Chapter 23
YOUR MISTAKE
KINGFISHER
HE WAS TALLER than her.
His hair was blond and was curly—not an uncommon trait in Zilvaren, it seemed.
As we stalked the boy’s movements through the streets of the Second Ward, I studied the slope of his shoulders, his gait, the way he left his hands in his pockets, like he had no idea they should be out and free, ready to hold a knife, and I couldn’t do it.
I could not find a scrap of his sister in him.
If I’d passed Hayden Fane in the halls of the Winter Palace, I would never have known he was related to my mate. Not on a surface level.
But then, there was the matter of his blood.
I’d failed to sense it the last time I’d come here at Saeris’s behest. I’d forgotten how weak the familial scent smelled between humans, or maybe I’d never even known.
I’d met so few humans when I was young, and the chances of any of them having been related to each other were slim.
Among so many millions of people, it was no great surprise that I hadn’t been able to find him before.
But now, twenty feet behind him, I could smell it, trailing like a ribbon behind him as he wove through the bustling crowds: something like sunlight, a little like home.
But different. The boy up ahead, with the red scarf protecting his face, was Saeris’s brother, and we were this close to bringing him back to Yvelia.
“He might not be happy to see me,” Carrion muttered into his own scarf next to me.
I tried not to laugh. “Really? I’m shocked.”
“Y’know, sarcasm is a form of humor. The lowest, basest form, yes, but it still counts. If you’re not careful, I’ll start to think I’m rubbing off on you.”
“Don’t use the word rub and then refer to me in the same sentence, please,” I volleyed back at him. But there was no sharpness to the retort. Like the fine sand that constantly battered the city’s walls, Carrion Swift was slowly wearing me down.
“Oh, please,” the smuggler drawled. “You are not my—” He craned his neck, scanning the crowd over the tops of their heads. “Ahhh, fuck. He’s gone. I think we lost him.”
I grabbed him by the arm and shoved him to the left, out of the flow of bodies all shuffling to go and get their morning allotment of water.
“You might have,” I said. “I don’t lose people.
He ducked down here just now, right before you were about to lie and say I’m not your type.
” I gestured to the side street next to us, my senses on high alert.
Saeris’s brother was nowhere to be seen now, but he had come this way.
Crumbling buildings stood to the left and the right.
Faded clothing hung limp from the windowsills, the air too still and heavy to stir them.
“I wasn’t lying. I prefer my women and my men a whole lot prettier than you.
” Carrion stepped into the alley, but I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, dragging him back.
The blade came a split second later; it wouldn’t have hit the smuggler anywhere vital, but it would have hit him. It would have hurt.
The dagger embedded into the pale stone next to Carrion’s chest, its handle shuddering from the force it had slammed into the wall.
“Gods and fucking martyrs!” Carrion wheeled on the disheveled human who had stepped out from the gap between the buildings to our right.
His eyes were brown, not blue. Saeris’s chin was elfin and almost sharp, but Hayden’s was cleft.
There was a similarity in the shape of their eyes, though.
The overall structure of the rest of his face was much like hers.
And the way he tipped his head to one side and scowled at me was suspiciously familiar.
“Sorry, Swift. I saw him first and reacted.” He looked young, but his voice had some gravel to it. Hayden’s eyes hadn’t left mine; his whole body was angled toward me.
“Sorry? You nearly cut my nipples off.” My hand was still resting on Carrion’s shoulder; he shrugged me off, grumbling under his breath as he stalked toward the human. “You go around hurling knives at strangers in the open now?” He pointed at the knife. “Where the hell did you even get that?”
“Saeris left them hidden all over the city. She said you never knew when you might need to arm yourself—and it looks like she was right. What are you doing with that traitor?” His attention flitted to Carrion, but it didn’t roam far before it returned to me.
Plenty of people had looked at me the way Hayden Fane was looking at me now—disgusted, angry, furious—but they’d had reason to.
I hadn’t been able to save their fathers or their husbands.
They’d heard the stories of cruelty Belikon had spread about me.
But Hayden Fane had lived his whole life here in Zilvaren, and he had no right to look so offended by my presence.
“It’s customary to get to know a male before you judge him, boy,” I rumbled.
