10. The Shadowcrest Mountains
V iola dreamed she was in the room again, the room where everything ended. She saw the five sheets, and the faces she hadn’t uncovered. She dreamt of fields going up in flames, of ash, of snow. Of her own blood in her mouth.
She dreamt she was being consumed by fire. Her body was hot. Flames raced through the room—
“No fire,” she murmured, or perhaps she screamed.
There was a pressure on her temple, cool and pleasant. A slow, steady voice spoke. “Bones, douse the fire.”
“But—”
“Lela! Just do it.”
There were hands on her body, pulling and tugging. A hard, dense pain in her middle. It pinned her to the world even when she wanted to drift away. Pain did that.
Pain is my anchor.
Sometimes, she wanted it all to fade away. But if she did that, what was the point of any of them existing in the first place? She thought of their laughter, their kindness, their fights, their hugs. A thousand thoughts and memories, now stored solely inside of her. Each memory was a thread in a tapestry. She couldn’t let it unravel completely. If she did, she feared she would lose the last remnants of who she was.
She dreamt she saw their faces again, standing around her bedside.
I hate you all, she wanted to scream, at the same time as come closer.
Seb’s hand wrapped around hers. For the first time, she felt like she could feel him. He didn’t need to speak. Of course he didn’t. They didn’t need words.
I hate you most of all.
Seb smiled, his black eyes rimmed with silver. I know.
When Viola woke, it was dawn. Cold bars of light slammed against her pillow, jolting her from sleep. She rose, clutching her midsection. It was tightly bandaged and stung with a lumpy, muted kind of pain.
Her throat was parched. A jug of water sat on the bedside. Viola chugged almost all of it, half choking as she swallowed, water dribbling down her chin and onto the lush sheets.
She was in a bedroom almost devoid of colour. The walls were printed with leaves so deep a shade of forest green that they were almost black, and the furniture was so dark it gleamed like onyx. The sheets, however, were made of fine damask in plum and gold, and an opulent gilded mirror hung over the fireplace.
The fireplace.
The room was warm, but no flames crackled in the grate, only the steady, pulsing warmth of a handful of firestones.
Viola rose to her feet on shaking legs, still clutching the bedposts to steady herself. Someone had pulled out a chamberpot for her—an enchanted one, thankfully, that magicked away her mess to some designated space far from the room.
She expected to see Freya or Heindrich nearby, the only people that knew about her preference for firestones, but no one was here. She tried the door: locked.
Where was she? Not back in the barracks. Perhaps she’d been too badly injured to transport back to the city, and her colleagues had found some grand manor nearby and sought refuge there. She didn’t know why she’d be locked in, though, or why the manor house was decorated so oddly. There wasn’t a break in the black walls. They looked like they’d been sliced from stone.
Viola hobbled towards the window next, opening it to reveal a balcony. She couldn’t make out much of the rest of the estate from her vantage point, but they were somewhere in the Feywood. Dark trees glittering with snow spiked through a thick white wind. She could just make out the faint outline of a ruined temple in the distance, but she was too far away to make out much more.
Too far away, and too high up.
She rubbed her head, closing the balcony doors. It was possible she was still half asleep.
She found some of her clothes on the back of a nearby chair, all freshly laundered apart from her doublet, cape and shirt, all of which were missing. At present, she was wearing a pouffy drawstring shirt that came down to her thighs, in the colour of smoky charcoal. She pulled on her trousers and boots, warming her hands by the hearth, and then tried the door again as if it had somehow magically opened itself.
It hadn’t, and the manor—if that’s indeed what she was in—was oddly quiet.
Hunger overtaking her frustration, she gorged herself on the food that had been left out for her under an opulent silver cloche—a dense bread roll, a pat of butter and herbs, and some small slices of smoked meat. She was trapped, but she was being fed and her wounds had clearly been dressed with care. Maybe the door had been locked for her own benefit?
Well, not for much longer.
After calling out and receiving no answer, Viola searched in vain for a bell to summon help, but found nothing. Never one to sit still, Viola began to explore the room with renewed vigour, searching for a secret entrance or a way to dislodge the door’s hinges. Both endeavours proved to be a waste of time, although she discovered the key was still in the door—just on the other side. Not much good that did her.
That was until she noticed the small hole in the base of the room, almost—but not quite—the size of a human head.
Thinking quickly, she seized a thin metal pole near the window used for drawing the curtains and took it to the fireplace, using the simmering stones and the poker to bend the end into a curved hook. Job done, she knocked the key onto the floor, waiting for the clink as it hit the stone, and threaded the makeshift hook through the hole to grab it. A few tries, and it was hers.
