Chapter 30
30
Lara departed for the Earth trial just before dawn.
I couldn’t follow her because no one was allowed to see where the candidates went. The location had been kept secret to prevent cheating; all the candidates knew was that they’d be spending a week outdoors. They would learn the rules once they reached the forest. Survive for seven days, using magic to do so. The hunting of other candidates was encouraged. And for the first time in these trials, killing another candidate was allowed.
Lara would get as far away from the others as she could, cover her scent with mud, and seek shelter. I would follow that night and find her using the same trilling call we’d used in the labyrinth.
Which left an entire day to worry about how she was faring.
Somewhat unnervingly, Princess Oriana came to supervise my preparations late that afternoon. She sat in my desk chair, staring at me while I picked through the wardrobe.
I scowled at the tree nymph outfit it offered me. “No.”
“You need to blend in,” Oriana said.
“With all due respect, my princess, this is not the way to do it.” The outfit, if it could be termed that, consisted of a tiny, ragged skirt and two triangles of fabric to cover my breasts. It was worse than my Beltane costume. “I’ll die of exposure before I can help Lara.”
She sighed. “Humans are so fragile.”
“Can I wear something similar to what Lara’s wearing?” Dappled brown-and-green trousers, a matching long-sleeved shirt, and sturdy shoes, with a fur-lined cloak for warmth. “If I smear my face with mud and put twigs and leaves in my hair, I’ll probably look like some kind of Nasty.”
Her assessing glance told me she was imagining it and found the idea of me passing as a Nasty all too plausible. “Very well. Just know this: if your identity is discovered, you will die before you ever leave that forest.”
My skin prickled. “I understand, my princess.”
She left after that, and I completed my preparations in silence.
Alodie came to find me right before sunset. I’d just finished eating a hearty meal, knowing it might be my last for some time. The asrai led me through the catacombs for over an hour, stopping at last before a simple staircase that led directly into the forest. After a quick hug for luck, she was gone.
The staircase ended inside a hollow tree. I waited, listening for movement outside, but I couldn’t hear anything but the whisper of wind. I eased open a door in the trunk and emerged into a night-dark forest.
Alodie had told me a stream ran near the hidden door. I followed a faint trickling sound to an ice-cold ribbon of water barely the width of my palm. I dug into the mud at the stream’s edge, shuddering at the chill as I smeared it over my face, hands, clothes, and hair. I topped the wet, sticky mass of my hair with twigs and leaves and then moved quickly through the woods, emitting a trill every few minutes to see if Lara was nearby.
The task felt daunting. She had promised to head east, but it might take hours to come within earshot, and in that time any number of monsters might find me. The candidates would be keeping an eye out for suspicious movements. They might kill me on sight, whether or not they knew who or what I was.
I walked for a long time, checking the stars whenever the canopy opened to confirm I was heading in the right direction. Once something hissed in the underbrush, but it quieted after I passed. Another time I heard voices ahead of me—two of the candidates conferring together. I froze against a tree as Garrick and Markas passed not ten feet from my position.
“We’ll start tomorrow,” Garrick murmured, and then they moved on.
I didn’t need to wonder what would start tomorrow. They’d clearly formed an alliance and would be eager to eliminate the competition. Lara, as one of the most successful candidates, would be a high-priority target.
Hours later, a faint call finally floated through the air to answer mine. The moon was high overhead, the sky the velvet black of the small hours of the morning, and I was so tired I wanted to collapse into the nearest bush. I stumbled towards the sound, calling out again after a few minutes. This time the answer came from much closer.
I was almost on top of Lara when I found her.
“Kenna.” Her whisper stopped me in my tracks. The dirt at my feet shifted as a trapdoor rose to reveal the top half of her face.
I wriggled into the hole beside her. It had been carved into the ground below a fallen tree trunk, a few feet tall but just wide enough for two people to lie side by side. When Lara dropped the door covering the entrance, it was pitch black. “No fire?” I whispered.
