Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Keir would have married me.
I don’t know what to make of those words.
They torment my dreams, and when I wake in the morning, I find myself no better rested. I’ve spent hours being chased through the Court of Dreams by a rabid wolf, and every time I think I’ve escaped pursuit, I burst into a room and there it is again.
Waiting to devour me.
The sooner I find my sister and the horn, the better.
The first candidate on my list of suspects to question is Lady Anissa. Soraya pretended to be her lady’s maid. I don’t know what sort of deal she struck with the fae lady, but I do know Soraya prefers blackmail.
“Trust is a knife waiting for your back. I’d rather have a noose around their throats,” she once purred.
And yet Lady Anissa is clearly not Soraya’s target.
For one thing, she’s still alive.
For another, you don’t ingratiate yourself in the household when you’re planning to kill someone. You’d be the first suspect. No, you plant yourself in a household that will give you access to your target’s household.
So someone Anissa knows.
I can’t help thinking of the Lord of Mistmark. Soraya was sent to kill him once, and she failed.
Maybe Father sent her to finish the task.
Soraya’s rooms are locked. I try the handle early the next morning before continuing on as though I’ve merely lost my way to the breakfast room.
Also unusual, for she’s been replaced with a brownie that Lady Anissa spends half her days harassing, and it would be expected that the brownie would be given the rooms Soraya used.
But she hasn’t.
Which means I need to get inside to see what they’re hiding.
Maybe Anissa wasn’t Soraya’s target, but that doesn’t mean that the constantly vexed brunette didn’t ensure Soraya went missing.
I eye my target over teacakes and scones.
Anissa is a minor scion of the Court of Dawn; a random cousin of the king there.
Her gown bares her shoulders—which appears to be the latest of fashions—but it’s made from silk that looks like last year’s pattern.
Cut down perhaps, in order to appear new, which tells me she doesn’t have as much wealth as she pretends, and yet, she’s desperate to mingle with the elite and pretend to be one of them.
Gossip tells me she’s ventured to the Court of Blood several times this year, ostensibly on trade business.
There’s some suspicion she’s got her eye on Malechus and may even be in his bed already, but when the prince himself appears, she doesn’t even glance toward him.
Considering she was seated at the far end of the hall last night, I have to imagine Belladonna—who would have laid out the dining arrangements—has little liking for her.
Few have surfaced after last night, and so I spend the afternoon adding names and faces to my repertoire.
There’s no sign of the Lord of Mistmark, who is someone else I want to acquaint myself with most desperately. Nor is the blushing bride here.
And Keir is currently making several women laugh. Maybe he said something outrageously funny, but I doubt it. The ruse is working. He’s barely looked at me. I am out of favor, left on the sidelines to my own devices. One of the women cuts me a sidelong glance as she daringly strokes his sleeve.
He didn’t return last night.
I know, because I spent half the night tossing and turning, before I finally slammed the pillow over my head and fell asleep.
I make my excuses and leave the tea party.
Before I punch her pretty white teeth through the back of her head.
* * *
Find what happened to Soraya, and you find the horn.
As much as tension exists between the two of us, she’s not an idiot. Her talents run more to assassination than theft, but tracking fae prey isn’t too much different than tracking a hidden relic.
I haul my mask over my face as I climb through the window in my room, and then look toward the bridal suite in the eastern tower that the Lord of Mistmark has been given. The mask is glamored to make me invisible in the night, even when I’m not Sifting.
I barely saw the Lord of Mistmark today. Just a distant figure dressed in strict black as he swung a pretty blonde in a red gown around the dance floor tonight. There were too many nobles between us—every fae in the kingdom trying to gain his favor, for he’s the toast of the court this week.
Perhaps it’s a good thing.
I’m a little too curious about him.
What sort of man conjures mercy in my merciless sister’s heart? What kind of lord could even capture her attention, let alone any tender feelings?
I need to find out.
Night is the time I come alive. There is nothing more than shadows here, and they’re my home.
I Sift toward the Lady Anissa’s rooms, flickering into being on one rooftop and then the next, until I’m sitting on her window ledge.
There’s no one inside her rooms. I can tell when a room is empty, and so I dart along the ledge, leaping from window to window with effortless grace until I fetch up alongside the window that leads to the rooms Soraya was using.
