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I am, before anything else, a survivor:
Among those who matter I am known and notorious. I am the Catamite Prince; the Day Prince; the Prince of Ruin. I am the last scion of my dead father’s dead court, once called the Sun Throne, brightest of all Arcana, now just so much ash and rubble.
You can learn a lot about a person by the way they fight—profession, temperament, sometimes even ethnicity or nationality.
“You don’t call; you don’t write,” Brand said in my ear.
a flash drive in the USB port. It was programmed to do all of the work for me, which was just
moment of static and Julia said, “I’ve got similar reports from the other mercs in that wing. The rooms must be shielded. Not everyone was
A normal job went like this: I went somewhere I shouldn’t, I tried not to get caught, and if I did, Brand shot someone in the head. It was a good day when the corpse had pizza money.
“Someone’s yelling and I haven’t had coffee,” I said.
Now and then there’s a tabloid sighting, largely at truck stops and waffle houses. Every culture, it appears, has an Elvis.
People thought I shut down after the attack, but that’s not completely true. That night in the Bowers? That was a turning point. That’s when I realized that everything was different and always would be.
I didn’t think I could come up with a distraction better than a bloody car, but I put everything I had into my sabre.
Some people got the shakes after an adrenaline surge. Brand got pissed.
“If we get you killed your first week, people will make fun of us,” I said.
I thought, Down is good. Lying down would be better. Lying down several city blocks away would be ideal.
Tattoos were uncomfortably close to runes, and sometimes they took on a life of their own.
I said, “Just to make sure I’ve got things right, this is a prison cell, isn’t it? You’re not just ducking your mom because you got drunk and woke up with a sailor?”
And there weren’t too many scion mercenaries on the market.
I liked men who danced. It was something I was far too self-conscious to do well myself.
“Is Lord Tower expecting us?” Addam asked. “Lord Saint Nicholas, with all respect, people in a five-block radius are expecting you.”
Lord Tower was a man who ordered people’s death from a chaise lounge. Anything that required his presence over an actual battle map was unsettling on a global scale.
and Max, who stared at me like the last bit of safety in the world was sinking out of sight. It occurred to me that my maybe going off and dying was one more thing he wasn’t prepared to handle, not after losing everything in his life just days ago. I tried to tell him that Brand would remember to feed him if I didn’t come back. It hadn’t been my funniest moment.
“Maybe not, but oaths are tricky things. Just the other week I made one and got a teenager out of it.”
It was so much easier to fight the monsters outside my head.
When he heard Addam approach, he turned and stretched his arms upward to bring his front into the best definition. The trap was sprung. I couldn’t see Addam’s face, but his shoulders actually sank as he caught sight of Brand’s endowment. Addam turned and gave me such a comic expression that I started laughing. “Again,” I reminded him, loud enough for Brand to hear, “not a competition for my attentions.”
“Rune of Sun House, I believe that you are meant for great things. I truly, truly do. Your story has barely begun. It is my honor to be along for what has been, and is, and will be one hell of a ride. So don’t leave me on the bench again. That’s all I wanted to say.” He
Brand said, “Shut the fuck up and start yelling ‘Polo.’ I’M COMING TO YOU.” I smiled and said, “Meet you in the middle.”
“That’s not a plan; it’s the absence of options. No.”
“I guess I’d like to see Ashton’s fat fucking face when the Day King heads his way with a mass sigil filled with Fire.”
“I need to go. Help Brand upstairs?” I asked Addam. “Don’t you fucking dare,” Brand said when Addam offered a shoulder. “Just,” I said, and waved at Brand, “wipe him off and superglue everything shut.”
This. This is what it meant to be Arcana. Using the mass sigil for a defense spell had been an awesome exercise in power. But using a mass sigil for offensive magic was the difference between being witness to, and the cause of, awe.
I thought about what had happened in the carriage house, and how I’d spent twenty years ready for this moment. Ready to close my eyes without the weight of knowing they’d reopen.
“Admit it,” I told him. “You were peeking around the corner, waiting for the last possible second to make your entrance. You Arcana are such drama queens.”
There are moments in your life that are so impossibly large that it’s difficult to even comprehend them. They make your very bones vibrate. Standing there, it was like my future spiraled outward. Waves of possibility crashed on each other, bound by the insane certainty that everything could start. That everything could finally start.