“N-no.” Her teeth chattered. “I tried to light one earlier, but it didn’t work.”
It was so late—and so dark—that there was no point in trying to fix anything tonight. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
We huddled together for warmth. It was strange at first, having someone so close to me, but soon I stopped caring. It was incredibly cold now that I’d stopped moving. We combined our cloaks into one blanket and clutched each other like sisters until I finally fell into a restless sleep.
I woke naturally at sunrise, even though no light penetrated our shelter. My body was used to the schedule, and when I lifted the trapdoor the tiniest amount, I saw the woods bathed in the delicate gold of a new morning.
Knowing animals would also be out at dawn, I headed into the forest to hunt. Caedo took its favorite form, that of a lethal dagger, and its anticipation of the hunt mingled with mine until my heart pounded in time with the pulsing vibrations from its hilt. It felt strangely good to be out in the wilderness again, dependent only on myself for sustenance.
I moved carefully, staying low to the ground. My cloak was still in the hole, both to keep Lara warm and so the fabric wouldn’t hamper my movements, and with my mud-spattered garments I blended in well with the surroundings. Flakes of dried mud fluttered to the ground in my wake; I’d need to reapply my disguise later.
In a clearing ahead, two glowing green lights drifted at eye level.
I watched them from behind a tree. They looked like pixies, although it was hard to see any details beyond their small size and glow. Pixies were harmless, but I didn’t take any chances.
A movement in the underbrush piqued their interest. One of them dove, and moments later a high-pitched screech announced the death of some small creature. The other pixie joined the first, and when they rose into the air again, a dead rabbit hung between them.
Their features came clear as they flew past. Their faces had the same delicate shape as a pixie’s, but their mouths were gaping maws that took up the entire bottom half. Blood dripped from needle-sharp teeth and claws. Their bodies were covered in scales, their wings membranous and tipped with talons.
These weren’t Underfae, then, but Nasties, some ravenous variant on a pixie that could probably rip my throat out in an instant. I had been right to hide.
Once I was certain they were gone, I explored the clearing. Often one animal meant more in the immediate vicinity, and I found signs that animals came this way frequently: trampled dirt, snapped twigs, and clumps of fur snagged on bushes. I found a hiding spot and waited.
Eventually my patience was rewarded. Another rabbit appeared, its twitching nose skating over leaves and grass.
I struck, and blood splattered across the leaves.
This would keep us fed today, and I didn’t want to leave Lara alone for much longer, so I returned to the shelter. Along the way I spotted an imp with pointed ears and antlers foraging for mushrooms—one of the Underfae who had been let out to sabotage candidates. Imps were notoriously acquisitive, so we’d need to keep our belongings secured. I waited behind a bush until the waist-high creature gathered his treats and moved on.
Lara stirred when I opened the trapdoor. It was cleverly constructed, a latticework of tightly woven branches covered in mud that fit neatly over the burrow she’d carved into the earth.
“This is nice,” I said, peering into the shelter. I’d felt its dimensions last night, but I hadn’t seen the small pool of water at the far end. She must have summoned it from the ground.
Lara gave me a speaking look. She hadn’t applied mud to her face the way I had, though a smear of dirt crossed one cheek. “This is horrible.”
“It’ll be over soon. Come on, let’s have breakfast.”
It was much easier to build a fire with Lara’s help. She saved me endless digging by using her magic to carve two holes: a larger one and a small one next to it that joined the first pit at the base. The larger hole would conceal the fire and the smaller hole would ensure it continued to receive air as it burned, rather than smothering beneath the soil. I lit it using a hand-drilling technique my mother had taught me.
I thought of her smiling eyes and calloused hands, the soft lift of her voice as she’d taught me survival skills and as much of her herbcraft as I had the patience for. She would probably have seen this ordeal as a great honor—her only child, chosen to aid the Noble Fae.
“What are you thinking about?” Lara asked.
