Chapter 23 Valerie
Midnight in the Hollows was noisier than the harbour marketplace on a sunny day. As a young Cloak, Val used to love it. Night after night, she would lie awake in her bed with a grin on her face, listening to the jaunty tavern music, drunken catcalls and bawdy cackles.
Tonight, she cursed those bastard taverns and their shitty music. While the rest of Fantome cowered in wait for the Silver-tongue Saint and his armies, the Hollows was kicking up its heels and getting pissed. Again. If she never heard another accordion in her life, she’d be blessed.
She was exhausted. Wrecked from their getaway from the Appoline and worrying herself mad over her friends: Sera, who had been taken hostage at Bellevue Castle, Ransom and Paola, who, in a hasty ill-advised plot had sneaked off to rescue her, and Theo…
Theo, who was fighting an enemy inside himself.
Soul-eater.
A saint-killer made flesh.
Things really had gone to hell around here.
Losing Bibi had been like getting her heart ripped clean out of her chest. Every time the memory seized her, Val felt a scream build in her throat. If anything happened to Sera or Theo, she wasn’t sure she would survive it. She wasn’t sure she’d want to.
Dark thoughts, Saint of Truth.
Worse than those out-of-tune accordions was the irritating voice inside her own head.
‘Shut up,’ she snapped at it. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’
It had been a long night. After unveiling the true insidious nature of Theo’s power, she couldn’t get out of that cloakroom fast enough.
He had locked the door after her and hadn’t come out since.
She’d run into Paola in the hallway. She was on her way to meet Ransom, who was waiting for her out on the street. With a stolen horse.
When Anouk woke up, she was going to be pissed.
Val was glaring at the ceiling, waiting for the sweet oblivion of sleep, when a wolf howled outside her window.
She bolted upright, sure she had imagined the sound. There were no wolves this far south of the Pinetops. Certainly not in the heart of the capital.
‘AWOOOOOOOOOO!’
Cursing, she ran to the window and tore her curtains apart. She gripped the sill, her pupils blown wide at what she saw glimpsed below her.
Caruso Dantes was standing in the front garden of House Armand, wearing that shit-eating grin she despised.
The Saint of Truth should never lie.
Even to herself.
‘I thought I told you to shut up,’ she muttered, feeling mildly absurd for talking to herself.
Caruso was pacing underneath her window. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he howled again. ‘AWOOOOOO!’
Grabbing the closest thing on her bedside table – a jewelled hairband – Val opened the window and flung it at him. ‘Get lost, you creep!’
He caught the hairband in one hand, and crooked a finger with the other.
She offered a finger of her own.
He howled again.
‘Have you lost your mind?’ she fumed.
His laugh was a bark in the night. ‘A long time before today, kitten.’
‘I’m all out of hairbands, Caruso. And I’m not wasting my shoes.’ He just stood there, grinning up at her like she was the damn moon. ‘Oh, piss off.’
He did not. And deep down, Val didn’t want him to. At least not before figuring out what the hell he was doing here.
Closing the window with a pointed thud, she put on her slippers and grabbed her lavender robe from the hook on the wall. Before she could talk herself out of it – not that she was ever good at that anyway – she took off down the stairwell and headed out into the garden.
Arms folded, she summoned a scowl that could wither a rose bush.
Caruso was leaning against the front wall, waiting for her. In the dark, his teeth were white and sharp. A wolf’s smile to match that wild howling energy.
Stopping several feet away from him, she said, ‘How did you know my bedroom was at the front of the house?’
He shrugged, gesturing to the slant of moonlight currently illuminating it. ‘I asked Saint Oriel to show me.’
Truth.
‘You’re insane.’
He licked his teeth. ‘Maybe the Saint of Destiny has a thing for me.’
Her eye-roll was violent.
‘Thanks for dressing up for me.’ He gestured at her robe. ‘Purple looks good on you.’
Truth.
Her cheeks flamed. Fuck. ‘It’s lavender. And also, shut up,’ she snapped. ‘We’re not playing nice. I only came down here to keep you from waking the rest of the house.’
‘Where’s Ransom? I’m surprised he hasn’t set his shadows on me.’
‘He’s asleep.’ The lie prickled down her spine. It felt like her magic was pinching her. ‘You’ll be dealing with me tonight.’
‘Then Oriel continues to favour me.’
‘That remains to be seen.’ She noted, belatedly, that he was still wearing his suit from the ball. His jacket was crumpled, the trousers stained with dirt and ash. She searched the street behind him.
