Prologue #3
Lorreth’s nostrils flared, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “No. I’ve searched high and low. If Foley’s here, then I couldn’t tell you where.”
Unfortunate. We needed Foley. I sighed, shoving down my disappointment. “All right. Well, keep looking. I have a feeling we shouldn’t give up just yet.”
“Who’s Foley?” Carrion asked.
Lorreth opened his mouth, halfway to answering, but then he hesitated, looking to me.
The universe could end and Carrion Swift wouldn’t have run out of questions. But in his position, I probably would have felt the same way. I inclined my head, glancing away while Lorreth explained.
“A friend once. Still a friend. One of us. We lost him at Ajun.”
Saeris said that Lorreth sang a ballad about the Ajun Gate, about the battle that had taken place there, but that the quicksilver had claimed the song in return for allowing Avisiéth, Lorreth’s sword, to be forged anew.
Carrion had asked about the Ajun Gate since then.
While we’d all waited for Saeris to wake after the Midnight Kiss, Lorreth had recounted plenty of our exploits to the smuggler.
He’d talked of the friend we’d lost to the dragon.
He just hadn’t told him the whole story.
“If you lost him in Ajun, then how . . .” Carrion’s brow furrowed, realization dawning on him. “Oh. You lost him. But he still lives. Here?” he said, looking up at the razor-sharp walls of the Black Palace that towered above us.
“Yes,” Lorreth said. It was remarkable how one word could hold so much tension.
The warrior cleared his throat. “I’ll tear the place apart if I have to, Fisher.
Don’t worry. I’ll get it done. Go. Get inside.
Saeris was putting on a brave face when I left her, but she was panicking.
I’ll rub Bill down and get him cooled off.
” Even as he said it, he scrubbed a hand up and down Bill’s sweat-slicked neck, clapping him on his shoulder.
I got down, careful not to jar Onyx too badly as my boots hit the ground.
I landed softly, but he still yelped. I could feel his bones through his fur. With a sinking heart, I saw that his paws were cracked and bleeding.
“You’ll have to hold him,” I told Carrion, as we headed back toward the Cogs.
“What? I can’t hold him. He does not like me.”
Quickly, I drew Nimerelle and spun the sword over, holding her up for Carrion to see. “Want to carry this instead?” I asked. “You’ll need both god swords if you want to carve a path for us back through the Cogs and into the palace.”
The smuggler paled as he assessed the sword. At best, you’d wind up with severe burns if you touched another warrior’s god sword. At worst, you might lose a hand. Or your life.
“I’ll stick to the fox,” he said, eyeing Nimerelle warily.
It took longer than I would have liked to make it back up to Saeris’s rooms. We left a trail of teeth in our wake, canines skittering and bouncing off the cobbled streets and then off polished floors as we climbed each floor of the palace.
By the time we were safely behind closed doors in Saeris’s room, I had lost count of the vampires I’d killed, black blood painted Carrion’s clothes, and Onyx had passed out from exhaustion.
Saeris was by the door, tears streaking down her pale, beautiful face.
She was dressed in a thick black robe with elaborate golden embroidery at the pockets.
Her expression was stricken as she took in Onyx.
“Gods. Is he okay?” she whispered, as if she were too scared to ask the question for fear of the answer.
“He’ll be fine,” I told her. Gods, I wanted to sweep her into my arms and hold her.
I knew the slope of her shoulders so well.
The way the fine wisps of her hair curled at her temples.
I knew the hard defiance she wore on her like a shield, but I hadn’t met her grief yet.
It was an unwelcome stranger I wanted to banish as soon as possible; its presence in the room made my chest ache.
Despite his injuries, the little fox writhed in Carrion’s arms, determined to reach his destination at last. Only when he was safe, pressed up against Saeris’s chest, did the tension seem to leave his body.
He trembled, panting, as he stared up at Saeris.
She had cursed my name and bared her teeth at every threat she’d faced since I’d met her.
Even when I’d found her on the steps in the Hall of Mirrors, dying from the injuries Harron had inflicted upon her, she’d been full of defiance.
Now, she wept as she cradled the fox in her arms, and I couldn’t fucking bear it.
I reached for him. “Here. Give him to me,” I said.
Saeris’s eyes were the pale blue of a winter dawn breaking over the mountains. Bottom lip quivering, she gave me a questioning look but didn’t give it voice. She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and handed Onyx over to me.
Carrion was gone. For once, the thief had assessed the situation and made himself scarce. Saeris followed me with wide eyes, her heartbeat pounding in her throat as she watched me carry the fox over to the door that led out onto her balcony.
As the first of all the vampires and king of the Blood Court, Malcolm had claimed these rooms once, as was his right, but he hadn’t spent much time here.
According to Tal, he had slept in the tower above us, his paranoia urging him to lock himself behind a series of two-foot-thick iron doors while he slept.
