Chapter One #3
Pottery tumbles from stall shelves, shattering on the ground. I hear boots slap on mud and voices rising, not haggling or cursing but shouting as the mob surges past the Black Quay, all the bodies moving as one as they scream and run into the thick of the market around us.
We all scatter, but the panicked horde moves impossibly fast toward and around all of us in the market. Something hot and as solid as an ox slams into my back, and I fly forward. A sharp knee to my gut knocks me flat; the hilt of the short blade at my waist digs into my ribs.
I gasp at the pain, tasting thick mud. A heel collides with my mouth, and my blood spatters across the dirt. Another heel lands at the base of my spine. A third blow to my head punctuates the pain, and ringing explodes in my ears.
Through it all, a single word rises above the shrieks of the crowd as I fight my way upright—
Gardai.
The High King’s brutal royal guards. Not two or three or four of them, the normal patrols we see. Instead a thick sea of crimson-and-black uniforms clashes with the crowd beneath the shadow of the Black Quay. There are dozens of them, descending on us all.
I hear the clash of steel on steel and the dull thump of metal on wood—or on human bone. Terror lights in my gut, courses in my veins.
Another body slams into me, and I go flying. Trampling feet crush me down into the dirt once more. Pain beats in my every muscle, but something sparks inside me then. Something fierce—and desperate.
I refuse to be another name lost to the haze coating every inch of this city.
I have to survive this.
My muscles shake, but I shove myself up heavily. I fight against the weight of the crowd, ears ringing with the din of screams, just as a guard in menacing red and black brings his sword swinging down straight for my head.
Instinct seizes every nerve. One hand finds the hilt of the dagger at my side, and I drop, sliding to slice the back of the guard’s knee with my blade before he brings his down on me.
He crumples to one knee with a roar. The guard’s violent glare jerks to me. “You’re dead,” he vows with a savage grimace, struggling to rise.
I hurl the knife from my belt before he can make another move, and it embeds deep in his left lung.
The guard wheezes, hands clutching at his front. He rips my knife out, but it falls into the mud, too close to him for me to risk grabbing it, even when his gasps turn to whistles and his skin begins to gray. Even as he coughs up blood, the crowd is surging again.
Shit.
Suddenly a long knife slashes across the front of the guard’s throat, crimson spraying over the mud. A cloaked arm snaps back as the guard falls, hands grasping at the gash, then going still.
Green eyes, as fierce as fire, lock on mine from beneath a heavy hood.
Dark hair falls across a man’s shadowed face, no more than a few years older than me.
Stubble covers his jaw, and I catch a haunting, branching scar—like a fork of lightning.
There’s a spray of blood across his cheeks, but it’s flaking and dry, as if it’s been there for hours.
“Go for the throat next time. Kills them quicker.” He glares from beneath the cover of the heavy hood and black cloak—
Just as another hand whirls me around into a sweaty mess of leather and auburn hair.
“Maeve!” Finn heaves me up with one arm, her other gripped tight around the hilt of her favorite sword, Macha—named after one of the Old Ones, the goddess of war. Shock twists her face into a mask, as if she’s the one in pain.
I must look as bad as I feel.
A wave of nausea rolls through me at the stink of blood, and I press a bruising hand to my mouth as my sister ducks down to grab my blade from the dead gardai’s side and slides it into the sheath at my hip.
Finn takes the brunt of my weight and looks behind me. “Come on, we’ve got to move,” she says.
When I look back, the man is gone.
Vanished, quicker than a whisper in the wind.
I squeeze my eyes shut and cling tighter to my sister.
I don’t want to see any of it. The blood. The death. The brutality. And with Finn I don’t have to.
I lock my eyes on the dirt under my boots just as a flash of steel slices into the edge of my vision.
I hear the whistle of the sword before Finn’s sharp gasp, and her hands slam into my shoulders, shoving me back into a wall of hard stone.
A crack rings through my skull at the impact, pain exploding as a sword slashes down right where I’d been a second ago.
Brilliant lights pop inside my head; even the roots of my teeth shriek. I see double, and the guard towering over us with his sword raising for another blow splits as my vision flickers.
Finn slashes her sword up, arcing it over her head with a roar and bringing it crashing down into the guard’s shoulder. He collapses, clawing at the vicious gash.
She heaves her blade from the guard’s flesh, wipes the steel on the fallen body behind her, and pulls me after her into the slums behind the market.
I almost think I see the snap of a black cloak along the rooftop just ahead.
I blink, and the shape vanishes just as Finn shakes her head and grins. “I see trouble’s finally found you.”