Chapter 10
10
Another day passes into night, and the hunt calls to me.
I can feel it in my veins, that restless itch beneath my skin. As I strap on my weapons with smooth familiarity, the pounding eases. This is my ritual, my dance.
I pull on stained trousers, blotched with old blood. The first sheath goes snug around my right thigh, followed by an identical one on the left. My favourite dagger slides home at the small of my back. I add another at my hip, within easy reach. One to each forearm and calf. This is my armour.
This is my war paint.
“Off to track someone specific?” Derrick’s voice drifts down from his perch on the carved wooden mantelpiece.
His skin glimmers in the firelight, shedding motes of rich saffron. It’s almost enough to gild the floorboards at my feet.
“I’ll see if I can sense any of the fae from the kill wall.”
Derrick makes a thoughtful sound. “In that case, bring me back a severed head.”
“I’m adding ‘collecting grisly body parts’ to the list of things I’ll never do for you,” I say, sliding a serrated blade into the sheath at my wrist.
“Just an eye! I promise not to put it on a pike.”
“No.”
“It’s an ancient and noble custom. In my warrior youth, the fiercest pixie fighters would take trophies from their kills to prove their valour in battle. I had a whole rack of ears that made everyone envious.”
“A rack of...Christ alive, never mind. I don’t want to know.” I turn and fix him with a stern look. “No severed body parts in my house. Not a finger, not a toe. Absolutely no ears on pikes.” I tick the banned items off on my fingers. “My standards may be shockingly low, but even I have limits.”
Derrick mutters something about unreasonable requests. “What’s the harm in a little decoration?”
“Please allow me to explain what’s wrong with that statement. One: ‘decor’ should never apply to dismembered body parts. Two: The servants might eventually notice, and I prefer them not to be terrified out of their minds. And finally: it’s alarming that I need to clarify any of this.”
He sighs. “Fine.”
“Good. I’m going now.” Before the little menace gets ideas and starts bargaining.
“Tell MacKay if he lets anything happen to you, I’ll claw up his arse and eat his heart.”
I give a wave without looking, already on my way. “I’ll tell him that.”
I will not be telling him that. Ever.
Outside, Charlotte Square slumbers beneath a fresh dusting of snow, pristine and undisturbed. The tidy Georgian townhouses sit dark and quiet as mausoleums. At this late hour, all the genteel inhabitants are tucked safely in their beds. Golden light forms fuzzy halos around the intermittent streetlamps as I crunch across the frozen square, my pace brisk. Clouds float thin and fast over the waning moon, threatening another downpour. But for now, the night remains clear.
I plunge into the maze of Edinburgh’s Old Town. The jumble of pubs and ramshackle tenements cling to the stony bones of Castle Rock, looming high above. Warm light seeps from narrow windows and open doors, but the twisting streets and shadowed alleys below are wreathed in darkness.
Perfect.
I make for the area around Grassmarket, a dingy neighbourhood overstuffed with rundown buildings and crowded housing. If the fae wander tonight, I’ll likely cross paths with one stalking these parts.
Sudden power thrums in the air, there and gone. It raises the fine hairs at my nape. I’d know that whisper-soft brush anywhere, more intimate than any caress. Kiaran is close.
The corner of my mouth lifts. He’s playing our favourite game.
I race past dark shopfronts, their signs creaking in the chill breeze. He’s somewhere up ahead, waiting. Another nudge against my senses proves me correct—Kiaran is giving chase, herding me.
He should know better.
I hang a sharp right, veering down a different route than he’s planned for me. My feet fly over the uneven ground, careless of icy patches.
There’s an abandoned tenement nearby with the perfect place for an ambush.
The rain unleashes in earnest. It hisses down in relentless sheets, leaching the colour from the night until everything dissolves into shades of grey. Visibility drops to nothing. I navigate through the deluge by memory and instinct. My lungs burn, ribs aching from the brutal pace. But I force my legs faster, sprinting toward the empty tenements.
I blow through a sagging side door and take the steps down to the cellar, two at a time. The chambers beneath the decrepit building form a warren few locals know about. The ideal bolt hole when someone is tracking your steps. They offer quick transit while avoiding the streets.
After a sharp right and a crumbling staircase, I emerge back at street level, sucking in deep lungfuls of the freezing air. The glow of streetlamps chases me through the rain-soaked alley.
I slip through the creaking door of the abandoned tenement, boots kissing the rotting stairs without a sound. Up three flights to my favourite perch for an ambush: just below the open rafters. Silencing my breaths, I slink into the deepest pool of shadow and wait.
I slow each inhale, hone my focus to a razor’s edge. Waiting for the barest touch of his boots on stone. The swish of a long coat to give my prey away.
There.
The faintest scuff reaches my ears. Barely a ripple in the shadows. Kiaran pauses below my hideout, searching the dark interior. He cocks his head, listening for me.
Grinning, I drop behind him, silent as snowfall. I get an arm hooked around his neck and squeeze.
“Yield,” I hiss in his ear.
He twists in my hold. I’m already moving, rolling away before he can pin me. I gain my feet with a knife in my fist. My heart beats a staccato rhythm. I give the blade a flip, end over end. The metal winks in the dim light.
Kiaran’s eyes glint violet in the half-light. “Eager today, are we?”