I couldn’t imagine him standing out on this balcony, out in the open, with the night sky bristling with stars over his head.
He would have been too afraid of his own shadow out here . . .
Saeris was radiant under the moonlight. Her hair whipped and snapped like a banner on the cold breeze. “Just . . .” Tears shone in her eyes. “If you have to do it, then at least make sure it’s quick.”
A band of iron cinched tight around my chest. She thought I was going to put the poor creature out of its misery. She thought that, and she had still handed him over to me. She’d trusted me to do what had needed to be done, to save her companion from pain . . .
I shook my head, smiling softly. “I told you. He’s going to be fine, Osha. I promise.” I sank down onto my knees, placing the ball of bloodstained white fluff in my lap. A pair of eyes, black and glassy as jet, stared up at me, wide and trusting.
“Healing is a small magic for me,” I whispered to him.
“I guess it’s lucky for both of us that you’re small, too.
” I waited for the current of magic to warm my palms. I’d used it to heal bruises when I was a Faeling.
I’d used it to fix a broken thumb, and that had almost depleted my entire reserve of healing energy.
When I was young, I’d complained to my mother that my healing gifts were so negligible, but she had laughed and ruffled my hair.
“Never doubt your powers, sweet one,” she’d told me. “Each one of them is a gift. Each one will prove exactly enough when you have need of it. Have faith in yourself. You will always be enough.”
I prayed she was right as I held my hands over the fox’s injured hind leg. At first, I felt resistance—a barrier that didn’t yield as easily as the one that stood between me and my shadows. It gave eventually, though, allowing a wave of pain to wash over me. I winced—
“What is it?” Saeris asked. “What’s happening. What are you doing?”
Onyx whined. His head rested on my leg, his exhaustion seeping through the connection I’d just forged between us. He was weary to his bones, and his leg was pulsing with pain. Not broken, thankfully, but fractured. He’d been running on it for so long.
“Fisher!”
“A moment, Osha,” I said. “Trust me. This won’t take long.”
I closed my eyes, and I pulled. Some members of the Fae didn’t have access to small magics.
A small magic wasn’t a part of a male or female’s birthright, like my shadows were.
It was a much smaller well of energy—a faint affinity that a person might have toward a specific line of magic.
Unlike birthright magic, small magic was a finite resource.
My hands shook as I dug deep, searching for every scrap of healing magic that still flowed inside of me. Once I’d visualized it there, in the middle of my chest, I poured it all into Onyx.
The fox shuddered, and within seconds, his rapid breathing began to ease.
The pain radiating from him ebbed until it was only a dull throb in his leg.
His paws were healed. The fractured bone fused .
. . but not fully. I didn’t have quite enough healing magic to heal him all the way, but it was enough. He could manage the rest on his own.
The little fox yawned, then kicked, wanting to be free of me. His coat was clean again now, the blood that had stained it gone. His limp was barely noticeable as he ran back to his mistress.
Saeris’s eyes were full of wonder and relief as she stooped down to pick him up. “What? But . . . how?” She laughed as the fox nuzzled into her neck and licked her cheek. “I didn’t know you could heal!”
I shrugged. “I can’t now. Not anymore, anyway. It wasn’t much, but I gave him what I had.”
Her joy faded a little. “But . . . if you have healing magic, shouldn’t it just replenish? Like it does for Te Léna?”
Ruefully, I shook my head. “Some magics don’t work that way, Osha.
” I would explain it to her some other time.
There was still a shocking amount that she didn’t know about this realm, its people, and its magic.
But that could wait. Onyx was in much better shape, and she had stopped crying. For now, that was all that mattered.
“You sacrificed that magic, then? To help him?” Saeris asked. Gods, she was so fucking beautiful. The moonlight painted her skin silver until she looked like she was glowing.
I nodded.
She didn’t seem to know what to say. She buried her face in Onyx’s coat for a moment, breathing him in. When she lifted her gaze to meet mine again, she arched an eyebrow at me. “Why?” she asked. “Why make that sacrifice?”
I wouldn’t have answered her before. I wouldn’t have been able to lie, and so I would have kept my mouth shut.
So much had happened now, though. So much had changed between us.
The truth slipped out with ease. “Don’t you know?
There isn’t much I wouldn’t sacrifice to make you happy, Osha.
A little healing magic is the least of it. ”
Before Gillethrye, we’d been dancing around the tension between us for weeks and weeks. Now, God Bindings marked her hands and her wrists. They were wrapped around my wrists, too. We were of one another, bound to one another, in a way that felt strange and thrilling.
There was so much more to be said.
The weight of that hung between us . . . but the female I had been terrified to fall for simply nodded, trying not to smile. “I see. And here I was thinking that you’d changed your mind about Onyx.”
I tried not to smile, too. I couldn’t tear my eyes from her. Gods, she was fucking beautiful. “Oh no,” I muttered softly. “I still think he’d made a great hat.”