I started. I’d been staring into the flames for long minutes. “My mother. When I was little she taught me how to build a fire.”
Lara nodded, and I was grateful when she didn’t push any further.
I skinned the rabbit and skewered it on a stick while Lara watched, looking queasy. Soon we were eating hot, succulent meat.
“This is good,” Lara said in surprise. Juice dribbled down her chin, and she winced as she wiped it away. “Disgusting, though.”
“I love eating something I just caught. It tastes better knowing the work that went into it.”
“I’m trying not to think about how cute it was before you killed it.”
“Oh, please. You eat meat all the time.”
“Yes, but normally I don’t see the process it undergoes before reaching my plate.”
I looked at her curiously. “Do you never visit the kitchens?”
“No. Oriana doesn’t want us mingling too much with the Underfae.”
Typical Noble Fae snobbery. “Selwyn visits sometimes.”
“Why am I not surprised? I’m sure he feels very noble about visiting the servants.”
“He’s quite egalitarian.”
“It’s easy for him to support equality when he’s still benefiting from being a lord. I wonder if he would actually enjoy a world where everyone was equal.” She traced patterns in the dirt with a stick—a rabbit, a fire, two little figures. “Leo was the same.”
She rarely spoke about her older brother. “He wanted everyone to be equal?”
“For the most part. He still wanted to be a lord, but he wanted to use that influence to make everyone’s lives better. He wanted to unite the houses and abolish human servitude.”
And then he had fallen in love with a lady from another house and risked everything to be with her. “I’m sorry you never met him.”
“Everyone tells me how charming and brave he was. He would have been a wonderful prince eventually.”
Instead, Lara was the heir. “You’ll be a wonderful princess.”
She shook her head. “Let’s get back inside. I don’t want anyone to see us.”
We’d evidently reached the limits of her comfort speaking about her family and her future. I couldn’t blame her. I felt the same about my own personal tragedies. I, too, had a voice that taunted me in the middle of the night, one that said I was so worthless my father had abandoned me, so useless I didn’t even make a good servant, and so unlikable I’d only had one friend growing up, a friend I hadn’t been able to save…
We left a few embers smoldering to make it easier to start a fire the next time we needed one. Then Lara and I crawled back underground to wait.
We waited for days. That was our strategy—hide from the more violent candidates, use her magic and my hunting skills to source food and water, and emerge unscathed at the end of the week. What I hadn’t anticipated, though, was how boring the waiting would become. By the second day we were snapping at each other, by the third our heartfelt conversations had become arguments, and by the fourth we barely spoke. On the fifth day the rabbit-roasting spit—along with half a rabbit—went missing, courtesy of an imp Lara spotted hurrying away with its prize, and we had a fierce, whispered fight about who should have been watching more closely. By the sixth day I couldn’t stand the thought of spending one more second trapped in a foul hole in the ground with her.
“I’m going hunting,” I snapped.
“You already hunted this morning.”
“I don’t care. I’m hunting again.”
“Don’t let anyone see you,” she called after me. I repressed the urge to make a rude gesture over my shoulder. As if I wasn’t aware of the situation.
Instead of hunting, I explored, heading farther away from our tiny camp than I had dared to before. I was caked in so many layers of stinking mud that my skin felt like tree bark. It itched horrendously, and I resented Lara even more for refusing to apply the same level of disguise.
Voices sounded ahead.
I took cover in a small thicket, pressing myself low to the ground. It was Markas and Garrick again, conferring in whispers. My stomach dropped when they came into view.
They were both spattered with blood.
“I can’t wait to see Hector’s face.” Garrick grinned savagely. “I’ll be sure to let everyone know it was Light House who did it.”
“And Illusion,” Markas protested.
“You helped, but I struck the final blow.”
Their voices dwindled, and I lost sight of them. I lay there for long minutes, my pulse pounding frantically.
Who had they killed?
