The Dead and the Dusk (The Nightmare Court Book 2)

by Val Saintcrowe

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

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  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Dead and the Dusk

  The Nightmare Court, Book Two

  Val Saintcrowe

  THE DEAD AND THE DUSK

  © copyright 2020 by Val Saintcrowe

  http://vjchambers.com

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Nicce picked up her spoon and began eating the stew that was sitting in front of her. She was seated at a table in a tavern. Across from her was Sir Eithan Draig, the man she’d been trained all her life to kill. Now, things were tangled up between them, owing to the fact that thinking of him made her feel tight in the wrong places and that they were discussing her surrender of a large quantity of her blood to him.

  Eithan didn’t speak for a long time. He tried, his mouth working, drawing in noisy breaths. But he let all his breaths back out without speaking a word. He looked frustrated. He was a tall man with dark hair that fell in shaggy lengths past his chin, nearly to his shoulders, which were enormous. He was thick and muscled and attractive, but in a strange way, because he had glowing eyes and an unnatural way about him. He always seemed a bit monstrous.

  Nicce tore off a chunk of the bread they’d purchased and used it to sop up her stew. “I suppose you’re going to tell me Ciaska can’t be killed.” She was used to finding out hard truths, after all, and she didn’t know much about the gods, even though she was fairly sure that her father had been Sullo, the sun god. She’d never met her father, of course. She only thought so because, on occasion, her blood turned to liquid sunlight, which surely meant that there was something extraordinary about her.

  “No,” said Eithan. “I believe she could be. Theoretically, of course. Obviously, I’ve never seen anyone kill her, since she’s still alive.”

  “There are stories about gods being threatened by humans,” said Nicce. “I think they are more vulnerable than we give them credit for. Rhodes and I had theory that they were simply creatures from another world, and that—in that world—they are nothing special, but in our world, they are worshiped because of their abilities. That they stumbled through one of those portals like the one you have in the dark forest, and they continue to visit just because it’s a lark to be a god.”

  Eithan furrowed his brow. He picked up his glass and drained it of ale. “I don’t think it’s quite that way.”

  “Why not?”

  “I live half of my life on the other side of the portal. It is not a world full of other beings, except for, well, the nightmares, which you have seen.”

  She shivered. Horrible creatures. Monsters. Mindless things with teeth and claws and scales and too many tentacled legs.

  “But the gods, at least Ciaska, because she is the only god I have met, are definitely less divine than you might think she would be, and much more…” He searched for a word. “Human? She is more human than you would expect.”

  Nicce chewed thoughtfully on another piece of bread.

  “I think it might be possible to kill her,” said Eithan. “I think she would die if dealt a mortal wound. But she is strong. She protects herself with a mist that is almost alive. She uses it to kill, to hurt.”

  “Well, that is why we would use my blood to weaken her.”

  “No, no.” He shook his head. “We don’t want to give her your blood. That would allow her to come out during the day. That would make her more powerful.” Up until recently, Eithan had been unable to walk in the sun, but after he had drunk Nicce’s blood in an attempt to turn her and take her to the Nightmare Court as a sacrifice, he had been changed, and now the sun did not hurt him.

  “But when you first drank my blood, it seemed to hurt you,” she said. “You were incapacitated. You were in pain. I thought you were dying.”

  “I thought I was dying as well,” he said. “And for weeks afterward, it burned inside me. I thought it might slowly eat through me.”

  “But then it got better?”

  “But then I happened to have sunlight touch me, and it healed the pain,” he said.

  “Well, there, that’s perfect. We give her my blood, and then deal her a mortal wound before she can ever get into the sunlight,” said Nicce.

  “Hmm.” He considered. “It might work. But we can’t be sure your blood will have any effect on her.”

  “You were changed by her, yes? She made you into her creature, and your abilities are shadows of her stronger power,” said Nicce.

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “So, it will work on her.”

  “It might,” he said. “But all I want to do is to escape her. I have no plans to kill her.”

  “Haven’t you ever wanted her to die?” said Nicce.

  “Only constantly.”

  She spread her hands.

  “It can’t be that easy,” said Eithan.

  “My father is the sun god,” said Nicce. “Ciaska and the sun god have a rivalry. My power is deadly to her. I think it all makes sense.” Maybe it was why she’d been born. She had heard various versions of the way that her mother had become pregnant with her, but what remained the same in all of them was that there had been a ritual to summon Sullo, and that he had come. She had been born to serve Sullo, and maybe the way to do that was to kill Ciaska.