‘How did you get here?’
‘I walked.’
She reeled. ‘From the Appoline?’ A gruelling trek. ‘So that’s why you look like shit.’
He rolled back on his heels, chuckling. ‘I love it when you flirt with me, kitten.’
‘Call me that again and I’ll claw your eyes out.’ Those searing ice-blue eyes. Rimmed in long black lashes that softened the madness behind them. And now they were just … looking at her.
Didn’t this guy ever blink?
She raked her curls back. ‘What are you doing here, Caruso?’
‘Don’t you know, Saint of Truth?’
Moonlight danced along his heavily inked skin, making his shadow-marks even more prominent. A whorl climbed up the side of his neck and curled behind his ear, like it was reaching for the patchwork of scars there.
Caruso Dantes is not a good man.
Why did she have to remind herself of this?
She squared her shoulders. ‘Maybe you finally lost that last brain cell of yours. I guess it could only hold on for so long.’
He smirked.
‘Spit it out, Caruso.’
‘I want out, Valerie.’ His grin dissolved with remarkable quickness, his face so serious she didn’t need her magic to read the conviction on it.
A tilt of her chin. ‘Why?’
‘You know why.’
She was not about to make it easy for him. ‘Spell it out.’
‘He’s a monster.’ He said it so plainly. ‘You know he’s a monster.’
‘I’ve known that since the day I met him. And so have you.’
He offered no denial, the knot in his throat working as he swallowed.
Anger sparked as hot as coals in her gut. ‘If you had killed him when you were supposed to, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’
‘I know.’
The crackle of her rage shoved her forward. ‘You fucking turncoat.’ She slammed her hands against his chest. When he didn’t react, just looked at her from beneath that dark veil of lashes, she did it again. Harder.
She wanted him to flinch.
She wanted him to hurt.
But he said with irritating smugness, ‘Come on. Put your back into it.’
She gripped his shirt, not sure if she wanted to shove him away or pull him closer.
Caruso Dantes is a bad man, she reminded herself.
Then why are you touching him? whispered the old voice.
Quieter still, Why is he letting you?
‘You betrayed us!’ she hissed at him. ‘You abandoned us.’
You abandoned me.
It all came screaming back. That night at the Summer Palace.
The prince lording over a roomful of nobles as they quivered on their knees.
The King of Valterre cutting out his own heart, and then the queen succumbing to a tide of shadows.
Her sons, lined up to die right after her.
Bibi, leaping to protect them. Bibi, dying beneath that raft of shadows. Val’s scream ripping through her chest.
Bibi’s unseeing eyes.
Bibi’s unbeating heart.
And Caruso, who came too late. Caruso, who did nothing to stop the prince on his mad crusade. Caruso, who let that damn Strix carry Sera off into the night. Caruso, who stood aside, while his friends shoved that knife into Ransom’s ribs.
Oh no. Tears pricked the back of her eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Truth, said the old voice.
She didn’t give a rat’s ass. ‘Whatever.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
The earnestness on his face was unnerving.
Caruso Dantes is a bad man, she chanted inside her head.
So why are you still standing here? said the old voice.
‘Valerie …’
‘Go away.’ She shoved him again. ‘Find another garden to haunt.’ There was a tear on her cheek. Traitorous little bastard. She scrubbed it away, then turned to inspect a leaf. ‘Goodbye, Caruso.’
He was a statue in the dark, those icy-blue eyes like frostbitten stars. She felt him watching her as she dipped her head, furiously plucking leaves off Fontaine’s holly bush just to find something to do with her hands.
In a low voice, he said, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Pruning.’ Val sniffed. ‘This bush is a mess.’
You are a mess, said the old voice.
Saints, why did she have to cry in front of him? Of all the soulless bastards in Fantome, why did Caruso Dantes have to witness the utter crumbling of her careful facade?
A warm hand curled around her wrist. ‘You’re beheading it.’
‘Would you prefer I behead you?’ she snapped, accidentally pricking her finger on a thorn.
A breathy laugh. ‘I’d love to watch you try.’
‘Of course you would, you freak.’
‘Your finger is bleeding.’
She held it up to the moonlight, watching the blood trickle down to her palm. ‘Yet another thing that’s your fault.’
He didn’t argue with her. Instead, he grabbed her hand and with deliberate slowness raised it to his mouth. A breath caught in her throat, his eyes pinning hers as he slid her finger into his mouth and gently licked it clean.