It could only be Una or Wilfrid. I didn’t know Wilfrid well—he mostly kept to himself—but he had seemed pleasant enough. I respected Una, and it hadn’t escaped my notice that she had tried to stop Markas and Garrick from hurting me.
Maybe Garrick had taken his revenge.
I retraced the path the two faeries had taken, following footprints and breaks in the foliage. Maybe it wasn’t too late to help whoever they had attacked.
I soon realized there was nothing I could do.
Wilfrid lay in the middle of a clearing in an enormous pool of blood, his blank eyes fixed on the sky. A tree branch protruded from his gut. He’d been stabbed with it, and by the look of the wound, Garrick had deliberately moved the wood to widen the hole.
I bent over, struggling not to vomit up precious food. It was a gruesome way to die. The bruises and cuts on his face and hands indicated this hadn’t been a quick killing. He had fought.
Drink .
I recoiled from Caedo’s suggestion. “No.” The notion was abhorrent. Wilfrid’s blood was still cooling, and the dagger wanted to feed on him like some carrion bird.
He will not feel it . Caedo was growing restless after days of nothing but small amounts of rabbit or squirrel blood.
“I don’t care whether or not he feels it. It’s wrong.”
Hungry.
“One more day,” I said through gritted teeth. “Then I’ll get you more animal blood.”
The dagger’s hunger itched at the back of my brain. Maybe I should have let it feed, but I had discovered one of my limits. It was one thing to drink the blood of an enemy in battle. It was another to desecrate a corpse.
I wanted to bury the body or burn it—something to ease the throbbing grief and rage in my chest. I had hardly known Wilfrid, but he hadn’t deserved this. In the end, though, I left him where he was, staring blindly at the clouds. Let the other faeries see what had been done to him. Let them know how he had died and who was responsible for the brutality. Some would see the killing as a mark of strength, but hopefully more would be outraged.
What would this do to Void’s supposed alliance with Light and Illusion? Would Hector take revenge? Where would Kallen’s allegiance fall if the king praised Garrick for the kill?
I left the clearing, and when I saw where Garrick and Markas’s path split off from mine, I hesitated. Where were they now, and who were they hurting? I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in the dark while they hunted for their next victim, so I changed direction and began tracking them, stealthy as any forest predator. Maybe I could warn whoever they came for next.
I almost didn’t see their camp.
Markas couldn’t cast complex illusions or make things disappear yet, but he could disguise them. Their lean-to blended in so well with the surrounding woods that I had to blink a few times to understand why the trees in that area looked slightly off.
I didn’t hear any sounds, but a fire still smoked nearby. Beside it was a crystal Garrick must have used to concentrate his light powers into a beam hot enough to burn.
Struck by an urge to commit violence, I darted to the campfire, pulled out a partially burned log, and laid the flaming wood at the base of the lean-to. It caught quickly, fire licking up the bark and branches while sap hissed and popped.
No one came out screaming, and the fire burned merrily until the entire structure had collapsed into smoking rubble.
I hoped they had kept their supplies in there.
If they weren’t in the shelter, they must be hunting for other candidates. What if they found Lara? Markas could make her eyes play tricks on her, and Garrick would be impervious to any magic she tried to use against him. They would beat her easily in a physical conflict.
Growing more and more nervous, I carved a path through the trees, moving quickly.
I was back in familiar territory when I heard Lara scream.
I forced myself to slow my frantic pace and move silently as I approached our campsite. If I had any hope of helping her, I needed the element of surprise.
Lara stood in the middle of the clearing, wielding a flaming branch like a club. Before her, Garrick and Markas exchanged amused glances.
“Get back,” she said.
“Are you going to burn us?” Markas asked. “You aren’t Edric. It won’t work.”
A hole opened beneath Markas’s feet and he stumbled into it, cursing. Another opened beneath Garrick, but he was faster.
“Clever,” Garrick said. “Not clever enough, though. I saw your tracks in the woods earlier.”
