A Poison of Shadows (Whisperbound #2)

Chapter 1 Nadia

Nadia

This was what I got for being nice to people.

Three weeks ago, I'd shadow-walked three full-grown vampires through the deep in one night because a girl I'd known for approximately two weeks had been taken by a man who deserved to die slowly.

I'd decided—against every instinct I'd successfully cultivated over a hundred and sixty years of survival—to give a fuck about it.

The result: I'd spent a week unconscious in the castle healers' wing, another two weeks recovering while various well-meaning people asked if I needed anything.

And somewhere in between, the Vampire King had appeared at my bedside, with the particular expression of someone who was about to ask for something and already knew the answer.

He'd been good to me over the years. Better than most. Good enough that when he sat down and said, “I need someone I trust in Tharros,” I’d said “yes” before he’d finished the sentence.

Because apparently, one attempted coup in Morathen wasn’t enough excitement for the month. Every whisper since had pointed toward Tharros having rot of its own—cells, sympathizers, loyal faces with knives behind their backs—and the king wanted his eldest son home before it spread.

More specifically, he wanted someone mean, paranoid, and very hard to kill, watching Lorenzo Veyne’s back.

Lucky me.

And this was how I'd ended up crouched in a shadow in the Divide at two hours before dawn, watching his son organize saddlebags with a thoroughness that suggested he had never once done anything spontaneously.

Nice. I'd been nice.

And loyal. Gods help me.

I'd have both engraved on my fucking headstone.

The Divide hummed around me the way it always did at this hour—somewhere between dangerous and alive, which in this part of the world was basically the same damn thing.

The night market was packing up two streets over, the last stallholders folding their wares with the practiced efficiency of people who knew better than to linger.

A pair of shifters were doing something inadvisable in the alley to my left.

Above the stables, a couple had been having the same argument for going on two hours—something about money and a debt and a man named Osric, who apparently owed someone significantly more than he'd claimed.

I knew this because the shadows told me.

That was the thing about shadows—they were everywhere, and sound moved through them the way water moved through pipes, but only if you knew how to listen.

Doorways, most of them. Step into one shadow, step out of another two streets away.

Or just press against the edge and hear what was being said on the other side of a wall, which was way less dramatic but significantly more useful in my line of work.

I had a lot of lines of work. Nary a one of them involved horses.

Speaking of horses… Lorenzo had now checked the saddlebags three times.

Left side, right side, top buckle, bottom buckle—each strap tested with the same pressure, in the same order, whether or not it was strictly necessary at two hours before dawn.

He'd also checked the road. Checked the sky.

Produced some kind of document from his coat, read it, folded it back into thirds with surgical precision, and returned it to his pocket.

Centuries old, and he still made lists. As if a vampire needed to.

Vampires had a recall that made most supernaturals seem like they were running on a faulty memory charm—hundreds of years of accumulated information, perfectly indexed, instantly accessible.

They had senses sharp enough to hear a conversation through a foot of stone, to track a target by blood alone across a city, to read the shift in someone's heartbeat and know they were lying before the words were out.

Lorenzo Veyne could probably recite every supply route between here and Tharros from memory, including the ones that had changed in the last decade, cross-referenced against weather patterns and known threat assessments.

He was also stronger than me. Faster than me, on a bad day. Built like something the world had specifically designed to be difficult to kill.

And he was standing in a courtyard in the dark, making a list.

I didn't know whether to be reassured or deeply concerned about what the next three weeks had in store.

Most of the people I'd worked for over the years had been significantly less competent than the man currently murmuring something to a dark bay horse that was doing what horses did when they knew something was wrong but couldn't see what.

Ears swiveling, weight shifting—the particular restless unease of a prey animal registering a predator it couldn't locate.

She'd probably been doing it for the better part of an hour.

I felt a little bad about that.

Not enough to move before I was ready, though.

He was good—I'd clocked that much the first time we'd met, under circumstances neither of us would bring up.

Ever.