Val froze, a violent heat rippling down her spine.
Caruso Dantes is a bad man.
Too late, she pushed him away.
‘How dare you,’ she said, half breathless.
‘You’ve killed more people than there are blades of grass between us.
Two days ago you didn’t give a shit about morality.
If Andreas is a monster, then so are you.
’ She glared at him through the sheen of her tears.
‘Since when do you care about good and evil?’
‘Since good started calling me a piece of shit.’
She snorted. ‘And I’m good, am I?’
‘Better than good, kitten.’
That lazy smirk … made all the worse by the stain of her blood on his lips.
Caruso Dantes is a bad man.
He went on, frowning. ‘I stood with Andreas that night at the Summer Palace because my best friends had pledged themselves to him. I didn’t want to stand against them.
Not after getting Lark back from the dead.
Not after everything we went through together as Daggers.
’ He absently brushed his hand over the scars on his head.
Wounds that should have killed him. ‘But I see it now for what it is. A trick. Lark is not who he used to be. I don’t know the monster he’s become.
Nadia is too tangled up in him to walk away.
Andreas is a tyrant. A different beast than any I’ve ever killed.
He’s worse than the worst scum of this city. ’
‘Are you including yourself in that list?’
‘Yes,’ he said bluntly.
Truth.
Hmm.
‘I don’t want to be a monster, Val.’
Truth.
‘At least not that kind of monster.’
She pressed her lips together.
‘I want out…’ His gaze shifted past her, to the half-hidden facade of House Armand. ‘I want in.’
Her brows shot up. ‘You want to join the Order of Flames?’
‘I want to be on the right side of this war.’ He gave her a hard look, the killer in him rising to the surface. It made his eyes glow brighter, his teeth look sharper. ‘And make no mistake, war is coming to Fantome, Valerie. Andreas is going to gut this kingdom of its free will.’
‘Fuck Andreas,’ snarled Val.
Caruso’s laugh was brash. A wolf howling his amusement. ‘Yeah,’ he said, flashing that maddening grin. ‘Fuck Andreas.’
She chewed her lip, pretending to consider him. Without Ransom and Sera, it was her choice to make. He had spoken true of his intentions, even his regrets, and part of her could understand the loyalty that had led him to stand with Andreas that night at the Summer Palace.
But still …
He was an unhinged creature even at the best of times.
He shifted on his feet. ‘Even if you can’t stand me, you have to admit I’ll be helpful to your cause. I know how Andreas thinks, what his plans are … And failing that, I’ve got this.’
He went to the wall, returning with the biggest sword Val had ever seen. The weathered bronze hilt winked at her in the dark.
‘What the hell is that?’
‘Fatebringer. The sword of Saint Cadel.’ He held it out, revealing intricate braiding along the scabbard. ‘I swiped it on my way out of the Appoline. Figured it would make a good peace offering.’
‘You brought me an ancient sword?’
He shrugged. ‘Lark told me it was most valuable thing in the Appoline.’
‘So, what, you just stole it for me?’
‘You’re a thief. I figured you’d appreciate the effort.’
Saints help her, she did. ‘You really are mad.’
‘You always liked that about me.’
‘Shut up. I don’t like you at all.’
His smirk was feral. ‘If you say so, kitten.’
What an unholy pain in the ass. But an asset, too. He was right about that. And he had that menacing way about him, the kind that would do well in war. At the very least, she should let him plead his case to the others.
‘Keep your sword. We operate a finders keepers policy at House Armand.’ And besides, it was more than half her size. She’d probably tip over just from lifting it. Indulging herself with one last withering glare, she turned on her heel and marched back towards the house.
When he didn’t follow her, she stopped on the front steps and said, with mounting impatience, ‘Well? Are you coming or not, Wolfy?’
He bolted after her, that manic grin returning full force.
When the door shut behind them, she faced him once more. ‘One more truth before I find you a room for the night.’
He gripped his sword, waiting.
‘Did you see us hiding in the quad? When the Strix came for us?’
He had stormed through the dark to send it away, and she had been wondering about it ever since.
Caruso blinked, surprised by the question. ‘Of course I saw you,’ he said like it was the simplest thing in the world.
Truth.
‘Right. Good.’ She turned from him and plodded up the stairs.
‘I always see you,’ he said, quieter, following her.
Truth.
She walked on, relieved he couldn’t see the smile breaking on her lips.