Chapter 1
ELYSIA
Sanity always bowed to desperation.
There was no other explanation for my current state. Standing in the rain, clutching my umbrella with quickly whitening knuckles, and staring up at a building that looked like it could have swallowed me whole, Lord Purrlock’s wooden basket held tightly in my other hand.
A reproachful little meow croaked from between the layers of crimson velvet, yanking on my heart.
“You’re right,” I muttered, feeling smaller and wanting to be bigger. “This is a bad idea.”
The absolute worst.
But if I failed now, I might as well have waited home for the shadowy spies and masked attackers to find and finish me.
I should have run back to the port and forget all about this crazy plan. Yes, the docks were still officially closed in the aftermath of the war, but I’d vanished from tighter lockdowns than this.
In reality, the port was teeming with unnamed ships and unmarked crates that kept pouring onto the rune-covered cobblestones, which had been carved in hexagons so everyone would know, as soon as they stepped into this city, that they’d arrived in the cradle of luxury.
Each step I took in my worn leather boots echoed against the closed windows and statues adorning the towering walls, as if reminding me I didn’t belong here.
The mere mention of riches ruled all in the Fair Isles. No trade too unfair, no sum too big to bribe or squander.
And this house–this monster of a limestone house which I was sure glistened spectacularly in the morning sun.
Built tightly, it rose arrogantly up toward the sky with its carved balconies and oval windows.
Thick, ornate drapes covered all of them, but they couldn’t hide the depravity pulsing inside.
Languorous shadows of people dancing and sipping from tall glasses seeped through the candlelight.
Laughing.
Dancing.
And, gods, were those moans?
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
I’d only been in this realm an hour and I already despised the place, with its narrow, slick streets designed to confuse outsiders and the imposing buildings that seemed to bend at just the right angle to give off the impression that they could crumble on top of your head at any moment if they chose to.
I’d had to pay a lot for the privilege of tensing my muscles and looking over my shoulder with each step. Spent three full days in the cramped cargo hold of a small and suspicious schooner that transported silk and brocade, only allowed to visit the galley during the nighttime.
Because the leaders of the Fair Isles–curse their corrupted souls–knew better than to place an embargo on precious materials. The islands didn’t produce anything themselves, except debauchery, of course they needed those shipments.
But they drew an unflinching line at outsiders daring to cross their precious boundaries, even before closing the ports responsible for more than half of all Malhaven’s trade. These islands held too many secrets to dare disturb them.
Now, I was one of them. A stowaway wishing she was anywhere else, yet refusing to back down, even with the threat of spending a good few weeks in a dungeon resting on my back.
A sodden thump tensed my shoulders.
“Please be careful with those,” I said as the dock worker I’d wrangled with more promises of gold threw my second bag onto the wet pavement. I couldn’t tell which was grimmier, my luggage or the cart he’d carried them on.
Though its wood might’ve been eaten by the salty air, its wheels had moved by themselves on the way here, hissing hot air as it jolted down the street. I’d never seen any machinery, not even Calyx’s weird inventions, move by itself.
They’d huffed a final gasp as soon as we’d stopped and had been silent since.
“You want ‘em handled gently, you pay more,” the man grunted.
He stuck out his rough hand and for the briefest moment, I debated whether the last coins at the bottom of my purse were better spent on my flimsy bags or my stomach for the next few days. I shuddered to think it would take longer.
Life always seemed to be a debate between two pains, I just had to pick the right one.
I pressed my thumb against one of my many poison rings. Felt the press of the hidden blades in my boot.
I looked up at the man. Too many salty wrinkles from a life spent in the port. Puffy eyelids, from lack of sleep or too much alcohol. Or both.
But no violence shone in his dark gaze, only greed.
No suspicion in them, either. He didn’t know who he was talking to–and I intended to keep it that way.
Nobody needed to know the Viper had come to the Fair Isles.
Only raindrops fell onto the rope burns and scars on his open palm before he yanked it back.
“Thought so.” He grunted and threw my last bag on the ground with much more force.
Its corner landed in a mean puddle.
A splash hit my boots. I stepped back before it could get the hem of my coat, palms fisting. The phantom smell of blood invaded my senses.
I’d always been too jittery for my own good, more comfortable tucked away in my alchemy workshop with my herbs and poisons than in the outside world, but the war had only enhanced the unease clinging to me whenever I stepped out among strangers.
I watched this stranger turn around with a tired sigh, still debating if he was a danger. If I turned my back, would he stab it?
“By the looks of you, you shouldn’t have come here,” he said, fiddling with the cart’s wheels, now devoid of that curious steam.
“Meaning?” I asked with more courage than I felt.
“You want my advice?”
“If it’s free.”
He jerked his head back, as if he hadn’t heard that word before, and narrowed his eyes on me. Then he shook his head. “Hopeful souls get lost on these streets.”
I held on tighter to my umbrella. In a pinch, I could jam it in an eye long enough to run away and vanish. “How do you know I’m hopeful?”
If I’d truly had an ounce of hope, it had withered away the second I stepped off that schooner. Its dregs had been washed away by the rain when I saw this house.