She jammed the key into the lock and pushed open the door. A corridor made of the same dark stone rose to greet her. Not one to explore potentially dangerous surroundings unprepared, she discarded the hook, picked up the poker, and crept out into the strange, silent corridor.
It was built like a castle, full of pillars and arches and vaulted ceilings. Occasional works of art dotted the corridors, eclectic in style. There were portraits and landscapes and still lifes, vases of jade and silver. Not much thought seemed to be given to the placement or colours, like it didn’t matter to the manor’s occupant what the pieces looked like together, only that they had them to begin with.
She stopped next to a bust wearing an emerald crown, her side splitting. The crown looked suspiciously like the one that used to belong to the Empress of Nordheim which had been lost to the Shadowmancer a few weeks earlier.
Viola froze. No. No. It wasn’t possible. There was no way that she was in the Shadowmancer’s domain, surely? He wouldn’t have saved her from the wendigo. He wouldn’t have bandaged her wounds.
And he didn’t have such shocking taste in art, did he?
More than a little disturbed—and now worried that the shadows might have eyes—she stepped into the nearest room and frowned. It was completely empty, and more than that, it was unfinished. Half of the wall looked like it belonged to a mountain, the stone rough and jagged.
She crept onwards, opening another door, then another. One was a tower without any stairs, another unfinished room, and the third a storage cupboard filled with buckets and brooms. She turned to the other side of the corridor where her own room was located, and tried the door next to it.
It was a bedchamber more opulent than any she’d ever seen, filled with heavy fabrics and plush curtains, all in dark shades—forest green velvets, blood red cushions, gold and black brocade chairs.
And in the middle of the room, lying on a ridiculously ornate bed carved with wolves and branches, was a dark-haired figure.
Viola sucked in a breath.
The Shadowmancer.
She approached carefully, one tentative step at a time. The left side of his face was pressed against the pillow, his entire right side exposed. It wouldn’t be hard to dispatch him like this, not with the poker in her grasp. Her mind was racing through the dozen points of entry, calculating which would be quickest and cause the least amount of resistance.
She reached the side of his bed, startled once more by his youthful appearance. His black hair was trimmed neatly at the sides, tousled on top. His skin was pale—the colour of fresh cream straight from the dairy, all milk and moonlight. He looked like he’d never seen the sun. There was something Tsubasan about his features, the slope of his cheek, the clarity of his skin, the jewel-like shape of his eye.
Viola hesitated, retracting her weapon by an inch. It didn’t seem particularly knightly to kill a sleeping person, even if they were the most wanted person in the realm. Even if her king had told her to. She searched through her knight’s vows. There was nothing that forbade it, but…
Well, he hadn’t killed her when he’d had the chance either. He’d bound her wounds and given her shelter. If she killed him now, she’d never find out why.
That was the only reason she wasn’t doing it. The only reason.
“It’s really rather rude to consider killing the person who saved you,” said the not-so-sleeping figure, eyes still shut. “Rude… and foolish.”
A cold sensation prickled at the back of Viola’s neck. She turned around, and found a hundred shards of shadow hovering behind her like the spiked back of a porcupine.
“You can manipulate shadows with your eyes closed,” she whispered, as if speaking too loudly would provoke them.
“Of course,” said the voice from behind her. “Shadows still exist even when you’re not there to witness them.”
The shadow-daggers dispersed, swamping the room in total darkness, thick as ash. Viola wheeled around, brandishing her poker—
“What are you doing?”
“Getting dressed without giving you a show. Hold on a moment.”
A tense few seconds later, the darkness dispersed. The Shadowmancer stood before her, wearing a loose, black silk dressing gown hemmed with gold, tied loosely at the waist displaying most of a slim, chiselled chest, smooth and dusted with light muscle—the kind men just seemed to incur with minimal effort, much to her annoyance.
Aside from the gown, he wore a pair of silk night-trousers, and the gold mask he’d become known for. She had assumed it was part of his costume, some persona designed to intimidate or disguise, but now she was closer, she wondered if that was the full truth. There seemed to be some discolouration underneath the left eyehole, a greyness to his skin not matched on the other side.
“What’s with the mask?” she asked, deciding she didn’t owe her enemy politeness, even if he did save her life.
“Don’t you think it adds to my villainous aesthetic?”
Viola had no answer for that, much like she didn’t have an answer for why he was grinning at her. The mask made him look less human, more sinister—although it did draw attention to his rather soft, irritating mouth. It made his smirk even more pronounced.
She wished she’d stabbed him when he had the chance.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Viola Windbright,” she replied, keeping her answer short.
