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And there it was. There he was, sitting at a table on the far side of the tavern with three of his dim-witted friends, his back to the corner so he could keep a weather eye on the crowd. Carrion Swift: the most notorious gambler, cheat, and smuggler in the entire city.
His hair was copper and gold and burnished umber, as if each strand were a fine thread of the metals that were so precious to Queen Madra.
I hated to admit it, but it was that confidence that had lured me into his bed. I’d wanted to disprove it, to show him that his self-assuredness was nothing more than a façade.
“I never met a rule I didn’t wanna break, Sunshine.”
The guy just didn’t know when to quit. I spun around, scowling at him. “What!” “Even filthy and tired, you’re still beautiful.” “Gods and martyrs,” I whispered.
How, after over a thousand years, did the queen still live? Madra was human, so why didn’t she die?
The rebels my mother had helped before her death had done more than hide in our attic. They had trained me. Taught me how to steal. How to survive. How to fight.
No guilt. No mercy. No time.
Rage washed my vision red. They’d killed my mother. My friends. Elroy’s entire family.
If you’re gonna fight any of us, you’re gonna fight me.
And just when he was getting comfortable, when this predator thought he’d finally gotten a read on my capabilities as a fighter… I stopped holding back. His eyes went wide when he saw it happen. When I loosened in my stance and brought the blade up to guard my face. The second when I bared my teeth and came for him.
“Go and see the old man. He’ll let you stay with him now.
I’d planned every minute possibility and eventuality and decided that it could be done, and it would be done. By me.
“Six. Ounces. And our water doesn’t come from a tap. It comes from a standing reservoir that fills from your run-off. Do you understand what that means?” “There’s a filtration process—” “There’s a grate,” I snarled. “It catches the solids.”
“If I seem healthy to you, then that’s because I’ve been stealing from the Hub’s water reservoirs my entire life.”
Because we say no.
Do you know much about metalwork, Captain? I do. It’s under the most unbearable conditions that the sharpest, most dangerous weapons are forged. And we are dangerous, Captain. She’s turned us all into weapons. That is why she won’t suffer my people to live.”
Why would a room within Madra’s own fortress need such an imposing door, and why would it need to be kept locked?
Balea and Min, the physical embodiment of Zilvaren’s suns—twin sisters, identical in appearance, beautiful and cruel.
“You took something of mine, girl, and I am not in the business of letting theft slide. So, I will take from you. First, your life. Then, I’ll make a column of greasy smoke out of those who matter to you, and when they’re gone, I will tear the Third Ward to the ground. For the next one hundred years, anyone foolish enough to think twice about stealing from me will remember the black day Saeris Fane offended the Zilvaren crown and a hundred thousand people paid the price.”
Sick. Twisted. That’s what she was. Madra’s fair face had fooled many, but a dark, ugly pit roiled away behind the mask she wore. I saw it. I felt it in her words.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” he said. And then he brought the blade swinging down.
Escape. Escape. Escape.
“How… are you doing that?” he grunted. “That… isn’t… possible.”
The stillness wanted the blade, and so it took it. As if I had a third, invisible hand, I reached out toward the dagger, and I wrapped my will around it. The weapon trembled, its tip quivering.
Saeris Fane was twenty-four years of age when she died. Honestly, she should have died a lot sooner, but the girl never did know when to give up.
Fuck this city and fuck this world.
The torches resting in the sconces blazed, roaring as their flames danced and leaped, casting an eerie orange glow up the walls. On the ground, the silver threads persisted in climbing up Harron’s legs, probing, ever moving upward, on a mission to find skin.
“Saeris, no! Do not touch the sword. Do not… turn the key!” he panted. “Do not open the gate! You—you’ve no idea the hell you will unleash on this place!” He thought I would care?
The sword was old. I felt its age on the air somehow—a prickle of energy that spoke of hidden, ancient places.
The sword was free, and every part of me knew that it wasn’t going back into… Into… I was sinking.
Emerging from the silver, the huge figure rose up from the pool as if ascending from the very depths of hell itself. Broad shoulders. Wet, shoulder-length black hair. Tall. Taller than any other man I’d ever seen. His eyes shone an iridescent, shimmering green, the pupil of the right eye rimmed by the same shining metallic silver that ran in ribbons from the black leather armor that covered his chest and arms.
I had never for one moment imagined his voice might also be the stroke of velvet in the ever-encroaching darkness.
Of course Death was beautiful. How else would anyone choose to go with him without putting up a fight?
he was still the most savagely beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
My silent scream died on my lips as Death carried me into the pool. The darkness took me before the silver could.
Her voice was soft and sweet and made me miss my mother in a way that caused me to ache inside. I couldn’t understand the things she sang about. Her words were a mystery, the language she spoke unfamiliar and strange.
This bed was far bigger, for starters, and it didn’t smell like muskrat. A set of immaculate white sheets covered my body, on top of which lay a thick,
Her skin was pale, her eyes a vivid shade of green.
They were pointed.
“Ahh. Saeris. A pretty name. A Fae name. How are you feeling? You’re sore, I bet, but you must be feeling a lot better than when you first arrived.”
Long hair is a sign of high-born status for Fae women. Others will be jealous of your dark coloring, too. Dark hair is a royal trait amongst the Yvelian Fae.”
Bal. Mithin. Balea. Min. The Twins.
Now I saw him properly for the first time, and a wave of shock rippled through me, down to the roots of my soul.
His jaw was defined, marked with dark stubble, his cheekbones high, his nose arrow straight and proud. There was a dark freckle just below his right eye. And… those eyes. Gods. Eyes were not that color. I’d never seen that shade of green before—a jade so bright and vibrant that it didn’t look real. I’d noticed the filaments of silver threaded through his right iris back in Madra’s Hall of Mirrors, but I’d assumed I’d imagined them, being so close to death and all.
This was a treasure beyond Madra’s hoard of gold. More precious than rubies and diamonds. The information inside a place like this was too vast to comprehend. And the light!
“Humans are usually weak, fickle creatures, but I’ll admit, I admire this one’s loyalty. She values her family over everything else. There’s something to be said for that.”
I thought about it. All of the times I’d made Elroy’s tools hum. That spinning blade on my dead mother’s dining table. The guardian’s gauntlet, when I’d slammed it down on top of the wall—how its vibrations had made the grains of quartz in the sand dance. How I’d turned Harron’s dagger into a river of molten silver and steel.
“You’re my brother,” Everlayne hissed. “Though I sometimes wish you weren’t!”
“Careful, little sister,” Kingfisher rumbled. “We don’t want to spill all of our secrets in one go now.”