The laughter inside grew louder, pulsing against the ornate walls. Those sounds didn’t belong to anything innocent.
He licked his teeth and jerked his chin at my dark leather coat, a gift I’d received along with my Viper moniker.
“Fancy clothes, tattered bags. If you had the fortune, you would’ve arrived here in a carriage.
Don’t know why you came here, but those rumors are for fools. The Fair Isles won’t make you richer.”
“Gold doesn’t sway me,” I said, as if I hadn’t burned my nose hairs and the tips of my fingers for years to scrounge up every fleck of it. But that soul of mine he seemed so concerned with hadn’t been touched.
“You just haven’t been offered the right amount, then.” He snorted a laugh and kicked one of the wheels. It still didn’t hiss more vapours. “Should’ve at least brought a chaperone. You look young. Too young.”
“I’ll be turning twenty-two this year, thank you very much.” I said with more bite than I needed to, knowing he wouldn’t believe me.
Few did.
Usually, I didn’t mind it. They said I’d inherited my doll face from my mother, though the few memories I had tended to fade into the darkness my childhood had turned into, and nobody from my family had grown to fill out a doorframe.
They said my father was tall, but my memories of him were even hazier.
“Sure, love.” He huffed again and knocked on the wheels once more.
The silence stretched, punctured only by the drunken laughter and another annoyed meow.
I probably would have stayed in the rain all night, but Lord Purrlock’s fluffy behind had been accustomed to warmth.
Watching the man from the corner of my eyes, I turned to the front door.
I’d spoken to, bargained with, and threatened three dozen people.
I made promises and borrowed enough gold to saddle half of my future.
Just to get this inkling of a location.
The house didn’t even have a number on its mahogany door.
No visible locks–which meant hidden ones.
Just an ornate door knocker, two goddess hands holding a half-moon.
Taunting me to finally admit I’d traveled halfway across the continent for this.
I gulped and raised my hand toward it. Every drop of rain felt like acid against my skin, warning me away.
“Don’t bother,” the worker called, not bothering to turn. “Nobody’s gon’ answer that front door.”
My fingers froze. The cold metal pulsed a breath away from my fingers. “Why not?”
“‘Cause it’s night,” he said, like it made all the sense in the world.
“So?”
“So this the Fair Isles, yeah?” He grimaced at his cart. “If you do business at night, it’s never through the front door. Too many eyes.”
“Then how, exactly, am I supposed to get in?”
He finally turned, and I could tell from the glimmer in his eyes that he’d been waiting for this moment. “This advice is gon’ cost you.”
I exhaled through my nose. I stumbled right into that one. My poison rings felt colder against my fingers, but knocking him out wouldn’t give me answers, only the risk of discovery. A pain I didn’t need right now.
Another meow rattled the basket. I held on tighter to the handle, the wooden weave digging into my skin.
“Fine.” Not taking my eyes off him, my fingers dug into the bottom of my purse and took out two measly coins. I’d come here to protect my Clan and future, not to be extorted, yet here I was, glaring at a stranger and tossing him gold.
He caught the coins with practiced ease and kicked the wheels with his heel, not even looking at them. They magically started working again.
He’d planned this from the start. If the dock workers in the Fair Isles could leech so easily, I shuddered to think what the guildmasters ruling this place and Malhaven’s trade were capable of.
The man grinned with too many missing teeth and raised a lazy finger, pointing to a narrow alley, hardly big enough for me to squeeze through with my cat’s basket, let alone my wet luggage. “Down that street. Knock three times. Careful, that door’s the same color as the walls.”
This godsdamned place was even trickier than I’d imagined–and I not only had to survive it, but come back victorious from my mission.
I peered back at the shadowy alley. It was so dark, I couldn’t see its end and the walls flanking it loomed dangerously.
“For your sake, I hope you don’t find what you’re looking for,” the man said before he hurried back down the street, the cart’s rickety wheels wheezing after him, leaving me alone with my luggage, sodden boots, and racing heart.
He was wrong, though, I thought as I struggled to pick up the bags without jostling my cat’s basket; cold water dripped from the tipped umbrella down my spine. Nobody would bother to steal them, but someone might mistake them for garbage, and these were all the clothes I owned.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered as Lord Purrlock protested the movements, pawing at the basket lid.
I tried to tell myself he would’ve been more miserable if I’d left him at home, but guilt still gnawed at me.
He was the only friend I could allow to accompany me on this deranged mission and I already regretted it.
“We’ll get this done fast and then we’ll forget about it for the rest of our lives. ”
Because I wasn’t looking for a what.
I was searching for a who.
The bastard I’d only met once, during a Clan wedding massacre, when we’d exchanged more dagger swipes than words. His gaze had speared me then, cold and calculating, and it still haunted me now.
The arrogant member of the enemy Clan’s famed First Family.
The man I’d been arranged to be married to and whom I’d avoided successfully until now.
The one they said could finally unlock my powers–and I was desperate enough to believe them.
Dax Vegheara.
Get A VIAL OF PRIDE AND POISON, book 5 in The Curse of Silver Secrets and Cruel Shadows Series