Lara hadn’t been in the woods; I had. Which meant I hadn’t been nearly as stealthy as I’d thought.
Another hole opened, but this one was shallow, and Garrick righted himself quickly.
Lara’s magic wasn’t infinite. I had to do something.
Garrick held a branch he’d carved into a sharp point. He meant to kill her the same way he had killed Wilfrid. He nodded at Markas.
Markas raised his hands, and Lara blinked as if confused and swatted at something in front of her. Garrick used her momentary distraction to begin circling behind her. She would be trapped between them in seconds.
I picked up a rock and threw it as hard as I could.
It grazed Garrick’s leg, rather than his head where I’d actually aimed, but it was enough to distract him. His eyes found me almost immediately. “What is that?”
I hunched over and hissed, doing my best to look like a monster and not a mud-spattered human. I picked up another rock.
“Tree nymph?” Markas asked doubtfully.
“Have you ever seen a nymph? They look a lot better than that.”
Lara’s eyes pleaded with me. Save me.
I would try.
A light flashed and I staggered back, blinking to clear the afterimage from my vision. Caedo practically screamed in my mind, and I barely had enough time to leap out of the way as Garrick’s sharpened branch whistled through the air. It would have skewered me if I’d been any slower.
I threw the rock, and this time he was close enough that it hit him squarely in the face, sending him staggering back for a few precious seconds. I sprinted around the edge of the clearing. Maybe I could keep him distracted long enough for Lara to fight off Markas.
Lara charged at the Illusion faerie with a bloodthirsty scream. Markas’s eyes widened as her branch crashed into his temple. Sparks and ash flew as the wood snapped, and Markas collapsed in a boneless heap.
“Kill him,” I shouted, but Lara just stared at his unconscious form.
Garrick laughed loudly. “The human. Now I recognize your pathetic servant. Have you been cheating, Lara?”
I reached Lara’s side. “You have to kill him. He’ll wake up eventually.”
She didn’t move.
Blood trickled from a cut on Garrick’s forehead, and although he was still smiling, anger burned in his eyes as he approached. “I’ll kill the human first. Then I’ll decide if I want to kill you now or wait to have King Osric do it in front of everyone.”
“Stay back.” I held Caedo between us.
“Knives are also cheating. Do you even know how to use that?”
Hungry .
“Perhaps we can strike a deal, Lara,” Garrick said. “Once the human is dead, I might be persuaded to forget what I saw.” He raked a lascivious gaze over her body.
“He won’t,” I told Lara.
“Like I’m an idiot,” she replied.
Garrick pulled his arm back with lightning quickness and threw the branch like a spear.
I knocked Lara to the ground, and the wood sliced across my arm, digging through mud and skin. Blood welled up and dripped to the soil below.
Garrick ran towards us. Lara was struggling to her feet, I was bleeding, and Garrick had pulled a smaller sharpened stick from somewhere…
Cold wrath filled me, combining with the dagger’s bloodlust to form something cruel and hungry. I felt the vibration of Garrick’s thundering steps through the soles of my feet. He was targeting Lara again, discounting me as a threat because I was a mere human, even though I was the only one wielding a real weapon. I let him fly past and lunge for Lara…
Then stabbed him in the back.
Hurt .
I did it again. Garrick fell to the ground, the stick clattering out of his fist. His eyes widened in shock as I plunged the knife into his abdomen.
Punish.
I twisted it as he had twisted the branch in Wilfrid’s gut. He screamed, high and sharp.
Kill.
I dragged the blade across his throat. His blood pumped out, flowing down his neck and chest and turning the soil to mud. He convulsed, staring at me in horror.
Drink.
Yes, the dagger could drink this time. It had let me strike Garrick several times when it could have drained him dry in an instant. It had allowed me to fulfill a need for revenge that had been locked away inside me, a bloodlust so powerful and raw I hadn’t recognized it against the background of my familiar mental landscape. Now I welcomed the rage and power, the sick joy, and as Garrick’s life drained away, I placed Caedo against his throat.