  Of course, once she’d done that, she was probably going to find a way to kill Sullo, too, and then she would find a way to kill the rest of them as well. The Four Kingdoms had been in the thrall of the gods for generations, and the gods were a blight on existence as near as she could tell. Their interference did little more than to terrorize the people.

  Eithan eyed her. “All right. Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s meant to be?” He took a deep breath. “We have to try, anyway.”

  She smiled. “You’re right. I think we do. It’s funny, you know. When I was training all my life, being brought up by assassins with the purpose of killing you, all I ever wanted was to be a normal girl. I thought I wanted some mundane life, no danger or pain. But then you drank my blood and it nearly killed you, and I was free. Finally free. And…” She stopped smiling. She thought about it all, how she should have been content, but how something had itched at her, something just at the back of her neck, something that called for her to do more. She wasn’t normal. She never would be. She didn’t
even want to be, not anymore.

  “And?” Eithan said, raising his eyebrows.

  “And it wasn’t enough,” she said. “I don’t want to be normal. I want to do something that matters. I want to make the world a better place. And what I’m good at is killing. It’s what I was trained to do. So, I’m going to kill Ciaska. I think it would be more easily accomplished if we work together, but if you don’t want my help, I’ll find a way to do it on my own.”

  He smirked. “You know, I bet you would.”

  She grinned at him, and they held each other’s gazes for just a bit too long, and she thought of him apologizing, only moments ago, for being attracted to her. He’d even used the word aroused.

  She felt a flutter in her stomach, and she hated that.

  Eithan Draig had drained the blood from over a hundred women over the past century. He claimed to have done it to save lives, but that didn’t change how much blood was on his hands. It was because of Eithan Draig that her teacher and friend and surrogate father Rhodes was dead. Rhodes had killed himself, but only to avoid betraying Nicce to Eithan. Because Eithan had pursued her and hunted her down, intent on draining her blood as well. He was not a good man. She had every reason to hate him.

  She wasn’t sure why she felt as though she was constantly having to convince herself of that.

  Sun and bones, the man was infuriating.

  But they were still sitting there, gazing at each other across the table, both with stupid smiles on their faces, and she felt warm all over, and he seemed so affected by her, and this was going to make working together so much harder.

  She picked up her cup of ale and drained it, trying to defuse whatever it was between them. She set the cup back on the table. “So, do we have an alliance between us, then?”

  “I believe we do,” he said. He offered her his hand, stretching it across the table.

  She took it, shocked again by how cold and lifeless his skin felt.

  They shook quickly and then they both pulled away from the other, and there was no more smiling.

  “Well,” she said. “How should we start?”

  * * *

  How to start, according to Eithan, was to figure out how to get her blood to change from blood to liquid sunlight. If she sliced open her finger accidentally, for instance, she bled as red as anyone. The change had happened twice now, once when Eithan had been drinking her blood and once when Diakos, the head of the Guild, had tried to kill her.

  She was eager to try it right then and there, but Eithan insisted they get some rest. They’d been through an ordeal that day, fighting and killing numerous members of the Guild, including Diakos, and then traveling for a long time on horseback. It was now the middle of the night.

  Eithan said they should sleep.

  So, Nicce, who had stolen coin from the Guild, procured them two of the rooms above the tavern, and they settled in for the night.

  The rooms were small, only containing room enough for a narrow bed and a small table with a water basin on top. Nicce thought she’d lie awake. She didn’t feel the slightest bit tired. But once she was in bed, her exhaustion found her and she slipped off into a dreamless and dark sleep.

  Morning came, and with it Eithan knocking on her door. He had brought food for her and he watched as she ate it, claiming he’d already eaten.

  She asked him if he needed food to live, considering he didn’t age.

  He told her he didn’t, but that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy eating.

  She gobbled down her food quickly, ready to get started.

  Eithan brought the water basin from his room, and she cut her arm, and red rivulets ran down to collect in the bottom of the basin.

  It hurt. She made a fist and squeezed, trying to get the blood to flow faster. She gazed at it, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. It was just red blood, normal blood, and it smelled of copper.

  Eithan’s face changed at the sight of it, the smell of it. He ducked his head down, scrubbing a hand over his face. She could see that he was ashamed of his reaction to the blood.

  But she protested when he wrapped up her wound and stanched the bleeding.

  “We’ve barely started,” she said.

  “It’s not working,” he said.

  “Well, you’d bled me out for quite some time when it changed over with the two of us,” she said. “Maybe it takes a while.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But if so, perhaps I should leave the room while you bleed, so that I’m not so…”

  “Do you really want to drink it that badly?” She raised her eyebrows.

