Chapter One
When I open my eyes, it takes me a moment to realize I’m no longer in a bed.
Chainmail presses into my cheek. I’m bobbing up and down from the motion of being carried. It’s dark in the narrow corridor, but I’m shadow-born. It isn’t darkness that’s blurring my vision.
I’ve been poisoned, I realize with a lurch of my stomach. Knocked out again, like I was when Zara took me from in front of the theatre. Only this time, my attacker didn’t use enough to keep me under.
I can’t get a good look at the person carrying me—they’ve thrown me over their shoulder, and I’ll have to give away that I’m awake if I want to see who they are.
I’m still wearing my armor from last night’s fighting, but I have no weapon on me, and I can’t sense Ronan nearby, which means my shadows will have no form to fight them with.
Slowly, doing the best I can to conceal my movement beneath their shifts in posture, I bring my hands together, slipping my mother’s signet ring from my finger.
I wait until my attacker reaches a door and carries me through it, concealing the sound of the ring dropping with the clang of the metal door in its frame and the squeak of its hinges.
At least Ronan will know which way I went if my next move fails.
My kidnapper is much larger and stronger than me, so I’ll have little chance of fighting them off without a weapon.
What I need to do is disable them just long enough so that I can run.
I recognize my surroundings—we’re in the alleys north of the palace near the market heading west to the river.
Thanks to my time with Soren, I know these streets well.
This is my best opportunity to get away.
I kick my attacker hard in the stomach. He grunts loudly as he loses his grip on me, and I stretch my legs to reach the ground beneath me, dodging his grasping arms and kicking at his legs to break free.
“Wait—” my attacker gasps out. “Sylvie, please.”
I recognize the voice. No, it can’t be.
I take a step back and look at the man doubled up before me. His head is bald, and he’s wearing the chainmail of the Royal Guard over a ruffled black shirt and black breeches. Enezian clothing, not the Selaran underclothes of the Guard. The man looks up at me, his eyes pleading.
It’s Larus. He’s shaved his head and his beard to avoid recognition, but I know his face better than almost anyone. I know his voice.
He’s still trying to get me out of here. Why?
“I’m not coming with you,” I say to him. “I made my choice.” I’m not letting him bring me back to Adria. I won’t join them, and I won’t be their prisoner.
I slip backwards into the shadows, but there’s movement at the end of the alley in the direction Larus was taking me.
“Larus?” someone calls. It isn’t Adria, but they’re Nithyrian, judging from the accent. “Did you find her?”
I darken the shadow I’m in as the woman turns towards Larus. There are three others with her, all of them in Selaran clothes and armor.
I look at Larus on the ground. Please, I say to him silently, but he can’t see me in the magical darkness I’ve created. Just let me go.
“Shadows,” he manages to choke out, catching his breath finally from my blow. “She’s here in the shadows.”
I take off into a run, knocking over crates as I go, trying to slow their pursuit. I leap over a crack in the road opened by an earth-born—possibly Larus—and grab onto a window box to prevent being brought off my feet by a sudden gust from a wind-born.
But it’s the fire-born that stops me. I reach a pile of rubble at the end of the alley, and I’m just starting to climb it when they ignite it in flame.
Fuck.
I climb as fast as I can manage, but I’m still sore and exhausted from last night’s fighting, and my legs give out quickly.
The flames lick at my heels as I scramble for a roof, and I’m nearly there, nearly away from these people, my own people, nearly back to safety, when the rubble shifts beneath me, leaving me hanging onto the eaves by my bare hands.
I try as hard as I can to pull myself up, to swing my legs to the building so I can push against it for leverage, but I’m just too tired, just too weak.
“Let me get her,” says Larus from the alley beneath me as a bolt of flame explodes inches from my hands. “We need her alive.”
“If you get her, can you keep hold of her this time?” says the fire-born woman who spoke earlier. She’s a friend of Adria’s, I realize. Lady Marina of one of the minor Nithyrian Houses, or she was until she was stripped of her title after the last war.
Larus ignores her. “Let go, Sylvie. I promise you, I’ll keep you safe. I’m on your side.”
I’m on your side. It’s what he told me weeks ago when I told him what Seth and Adria were doing, when I told him what I’d realized about Ronan. And yet there he had stood in the throne room, telling Adria and me that he had betrayed us both, that everything he’d done was to save us both.
