he’d never seen a ghost before. Anger? As this particular ghost was an ass. I wasn’t sure.

  Technically, I didn’t need Stiofan’s ghost to answer any questions. I just needed it out of the way so I could get to his shade. Raising his shade in front of his ghost seemed a little callous, but if he was going to be an obstinate jerk, I might not have many options. Shades had to answer me. Ghosts could do whatever the hell they wanted.

  “What is the last thing you remember?” I asked, giving the ghost one last chance to cooperate.

  He tilted his chin so that he appeared to look down on me despite being nearly the same height. “I recall being assaulted in my bedchambers. I assume I have you three miscreants to thank for that.” He sneered at me. “I don’t care how special the queen thinks you are; when she hears that you’ve captured one of her nobles and used some sort of magic to hold me against my will . . . Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be you. I doubt you’ll see the outside of Rath this century. Kidnapping a noble—”

  I attempted to interrupt him. “One, that isn’t what is happening here,” I said, lifting first one finger and then following it with a second. “And two, we have the queen’s—”

  He wasn’t about to allow me to cut him off, but spoke louder. “—is a near unforgivable offense, which you might know if you weren’t a glorified feykin pretending to be a true-blooded Sleagh Maith. Now release me from your ridiculous spell before I grow truly angry and make you wish you hadn’t hesitated. In fact—”

  My teeth snapped shut, the irritation clawing at me as cutting as the wind whipping around the circle. Apparently I wasn’t the only one sick of listening to Stiofan insult and threaten me.

  “You’re dead, you pompous prick,” Falin said. The words were soft, but clear. Spoken much quieter than Stiofan’s haughty threats. And yet they shut the ghost up immediately, his sentence left incomplete.

  “Is that a threat, Knight?” Stiofan still had his chin raised, his expression frozen in disdainful irritation, but there was a slight quiver in his hands, and his Adam’s apple wobbled when he swallowed.

  “The Winter Knight is being quite literal,” Dugan said. “You died, thus you are dead. No threat. Just a statement.”

  Stiofan’s ghost shot a skeptical glance from Dugan to Falin before shaking his head. “What manner of vicious prank is this? And how are you managing to tell such falsehoods? Am I victim to some spell you’ve concocted to allow lies past your lips? I’m not dead. That is easily evident. I’m . . .” He lifted his hands, looking at them. “Fine.” He frowned, flipping his hands over and then back again. “I’m fine?” The second time he said it, there was clear uncertainty in his voice. His gaze moved down until it landed on the body bag near his feet.

  The body bag containing his own body.

  He stared at it for one drawn-out moment while I tried to figure out what to say. With him having gone from panicked and cowering to imperiously disdainful, I was less inclined to try to make any attempt to comfort the ghost. At the same time, his realization that he’d been killed was unfolding in front of me, and it was painful to watch.

  Stiofan knelt and reached for the body bag. His hand wavered a moment, and then it thrust forward all at once, reaching for the zipper as though if he didn’t grab it right at that moment, he would lose his nerve and never be able to touch it at all.

  His hand passed t
hrough the zipper, disappearing into the sealed bag. He yelped and jerked his hand back as if stung. I doubted it had actually hurt him—though it was his own body in the bag, so maybe that changed the rules of interaction—but most likely it was surprise that the world around him wasn’t tangible that had caused his reaction.

  “What deceit is this?” he asked, his angry, disbelieving gaze slamming into me.

  “It’s true. You died, tonight presumably.” My words came out kinder than I felt, which I was rather proud of. “You were attacked in your bed. We are investigating your murder.”

  Chapter 6

  Being a ghost, Stiofan couldn’t actually blanch—he lacked the blood supply—but he wobbled as if he might faint. “I’m dead?” He looked smaller now, the self-importance he’d been holding himself up with deflated. “How . . . ?”

  “You mentioned being attacked,” I prompted. “Can you tell us what you remember?”

  His gaze took a long time to focus on me, as if he was gazing through all the could-have-beens that had been lost with his death. “Pain.”

  “What?” Dugan asked.

  “Pain. It was what woke me.” Stiofan’s lower lip trembled with the words, and he caught it between his teeth, stilling it. “Someone held my arms above my head, pinning them down. A pillow was over my face. And the pain, lancing through me, over and over. It was like a nightmare that wouldn’t end.”

  Shades, being only magic and memory with no soul, might have been unaffected by reciting the events of their deaths, but ghosts had no such buffer. They were souls, the very essence of the person they had been. And the horror of his death played over Stiofan’s face as he spoke. His arms wrapped across his chest, and he seemed to shrink with each word and each remembered stab.