His smile widened. “Ah, a squire from the House of Wind, then. From the north, are you?”
“Yes.”
“And what was your name before? ”
Viola hesitated. It wasn’t a question knights often got. When they apprenticed to the Houses, they took on part of their name, and that became theirs until the King or Queen bestowed on them another. Griffinrider, Dragonslayer, Cursebreaker. Viola had yet to earn one, although a few had floated around in the last year or so. None had felt hers, though. Windbright felt borrowed.
“Brightstone,” she told him, before she could think the better of it.
“Viola Windbright, formerly Brightstone. Do you have a nickname you go by?”
The tattoo on her wrist itched. Vi, Vi, Vi! Called a child’s voice.
“No,” she said quickly, “although sometimes people omit the middle syllable. ‘Vi-lah’.”
“I’m Nicodemus Nightshade,” he said, his silky hair brushing against his cheek as he dipped into a bow.
“Is that your real name?”
“Nicodemus is, from what I remember. Nightshade I chose because… well.” He did a twirl. “What else was I going to be? Doesn’t it make me sound intimidating?”
“You just did a twirl.”
“An intimidating twirl.”
Viola blinked at him. She felt awake, but she was beginning to believe she must still be dreaming. It was the only conclusion that made sense. “I’m sorry,” she started, not at all meaning it, “but what’s going on here? Why did you save me? Why are you twirling— ”
“For the same reason you hesitated before you used that poker,” he said. “Didn’t seem right to kill you when you were defenceless.”
“So, what—you’ll wait until my wounds heal and kill me then?”
“Probably,” he said. “That would be the sensible thing to do, wouldn’t it? Mind you, you seem quite adept at escaping. Perhaps you’ll slip out of my clutches once again.”
“This is all a game to you, isn’t it?”
“Everything’s a game to me, darling. The world’s a lot more fun that way.”
Above his head, held in the grasp of a shadow that was his double save for the tentacles sprouting out of its back, was the poker she’d plucked from the fireplace. She glanced down at her empty hand.
“How did you—”
“ Games, ” he said, his fingers dancing like a magician’s. He shooed both shadow and poker away. “How did you get out of your room, out of interest?”
“There was a key in the door. I knocked it out and pulled it round using the hole in the wall. ”
“Hole in the—you mean Azrael’s door?”
“Who is Azrael?”
“Only the greatest cat in the world! We call him Zazzy for short.”
“You… have a cat?”
“The greatest cat,” he corrected.
Viola’s mind wandered to Blackberry, hoping he’d flown back to the barracks, and from that, to the rest of her lance. Freya. Goddess, she’d be so worried—
“I need to go,” she said, marching towards the door.
The door slammed shut. Shadows wound around the handles. Viola yanked at them nonetheless, knowing it was fruitless. “Let me out of here!”
“Have you seen the state of yourself?” he said. “I’m surprised you can walk, let alone climb down a mountain. The forest is untraversable. If you leave now, you’ll die.”
“Why would you care?”
“I don’t,” he said sharply, “but I imagine you have someone who does.”
Viola froze. One or two, yes. Maybe more than that, if she was honest. “I don’t suppose you have any way of letting me get a message out, do you?”
“Yes, villains are notorious for being excellent hosts,” he said, stony-faced. “Come now, Windbright. You may yet see your people again. Try to relax and enjoy yourself. I promise not to murder you in your sleep.”
“I’m not entirely sure I believe you.”
He barked a laugh. “That’s probably a wise decision. Now, would you like a tour?”
The day before—or at least, what she thought was the day before—Viola had been dreaming about killing this Nicodemus Nightshade. She had dreams of delivering his corpse to the King and receiving a medal for her bravery. Maybe a statue. Perhaps she’d finally earn her knight’s name. Viola Shadowslayer had an excellent ring to it.
She’d even planned where to go during her celebratory leave. She’d never visited her grandparents’ homeland of Sudaria. It apparently had fabulous beaches, and she heard that the warriors there had developed numerous techniques for fighting in extreme heat.
She certainly hadn’t imagined her next break would be taken in the lair of her enemy, and never in her wildest dreams did she imagine he’d be giving her a tour of it.
Well, she supposed it couldn’t hurt to learn more about him. That’s all her curiosity was—a way to learn about him, to exploit his weaknesses as soon as she was properly healed and his defences were down.
“Where are we, anyway?” she asked him, as he opened the door to an opulent dining room, bedecked in silver and gold with impressive table displays of peacock feathers and jewelled pomegranates.
“A castle in the Shadowcrest Mountains,” the Shadowmancer told her. “And don’t get any ideas—it’s spelled against intruders. You could fly right past the window and not see it without myself or Cordelia with you.”