And maybe Adria had done something to him to compel his loyalty, but he’d given it to her all the same. He had a choice, and he didn’t choose me.
He can’t be on my side. Not if he’s on Adria’s.
But I can’t defeat him here, not when I’m unarmed and outmatched. I don’t want to go with them, but I don’t see what choice I have. Maybe if I cooperate, I can turn the situation in my favor.
I drop from the eaves into Larus’s waiting arms.
“Knock her out, and let’s go,” says Marina. “They’re raising the booms. If we don’t get on the water soon, we’ll be stuck within these walls.”
“Don’t—” I say to Larus, but he shakes his head.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers as he holds the handkerchief to my face once more.
I hold my breath and thrash my arms against him, but it’s no use. Before long, I have no choice but to inhale, and the world goes dark in a haze of minty poison and the wine on Larus’s breath.
I wake on horseback hours later. My hands are bound in front of me, and I’ve been draped sideways over the saddle and tied to it. The ground beneath me is not a city street but a dusty dirt path with deep ruts.
We’re not in Faros anymore.
We’re passing through a camp, I think at first, but then I realize as I slowly lift my head that it stretches on forever, all the way to the horizon.
This isn’t a camp. It’s an army.
One of Seth’s armies. They’re taking me to him, or to Adria. It makes no difference which of them they’re taking me to.
They’re taking me to my death.
I close my eyes as the horses stop and someone cuts me from the saddle, letting me slip backwards to the ground. I keep my legs limp, letting them strike and crumple beneath me as if I’m still unconscious.
“Careful with her,” says Larus, coming over to pick me up, handling me gently. “She’s a Verran.”
“She’s a traitor,” says Marina. “She’s why we’re in this mess. We could’ve turned the streets to blood if she didn’t run her big mouth.”
“You don’t know what they might have done to her to make her talk.”
“I don’t need to know. I know what a true Nithyrian would’ve said—nothing. I would have died before giving us up.”
“Don’t worry,” comes a familiar voice from further away. A female voice. “There’s still time for all of that. I’ll kill her myself the moment she stops being of use to us.”
I’m grateful for about half a second before realizing that this situation is really no better than if it were Seth speaking.
It’s Adria.
“Chain her in there,” she tells Larus, gesturing to something I can’t see without letting them know I’m awake. “I’ll deal with her in the morning.”
I hear the barking before I see where they’re taking me—the hounds are caged behind a row of tents on the edge of the camp. There’s not much beyond but the marshy land on the banks of the Mara, land that will soon flood.
Marina has followed Adria off somewhere along with the others, leaving Larus alone to his task. There’s another chance for me here, a chance to get the drop on Larus before I’m at Adria’s mercy, and I’m going to take it.
I glance at the chains before Larus shackles my legs.
There’s a gap between the cuffs to allow me to maneuver somewhat, likely so I can avoid soiling myself and making a mess for them to clean up.
Only one of each set of shackles is connected to a bar at the back of the large, empty hound cage where they’re planning to keep me.
I know what I have to do.
I keep as still as I can while Larus shackles my arms. The second he cuts the rope that had bound my hands before, I pounce. I throw my shackled hands over his head, shifting my body so that I’m behind him, the chain between my hands cutting into his throat.
He reaches for the chain, fumbling to get his fingers beneath it, but I snap it and pull it tight, suffocating him.
My heart races as I consider what I’m doing. No matter what he’s done to me, could I really kill Larus, the man who raised me? The closest thing I ever had to a parent? The person who taught me everything I know?
Larus pushes backwards against me, freeing him to take in a large gasping breath before I can tighten the chain once more.
Gods, this is harder than I thought it would be.
My arms feel the strain of exhaustion, and I feel hot streaks running down my face before I realize I’m crying.
I’m desperate to get away from here before they can kill me, but I hate every moment of what I’m having to do to leave.
And then the chain snaps.
Larus rushes forward, panting heavily and clutching at his throat. I go for the knife he dropped on the ground and hold it out in front of me.
“Not…bad,” he chokes out. “Almost…got…me.”
“I’ll get you yet,” I say, and I’m just about to launch the knife at him when he laughs, the sound hoarse and strange through his partially crushed throat.
“Wait,” he says. “Godsdammit, wait until…I catch…”
I don’t wait. I fling the knife in his direction, but it doesn’t reach its target. It clatters to the ground harmlessly just a moment before impact.