“Oh, I know you,” Hayden spat. “You’re him, aren’t you? Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate, whatever that is. Look, there! I can see it on your face. I’m right, aren’t I?” Hayden barked. There was hysteria in his eyes. His cheeks had flushed the same color as the scarf that hung around his neck.
Carrion jerked. “How do you know his name?”
Hayden snorted derisively. “Where the hell have you been, Carrion?
Last I saw of you, you promised you’d come back the next day with some supplies and word about Saeris, then you disappear for weeks on end.
I can’t move through the city like you can.
Things have been crazy here. The guardians have everything locked down so tight, you can’t breathe without one of them clubbing you over the back of the head for taking more than your fair share of air.
Everyone heard about the explosion in the Third yesterday.
Half the fucking bell tower’s missing. The guardians have been passing these out all morning.
” I tensed when he reached into his pocket, ready for whatever ill-advised nonsense he was about to embark upon, but he pulled paper from his pocket, not metal.
He passed the crumpled sheets to Carrion, who unfolded them and began to read.
His eyes skipped over the printed text, sifting through the papers with the shadow of disbelief growing on his face.
“That fucking asshole,” he muttered.
“Which one?” We’d been dealing with a lot of assholes lately.
Carrion gathered the papers back into a pile and turned them around for me to see the image that was printed on the top one: my face, crudely sketched, my eyes a little too small, my nose a little too sharp, my lips drawn back, teeth dripping blood.
It was clever, really—the caricature was clearly me, but the artist had exaggerated my features.
I looked sinister, bestial, but familiar enough that I would be recognized in the street if someone saw me.
Below the drawing were the words THE BUTCHER OF ZILVAREN.
They had to get a little more creative when coining villainous names for me. There were only so many places I could butcher.
“Madra’s telling people that you used magic to break into the palace. She’s saying that you murdered a bunch of people who were about to be pardoned and released from the cells. She says you’re a political zealot from the south.”
“Let me see that.” I took the papers from Carrion.
It was just as he’d said. There were more fantastical lies on Madra’s flyers, each more unbelievable than the last. But the thing about a city full of starving, oppressed people was that there were plenty of people looking for someone to blame for their suffering.
And who better for Madra to paint the villain than a male who had promised to step out of the shadows and murder her in her sleep? It made perfect sense.
“This bastard killed Saeris,” Hayden snarled. “She was being pardoned, and he slit her throat, Carrion.”
“I haven’t harmed your sister.”
“They dragged her body through the Third. They showed everyone what you did!”
Swift shook his head at the lunatic. “Sinners. He’s telling the truth, all right. He hasn’t harmed a hair on her head, Hayden. Saeris is fine, I promise.”
“Then whose body was it? Hm? There were chi—” Hayden choked on the word.
“Children. They were cut to ribbons. Their—their faces were—” I couldn’t tell if he was horrified or furious.
Hayden couldn’t decide either, apparently.
His eyes darted to the knife he’d thrown at Carrion.
Clearly, he was wishing the weapon were back in his hand so he could take another run at cutting my throat.
He lunged, trying to skirt around us, heading for the blade or the alley’s exit, I didn’t know. I stepped in front of him, slowly shaking my head. I didn’t lay a finger on him, just stared down at him, and the boy wilted like a cut flower.
“Saeris is fine,” Carrion repeated. “At least she was okay when we left her,” he amended. “Whoever you saw being dragged through the city was not your sister.”
“Well, I didn’t actually see her myself,” Hayden sniffed. “But there were drawings. Drawings like that one.” His gaze drifted down to the papers I was still holding.
I stepped back, searching his face, not sure whether to laugh or cry.
“Wait. So your queen, the same queen who’s been depriving you of water and starving you and murdering the people of your ward for generations, draws some pictures and tells you your sister’s dead, and you believed her?
Great fucking gods, this is fucking perfect.
” I turned away from the boy; he was too fucking stupid to deal with directly.
“Fix this, Carrion. I’m out of patience. ”
Prowling back and forth in the mouth of the alleyway, I waited for the smuggler to wrangle the human. He started out strong . . .
“Saeris isn’t in Yvelia anymore, Hayden. She accidentally opened a Fae portal, and Fisher here came through, in Zilvaren.”
But then immediately took a wrong turn . . .