Prologue #2
To Hans’s horror, the bullet slows through the air, enough to be seen.
Enough to be plucked like some orchard cherry and tossed aside, landing in the unforgiving red of the brother’s blood.
The dark-haired soldier’s eyes flare as he registers this.
The foxhole’s shadows twist against the light, leaping into impossible shapes.
Hans can feel his own silhouette dragged across the mud, even as his limbs go numb.
The rest of his men look both limp and stiff—no longer in control.
The whites of their eyes are wide as they watch their shadows coil around the flaming figure’s boots.
This darkness goes taut as he lifts a fist.
Hans feels himself turning. He sees the rest of his unit doing the same—pointing their bayonets at one another’s stomachs. Their pistols at their own temples. One private has even pulled the pin from his grenade, which he makes no move to throw.
The grieving brother screams.
Blades fall. Guns go off. The grenade detonates.
Death is everywhere.
1925
The thief is no ordinary cat burglar.
She does not have to smash through the glass of the British Museum’s windows.
Nor does she need a rope to lower herself down from the roof.
Her eyes don’t shine as she saunters past the extensive gemstone collection, nor does she pause to consider the walrusivory chess pieces that would fetch a pretty penny from collectors.
Money doesn’t interest her. There is a tense moment, where she halts in the mummy gallery, studying the withered bodies of Yuya and Thuya.
The rags they’re wrapped in look so at odds with her glittering dress—another anomaly.
Instead of all-black clothes and a mask, the thief is wearing sequins and a feather boa, as if she’s just stepped out from a party at Mayfair.
She has, actually.
Most of London’s Bright Young Things have nothing better to do.
Every night there’s a chance to dress up in your best gown and ruin it with dance floor sweat—not to mention the spray of champagne as it pours down a perfect glass pyramid.
Not many partygoers actually dare touch this.
It’s too breakable, and there are too many other things to inebriate yourself with: the swing of the trumpet, the swoosh of eyeliner, the careful carelessness of the crowd.
The thief, however, took the top glass of champagne before she exited. It’s already half drunk. She lifts this in a wry toast to the dead Egyptians.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where I might find the entrance to the hidden wing?” A pause, as if she might actually hear an answer sneak through their brown teeth. After another beat, she takes a sip of her drink. “Eh. Keep your secrets, then. I’ll find it myself.”
The thief wanders past more moonlit cases. Pieces of Stone Age flint, medieval coins, samurai armor. None of these displays are shimmering with the one thing the thief truly aims to steal.
Magic.
She’s not surprised. The Order of British Magicians keeps a tight rein on their powers—if women aren’t allowed to handle enchanted objects, then it would hardly make sense to display them where the general public might see.
No. The greedy sons of bitches have established their own separate collection.
A museum inside a museum. The thief heard whispers of it in the glittering corners of the party she just left.
Not that the lord’s drunk son sketched out a map or anything.
He was showing off a lighter—one that let its owner snap a flame into existence between their bare fingers—bragging about the fact that his father had acquired enough relics on his last expedition to Egypt to not only pay the tithe but also move up in the Order’s ladder of power. One step closer to the Apex.
The thief wanted to get there too, which was why she’d sat and felt the fire burn, both inside of her chest and out, while the intoxicated young man droned on: Papa was allowed to take me to the vault—top secret stuff, chock-full of relics. You can take items out on loan, if you rank high enough.
The thief had forced herself to lean in to let the boy light her cigarette. This afforded her one more question.
Where is it? Oh, some hidden wing in the British Museum.
It’s all warded off, of course. Nearly got decapitated by a sphinx before Papa intervened…
He’d said this as if it was something worth bragging about.
You wouldn’t believe some of the things the Order stores in there.
This lighter is just a drop in the bucket.
Of course, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but you won’t remember a word I’ve said when tomorrow rolls around.
He’d pulled closer with a grin.
She blew a big gust of smoke in his drunken face and used the opportunity to slip away.
None of the sphinxes in the mummy room strike the thief as giant enough to decapitate a man with a head as big as his.
But there are larger statues downstairs, aren’t there?
It’s been ages since the thief last visited these halls—as a tiny girl in a pinafore.
She tries to remember if her own father lingered in any particular gallery longer than necessary.
If any of the statues had moved around him, the way they sometimes did in the gardens of their family home.
These memories sting. The thief pushes them back as she flies down the stairs.
It’s not a boa she’s wearing after all—but wings.
Wings as black as a raven’s, with hints of purple and blue hidden in the odd feather.
To fly here, or anywhere in Britain, is a risk.
The Order would sooner rip the wings from the thief’s shoulders than suffer a woman to soar.
She would be much better off across the Channel.
To the thief, this is all the more reason to stay.
To make the old men pay.
There’s a night watchman on the ground floor, but he’s not in the habit of looking up at the vaulted ceiling.
The thief avoids him easily, gliding into the Egyptian gallery.
The statues are larger here—pharaohs and Assyrian lions cut imposing figures against the moonlight.
None turn their heads, though, as the thief comes to land beside an open sarcophagus.
There! Just across the way sit two massive sphinxes.
The mythical creatures are facing each other, with nothing but bare wall between them.
Lion haunches give way to all-too-human mouths—made even more unsettling for the fact that red stains the stones forming their teeth.
The thief grabs at the chain around her neck, pulling an ornate key from her décolletage and fighting back a frown. She’d been expecting a door. A lock that might click open with the right spell…
One of the sphinxes turns to regard her. The statue has no pupils, but the thief knows it sees her. Glitter and all. A stone jaw drops open to reveal even more crimson teeth. The thief fights the urge to take a step back. Black wing feathers quiver.
“Aren’t you going to ask me a riddle?” Her voice echoes through the gallery’s vaulted ceilings.
The other sphinx turns its head, stone tail whipping in the way of an angry cat. The thief feels her own shoulders tense as she regards the sculpted, predatorial muscles of its haunches. Never mind that each of these statues has to weigh at least a ton.
“No mind games, then. What is it? A secret phrase? Do I need one of those stupid rings?” She swallows, suddenly recalling her father’s hand in hers, leading her through the museum galleries.
The thief used to love the way that pinky ring of his caught the light, making its gold seem to glow.
“I’m sure if I was a son, you’d both step right aside. ”
The statues seem unmoved by this particular grudge.
The thief knows better than to force it.
She continues studying the sphinxes from a distance.
For all the Order has tried to tame magic—to collect and catalog and keep it out of the hands of the common man—there’s much your average British magician does not understand.
Hence, their undying fascination with Egypt.
Magic was more miraculous then, her father once explained.
Men became gods, gods became myth, and the myths tell us that even death itself became undone.
A bit more impressive than lighting a cigarette, to be sure.