The blood was gone in moments.
All of it, even the blood staining the soil. Every bit of that red flow was sucked into the groove in the center of the blade until Garrick lay still, pale, and cold.
The burning rage drained out of me and was replaced with a numb sort of shock. Lara stared at me, her eyes wide with terror. Not just because of Garrick, I realized. Because of me.
Markas groaned, and Lara’s eyes shot to him. “We have to go before he wakes up.” She gingerly reached for my hand to pull me to my feet.
Kill , Caedo said.
No . I was starting to shake. I couldn’t stop staring at Garrick’s body.
I’d murdered someone.
It didn’t matter that he was a faerie and an enemy. I’d never killed anything but animals or Nasties before. Worse, I’d never killed with such murderous joy in my heart. How much of that bliss had come from Caedo?
How much had come from me?
I followed Lara blindly through the woods. We stayed away from trails and waded through streams to disguise our tracks. Finally we came to a halt beside a fallen tree. It was enormous, with a tangle of exposed roots large enough for both of us to hide within. I edged between two roots, settling into a seated position on a patch of decaying wood.
We breathed hard for several minutes, staring out at the forest.
“You killed him,” Lara said.
My stomach cramped. “I did.”
“What is that knife?”
Caedo hummed in my hand, pleased. I looked down at the dark red jewel, still glowing faintly from the blood it had consumed. “I don’t know. I found it one day.”
“Kenna…you looked like you enjoyed it.”
I dropped my head, pressing the heel of my palm against my eye. My arm stung at the motion; I’d forgotten about the wound. My sleeve was blood-soaked and muddy. “It was awful, but there was so much energy running through me…” I trailed off. It was impossible to explain.
She laid her hand on my knee. “I think I understand.” Her face was drawn, but she no longer looked afraid of me. “I felt like that on Beltane. I was hurting people and knew it was bad, but I was also glad.”
“I feel horrible.”
“He was going to kill us.”
“I know. And I would do it again. I just…I think I’m going to see him dying in every nightmare I ever have.”
There was no talk of hunting or lighting a fire that night. Lara summoned a small amount of water for us to drink and then we sat together, shivering.
The forest was louder than I’d realized. We’d been shielded from its sounds by the earthen walls of our shelter. Out here, I was aware of every owl’s cry, of the wind through the trees and unknown creatures rustling in the bushes. A few times I saw something long and low slink by, but we held still and whatever it was moved on. Dancing green lights began glittering in the trees. It was beautiful, like watching fireflies, but I knew what they were.
I didn’t dream about Garrick because I didn’t sleep. Eventually Lara’s head drifted onto my shoulder, but I kept watch the entire night.
At last the sky began to lighten. Dawn, my old friend. I watched the sky turn purple, then rosy, then blue.
I nudged Lara awake. “We did it.”
It was the seventh day.
The results of the trial were announced at dinner that night.
I had bathed and then slept for a few thankfully dreamless hours before waking up to prepare. It had taken ages to restore myself to something resembling presentable, and even then the face that greeted me in the mirror was haggard and haunted. A different person than the one who had left.
The contestants’ table was set for six.
I watched anxiously as they filed in and took their seats. Talfryn and Edric were there, thankfully. Markas and Karissa sat together, although Markas didn’t speak to her or even look up from his plate. The last to arrive was Una.
Garrick, Gytha, and Wilfrid were all dead.
This was a more intimate gathering than the state dinners; only the candidates and a small delegation from each house attended. The Light and Void contingents glared at each other, and Prince Roland gripped his fork as if he wanted to stab someone with it.
Garrick had been his nephew. Somehow I’d forgotten that.
At the high table, Kallen stared broodingly at his meal, looking up frequently to check on Una. With Wilfrid’s death, he must have realized how close he had come to losing another member of his family. As if he felt my stare, he glanced in my direction.