  He shifted on his chair as if he couldn’t sit still. “None of the knights need to drink blood, but we all have a taste for it. And yours…”

  That was right, he’d told her that he’d never tasted blood that was as good as hers, which had made her feel fluttery too, and she’d hated herself. She didn’t know what it was about Eithan Draig, but his unabashed desire for her was part of what caused her to react to him the way she did.

  “I don’t mind,” she told him, but her voice had a stupid breathy edge.

  His jaw twitched.

  “It doesn’t bother me, seeing you want it,” she went on, just to try to make her voice sound stronger. “And I know you can control yourself, so don’t concern yourself.”

  He slowly made fists of his hands. He rested them on his legs below the table.

  She started to unwind the bandage to let out more blood, but then she paused. “The second time it happened, with Diakos, I was dying. And when I was with you, bleeding out, my body was shutting down as well. What if that’s the key? What if I need to be near death?”

  Eithan’s shoulders slumped. “I hope not.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “I don’t relish the idea of bringing you to the brink of death. It seems horribly risky, that’s why.”

  “But I won’t die. I don’t even know if I can die. I think the blood changes to heal me.”

  “You can’t know that,” he said. “It’s only a theory. If you did die…” He grimaced.

  “I won’t.”

  “I need you alive,” he said. “I need your blood.” He wasn’t looking at her.

  “I won’t die,” she said.

  He sighed, rubbing his chin. “Losing that much blood would weaken you.”

  “I’m telling you, I’ll heal. I wasn’t badly affected after you bled me out before.”

  “You’d need a lot to drink,” he said. “To help replenish the fluids you lost. I know this from the battlefield when I was still human. But all we ever had to drink was ale, and it would often worsen the situation, because ale flows through a man and takes more than it gives in terms of fluid.”

  “Maybe we should go to the mountains, where the streams are pure,” she said.

  “I was thinking we could simply boil water,” said Eithan. “But if you knew of a more private place than an inn like this, it might be something better undertaken away from prying eyes. There is nothing in the mountains, however, nothing but the Conclave and Castle Brinne. I don’t think the king will relish seeing me again.”

  “Yes, I heard you substituted Xenia for me as the bride,” said Nicce. “He likely didn’t thank you for the loss of his mistress.” She had spent some weeks living at the castle, during which there had been several issues, one of which was that the king had taken a shine to her and another was that Xenia was jealous of her. Still, when she’d heard what had befallen the girl, she hadn’t felt triumphant. She hadn’t felt truly threatened by Xenia, she supposed, and she felt sorry for her. The poor woman had been so intent on keeping her hold on the king, who was old and not particularly considerate. It had seemed a sad existence to Nicce. And then to have it ripped away, to have everything ripped away.

  “I was barely able to get out of bed after drinking your blood.” Eithan sounded defensive. “I still hadn’t healed the stab wound you gave me either. I felt as though I was burning from the inside out. And the god
dess came to me and said that I must have another girl by that night or the bargain was null and void. I picked her because she betrayed you. She was the one who told me where you were.”

  Nicce gave him an odd look. “She helped you. You wanted to find me. You punished her for giving you what you wanted?”

  “Well, at the time it hadn’t turned out so well for me, had it? You have no idea how painful it was.”

  She made a noise of disbelief, of disgust.

  “That’s not the reason,” Eithan muttered. “I was happy you were free. I was glad… I’m sorry I came after you again.” He sighed.

  She didn’t say anything. She looked down at the makeshift bandage on her arm. Crimson was seeping through it. Her blood was quite red.

  “Look at me,” said Eithan, a hitch in his voice.

  She didn’t. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Ask me to go and leave you be,” he said. “At this moment, I think I would sacrifice it all if you wished it. You have been through too much. I don’t want to be the instrument of your destruction. I don’t know if I can bear—”

  “Have you been listening to anything I said?” Her voice was sharp as she did raise her gaze. “It was my idea to go on the offensive against Ciaska. I want to kill her. I want to have something to do.”

  He shook his head at her. “This isn’t your fight.”

  “It is, because I’m making it my fight,” she said. “This is what I choose. I never chose to kill you. That was thrust upon me. Killing is what I do. It’s what I am good at.” Even though she had only taken a human life for the first time the evening before. Still, it had gone easily enough, and it hadn’t been just one. She’d perpetrated a slaughter, killing people she’d grown up with at the Guild, all to get free of them, all for this. She had a purpose again. That purpose was killing Ciaska, and she wouldn’t give up until it was done.

  “I don’t think that’s a good reason,” said Eithan.

  “And I don’t care what you think,” she said. “I need… a goal. A purpose. I’ve always had a purpose. Without one, everything is meaningless.”

  He scrutinized her, as if he couldn’t figure her out.