“Maybe.” I shoot him a reckless grin. “Let’s find out.”
My boots scuff the wet cobblestones as I leap at him. I slash out once, twice. The blade hisses through empty air as he leans out of reach. Taunting me.
“Leaving your right side unguarded,” he says.
“Less critiquing, more bleeding.”
Feinting left, I let him think I’m aiming high. At the last second, I whip my foot around to sweep his leg. He staggers, just for an instant. I strike quickly, bringing my dagger up.
But he’s too damned fast. With uncanny grace, he knocks the blade from my hand. Sends it spinning into the shadows to clatter against stone.
“Good thing I brought spares.” I produce another dagger from my wrist sheath.
We crash together in a blur of strikes and blows. He circles me, lithe and nimble, an elusive shadow I can’t seem to hit. I’m panting now, but he’s not even winded.
“Getting tired already?” he whispers, sending electricity skittering across my skin.
“Never.”
I feint left again, then slice right. Just when he expects my knives, I step forward with a right hook that splits his lip.
“First blood is mine,” I say.
He moves almost faster than I can track, snatching my wrist in an iron grip. Just enough pressure for me to loosen my hold on the knife. It clatters to the floor as he spins me around against him, my back flush to his chest.
His breath tickles my ear. “Well done. I think that’s the third blade you’ve lost in two nights?” His arm tightens. “Care to go for four?”
I drive my elbow hard into his ribs. He grunts but holds on. “Now we spar without weapons,” I say.
Joy and fury sparks in his eyes. This is his cathedral. This, the hymn he lives for. I hook a foot behind his knee and smash us both backwards. We hit the ground and tumble apart. The dance turns brutal, with no quarter asked or given. I strike his jaw, he splits my lip. Snatch a fistful of his hair and slam his face into the wall. He kicks my legs out from under me, leaves me breathless.
He hits me from my blindside, immobilising me against the wall. Blood trickles down my chin, but I’m grinning, wild and fierce. Everything distils down to this—the clash of bodies, pain and power and conquering monsters in the dark. We are creatures of violence, him and I. And this is our communion.
He leans in close, breath whispering over my cheek. “Yield, Kameron.”
“I don’t think so.”
I smash my forehead against his, detonating bright pain behind my eyes. He releases me with a muffled grunt, and my blows keep landing until he shoves me into the brick wall, pinning my writhing body in place with his. Our ragged breaths mingle.
“And now?” he asks softly. I can feel his rapid heartbeats mirroring my own. “Will you yield?”
I scowl. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
His lips graze my ear, eliciting a shiver. “I always enjoy winning.”
Slowly, deliberately, I wet my lips. His eyes flare silver at the sight.
“Keep it up, and I’ll stab you on principle,” I say.
“Stab away.” He’s so close, I’m breathing him in—pine, woodsmoke, and rain. The mark on my hand burns. “At this rate, you’ll run out of knives before I run out of walls to pin you against.”
Heat ignites in my core, scorching its way up my throat. “I still drew first blood tonight.”
Kiaran runs his tongue over his lip, watching me as his flesh knits itself back together. “You’re fast, and you have a decent strike.” His expression hardens, all hints of teasing gone. “So perhaps you’d like to explain why you keep losing your knives. Two to me tonight. The floor claimed another last night with Thalion. What happened?”
His words drop like stones between us.
I fight to keep the past sealed where it belongs, but the floodgates are cracking open. “As I recall, he ended up with my second dagger in his eye, and now he’s dead. The rest is not your concern.”
“I’m making it my concern.” His hands press to the wall on either side of me, caging me in place. “You called, and I came, no questions asked about the marks on your throat. Now I’m asking—how did he get a hand on you in the first place?”
My lungs seize up. I can scarcely draw breath around the vice clenched tight over my chest. But the words tear their way free. “I had the knife in my hand, and suddenly, I was on the hill three months ago.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Taking in all my cracks. All my jagged edges.
“Which scar was he, Kameron?” he asks.
Because he knows them all intimately. The topography of violence he traced that night when he put me back together and left his mark on me. A claim. A leash.
I tilt my head to bare the ragged puncture just above my collarbone. The place where Thalion’s fangs once sank deep in a claiming. A violation.
Kiaran’s fingers brush my skin, tracing the warped flesh with care. I shudder at the electricity that skitters beneath his touch.
He pulls me closer until I’m leaning into him, my racing heart pressed to the steady thunder of his. The clean scent of him envelops me. One hand rests at my waist, searing me through my shirt. Still gentle, as if I belong there. As if he’s the only solid thing left in a world crumbling to ash and dust around me.
“It’s not better, knowing he’s dead,” I say.
Kiaran’s voice remains soft. “It rarely is.”
I should pull away. Rebuild the walls he’s stripping down with this dangerous intimacy. But I’m so tired of holding it all in. Of pretending I’m not broken.
When Kiaran steps back, I sway slightly, feeling off-kilter and exposed. Vulnerable in a way I despise.
“Come to the border with me. I have something for you.”
I search his stoic face, thrown by the request. “What is it?”
His expression reveals nothing. “You’ll see when we arrive.” A pause, then softer, “I promise you’ll like it.”
He turns on his heel and stalks toward the door before I can argue. Forcing me to scramble after him into the night.