“Who’s Cordelia?”
“My… assistant,” he said, as if the word didn’t quite fit. “She likes to keep to herself. You’ll meet her properly later.”
Viola chewed her lip. “You built your lair in the Shadowcrest Mountains?”
“Castle,” he corrected. “And where else was I going to build it?”
She narrowed her eyes. “How did you build it?”
“Slice by slice.”
“By yourself?”
“Me and my army of shadows.”
Viola paused, gaze travelling over the room, thinking of all the doors and stairs she’d seen, how much left there was to see. “But that must have taken you—”
“Years,” he said. “Thirteen, in fact.”
“ Thirteen? But you—” She did a quick calculation in her head. If he was as old as she’d estimated, he must have started when he was little more than a child. He’d been living here all this time? What had he been doing ?
“You’re wondering how old I am, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Twenty-six,” he replied. “Yourself?”
“Twenty-four, just gone.”
Viola didn’t know what to say about his age. Impressive as this place was, she didn’t want to think about any thirteen-year-old carving up a mountain by themselves.
Nicodemus carried on showing off his home, drawing decidedly less attention to the items he’d clearly stolen over the years, and far more to the choice and scope of the rooms he’d fashioned out of the rock. There was a bathing room fashioned with water running off the mountains and heated with firestones, the ceiling inlaid with crystal so that it glinted like the night sky. Then there was an observatory open to the heavens, a plush sitting room, a gallery decidedly better decorated than the halls, and a workshop where shadows were busy carving furniture.
Viola jumped. “No one’s controlling them.”
“Yes, it appears that way, doesn’t it?” Nicodemus said smugly.
“But I was sure—”
“And now you are not.”
“Are you going to tell me how—”
“Oh, absolutely not,” he remarked, walking forward into the room. He had a slight limp on his left side, Viola noted, although she couldn’t be sure if it was an old injury or a recent wound. She wasn’t exactly walking easily herself.
The next room was a music room, filled with expensive instruments and splashed with a gold mural on the back wall. Everything was beautiful and extravagant, from the polished mahogany piano to the jewel-encrusted harp.
“Do you play all of these?” she asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Why have them all, then?”
“Because I can. ” He regarded her for a moment, her gaze caught on the harp. “Do you play?”
“No,” she said. Not anymore.
The next room on the tour was an armoury. It wasn’t as large as the one housed on the knight’s island, but it was certainly impressive, filled with golden blades and bejewelled hilts and a number of weapons chosen more for their beauty than their effectiveness, even if most of them also looked like they’d cause a lot of damage.
“Oh, this takes your fancy, of course it does,” the Shadowmancer said, watching her expression light up. “Tell me, are all knights so murder-minded?”
“I’m not murder-minded,” Viola protested. “The only person I’ve ever really wanted to kill is you.”
He laughed, much to her annoyance. How dare he not take her threats of violence seriously. “And you can’t talk.”
“Touché.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Come. Let’s move on before you get any ideas.”
Not wanting to admit quite how much she enjoyed the armoury—or the plans that might be forming in her mind—Viola didn’t protest, and waited until they’d visited another two rooms before clutching at her side and feigning a sudden need to rest .
“Of course,” said Nicodemus, “I’ll have one of my shadows escort you back to your room.”
He stepped aside, taking one shadow with him, and leaving another standing in his wake. Viola didn’t think she would ever get used to the ease of which the shadows seemed to slough from him, as simply as snow in spring. She’d been watching him closely every time he did it, trying to figure out a pattern to his movements, a set of rules. But he seemed to be following his own entirely.
The shadow escorted her back up to the room she’d been assigned and closed the door behind her. It didn’t bother to lock it. Perhaps Nicodemus knew that it was foolish to try to keep her locked up, or perhaps he knew that there was no leaving this place. He was right about one thing: it would be foolish to try to leave during a snowstorm and sporting an injury. If she wanted to survive, the best thing to do was stay put.
But she wasn’t going to be defenceless.
As soon as she was sure that the cost was clear, she crept back out into the corridor and made her way back to the armoury…
Only to find it suddenly empty, devoid of everything but a couple of practice swords and a few weapons too heavy and cumbersome for her to even try moving.
Oh, that villain!
She thought about grabbing one of the practice swords and hurling it at him just to vent her frustrations, but it occurred to her he’d probably enjoy that far too much. No, she refused to give him the satisfaction. Still, she was here now. She might as well get in some practice, or as much practice as her side would allow. When she eventually got out of here, she’d need her strength. She’d been lying down for too long.
She picked up one of the swords, and started to lunge.