I didn’t look away. For once I wished he could hear what I was thinking. I’m sorry about Wilfrid. Sorry I couldn’t stop it.
Perhaps he understood, because he nodded slightly.
At the other end of the table, Drustan didn’t look concerned or sorrowful, but I supposed he had no need to be. He would have considered all three dead candidates enemies. His smile struck me as vulgar, though. How could he smile when three young lives had been lost? When I’d taken a life so recently?
He couldn’t know what I’d done, of course. No one but Lara would ever know. Still, it felt as if my world had changed overnight, deeply and profoundly, while everyone else had stayed the same.
King Osric made a toast. “To the six remaining candidates. Each of them survived, hopefully while using enough magic to please the Earth Shard.” He grinned. “And some of them used enough violence to please me.”
A few faeries stiffened at the callous words. Roland took a deep swallow of wine.
“Garrick would have taken the honor for slaying Wilfrid, but alas, he is no longer with us. That death will be claimed by Markas instead. Stand, Markas.”
The Illusion candidate did, but he kept his gaze fixed on his meal. I wondered if he could feel Void House’s hostile stares and knew exactly how much of a target he had just become.
“Gytha was slain on the last night as well. Stand, Una.”
The last remaining Void candidate stood, her face a blank mask.
“I hear you killed Gytha in retaliation for the attack on Wilfrid.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
“One death apiece to Void and Illusion House. Let us drink to our two killers.”
Roland frowned and whispered in the king’s ear. After the room had finished drinking, Osric spoke again. “I have been asked why I did not announce who took the honor of slaying Garrick. Unfortunately, I cannot.” He paused for dramatic effect. “He was killed by something else entirely.”
Agitated questions filled the air, and Osric smiled with the glee of an actor leading his audience through a carefully planned scene. “We don’t know which creature did it, but we know how they did it. He was stabbed and drained completely of blood.”
The room went deathly silent. Even Kallen looked shocked at the revelation.
“That’s not possible,” Roland said.
“Nevertheless, it’s true. The mystery is, who or what did it, and why did they copy Blood House’s favorite killing technique?”
The forbidden name fell like a stone into a still pond, sending ripples through the assembled Fae. Nothing was forbidden to King Osric, though.
“It was a Nasty, there’s no doubt about that,” he continued. “Markas says he saw one of them before it happened.”
Thank goodness Markas had fallen unconscious before Garrick had revealed my identity.
“A Nasty trying to honor Blood House?” Roland asked, stumbling slightly over the taboo name. “It’s plausible.”
“We let out quite a few of the Nasties for the trial. It seems one was holding a grudge.”
“How would they drain him, though? Any weapons capable of that were destroyed.”
My skin prickled. I knew what this was leading to.
“There are many blood-drinking creatures deep underground.” Osric sounded enchanted by the thought. “The knife marks on his body were probably a diversion to cover up how it really fed. It was a foolish choice. The Nasty should have known no one but a Noble Fae from Blood House would have been able to wield a weapon like that.”
Not true . Caedo tightened affectionately around my arm. They are fools .
They certainly were.
Caedo had chosen me as its new mistress after the last one died. Would it have been able to do so if any Blood faeries still lived, or had it only turned to a human because the entire house was dead? And who, exactly, had dropped the knife in the bog?
Who was your last owner? I asked.
The rightful ruler of Mistei, of course.
I blinked, confused. Osric?
No . The dagger’s hatred for Osric pulsed in my blood. My mistress would have been queen if she’d won the war. Instead she died a princess, and now I am all that remains.
My breath caught. This wasn’t just a mystical dagger. It had been one of the most important weapons in a war fought centuries ago. Caedo had belonged to Princess Cordelia of Blood House, leader of the rebellion, who had refused to bow to a tyrant and had died with her people instead.
And now I, Kenna the human servant, no one special from an unremarkable town, a cheater who had just killed one of the Noble Fae, wielded it.