For any reason.

On pain of death.

Preferably mine.

Four centuries old, which on a vampire meant early thirties on anyone else.

He had the kind of build that came from spending those centuries doing something considerably more physical than sitting behind a desk.

Tall. Dark-haired, close-cropped, the kind of severe cut that said he hadn't thought about his hair in approximately his entire life, and it had decided to be attractive anyway out of spite.

He had a jaw that looked like it had never once done anything soft, and hazel eyes that caught the torchlight in a way that was completely irrelevant to my current tactical assessment.

Completely.

He was also, I noted with the same clinical detachment I applied to all threat variables, wearing weapons the way most people wore clothes—the kind of easy familiarity that meant he'd had them long enough to stop thinking about them.

Two blades visible. At least two more that weren't. The coat was good quality, dark, and cut for movement rather than appearance.

His hands on the horse's nose were steady. Unhurried.

I remembered what his hands were doing the night I’d plucked him from his home, and my pulse did something it had no business doing.

I labeled that under “Irrelevant” and moved the fuck on.

Shadow-walking passengers was an experience I wouldn't wish on most people and actively would on a few.

But Lorenzo Veyne had handled it the way he apparently handled everything—badly at first, then with rigid, furious composure the moment he had his feet under him.

Military background, obviously. The kind of soldier who'd become the kind of commander that didn't raise his voice because he didn't need to.

Dangerous in a quiet way, which was the worst kind.

Through the shadow at my shoulder, I reached for home—a reflex, the way you'd check a wound to see if it was still bleeding.

The deep didn't answer.

Not the surface shadows—those were fine, thin, and obedient and everywhere.

The deep was something else. My “something else,” specifically—a piece of the Shadow Court's realm I'd carved out years ago and walled off and made mine.

It was the only place in any world where I could exist without one eye on the door.

Where no one could reach me. Where I was, for the first time and only time in my very long and occasionally terrible life, completely safe.

It had been shut for three weeks. Since the castle war room, since the moment I'd shadow-walked the third vampire through and my knees had hit the stone floor, and someone had said something that I didn't catch because I was too busy trying not to die.

It wasn't gone. I could feel the shape of it—warm, present, mine—just on the other side of something I couldn't currently push through. Like a door I knew how to open that had, temporarily, been locked.

Temporary, I told myself, for the hundredth time, and withdrew before I could confirm that it was still very much shut.

Across the courtyard, Lorenzo said something that made the dark bay exhale like she'd been holding it for an hour, and I decided it was high time I stepped out of the shadows and got this show on the road.

He heard me immediately—the slight shift of his shoulders, weight redistributing. He didn't reach for a weapon. Just turned with the composure of someone who’d expected me to appear eventually and had decided he could wait.

Those hazel eyes found me the moment I cleared the shadow—vampire sight, which was annoying on principle because it made lurking significantly less viable as a tool in my arsenal.

I had perfect night vision of my own, which meant I could see him seeing me, could catch the two-second assessment he ran before filing the results somewhere I wasn't getting access to.

"You're early," he said.

"Are you complaining? You've been out here for two hours already," I pointed out.

"So have you. I said dawn." He glanced back at the horses, unbothered. "It isn't dawn."

"Gold star for telling time." I crossed the courtyard toward him, rolling my shoulders against the pull of the pack strapped across my back—weapons, supplies, everything I owned that was worth owning, which wasn't much but was very sharp.

My dagger found my hand the way it always did, handle-first, turning once in my fingers.

It was habit. A comfort to me, or a warning, depending on the audience. "Couldn't sleep?"

"I don't do much of that." His gaze dropped to the blade, then back to my face. "You look terrible."

"Wow." I pressed a hand to my chest. "Three weeks in a healer's wing and nobody warned me I'd come out the other side looking like something a cat threw up. Flowers exist, you know. As a concept. People send them when other people nearly die."

"My condolences." Flat. Completely without performance. "I'll note it for next time."

"Let's not have a next time."