I pick the lock and ease the window open. A second later, I’m inside.
Maybe it’s being in the Court of Blood, but I feel uneasy as I enter. A shiver runs over my skin, lifting all the tiny hairs on my body. Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to my instincts and they’re all telling me to run, but a swift visual inspection reveals no sign of a trap.
And I have the shadows if I need them.
Servants’ chambers are small and tidy, in general, but the sheets on the bed are rumpled. A trunk rests at the foot of the bed, clothes hastily strewn inside it and the lid slammed shut, with half a gown sticking out.
My sister is organized. Tidy. Not like me. Every morning she folds her clothes and makes her bed, until you’d barely know she’s even been in the room.
Something happened to prevent that.
I examine the trunk again.
Did someone search it?
I squat down to examine the lock, and that’s when I see a splash of something dark on the floor.
Blood.
It’s long dried, and as I lean down, I can see where someone’s mopped up more of it. The patch of floor in this corner is suspiciously clean, whereas hints of grime beckon along the rail that dissects the floor from the wall. They missed this one fleck.
Maybe it’s a whisper of sound or a glint of light beneath the door, but my senses suddenly scream at me.
I punch into shadows, hovering on the edge of form just as the door explodes open. There’s a knife in each hand.
Two shadowy figures sweep inside, garbed in cloaks. Women, I think.
One of them gestures with a hand—definitely a woman from those elegant fingers—and bloodied orbs of glowing light follow her around the room.
It’s the pretty blonde from the ballroom. The one who floated in the Lord of Mistmark’s arms.
Belladonna of the Blood Court.
The Blood Lily, they call her.
She lowers her scarlet hood, and I finally get a good look at her face. It’s like seeing her sister, Narcissa, in the flesh again. There’s an insolent curl to her painted red lips, and her dark hair tumbles in elegant curls around her face.
“What is it?” whispers the ethereal brunette who follows on her heels. Lady Anissa.
Ah, so they’re friends or allies, or… working together either way.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Belladonna whispers. “Don’t you know who I am? I can burn the blood in your veins, little thief. And I know you’re here.”
I press my spine to the bed and stay still, barely feeling my heart beat.
Belladonna sweeps closer, her angry red orb floating over her shoulder hungrily. “That tugging feeling you can sense on your skin? It’s a ward layered over the window. You tripped it the second you entered.”
Curse it. I knew something was wrong.
And I let my desperation to find my sister distract me.
“Do you think it’s the kidnapper?” Anissa whispers.
Belladonna cuts a sharp hand in her direction, which is interesting.
Kidnapper?
Damn it, Soraya. Where are you? What happened to you?
“I think,” Belladonna whispers, her gaze cutting right through me before it searches on, “that someone has returned to finish the job.” She steps closer to me. “What are you searching for, little thief? Didn’t you find it the other night?”
I glance toward the open window. It’s a temptation and a lie, because she’ll be expecting me to go for it. And Anissa stands between me and the door.
Anissa starts tugging the sheets out from under the mattress, lifting the corners of the bed. “The letters have to be here somewhere.”
I just need her to move a fraction to the left—
There it is.
I Sift toward the door. The only problem with my magic is that it’s restricted to line of sight, and so, if I wish to escape the room, I need to be able to open the door to see past it.
“There!” Belladonna cries, and something—a slash of magic—cuts into my back. “There’s blood! Near the door!”
I jerk the door open, solidifying just enough to be able to use the handle and then—
The door is torn from my fingers, slamming closed.
Another Sift, and I’m behind them.
Belladonna turns as if she can see me—or maybe she can scent my blood—and then she has a knife in her hand.
This is what I know. My body reacts as that blade lashes out and I catch her hand, rolling beneath the blow and tossing her over my shoulder. A startled squeak escapes her. I’m punching in and out of shadow, forming for the barest fraction of a second—just enough to throw her—before I vanish again.
It must feel like wrestling with a shadow.
Belladonna lands on the bed and her knife drives into the wall beside Anissa, point first. Anissa screams, hands jerking up far, far too late. The knife missed her by an inch.
Belladonna’s focus locks on her friend and then knife, and then an expression of pure rage twists her features.
Past time to be going.
Belladonna rolls free of the tangle of sheets, and then whips her hand toward me as if she’s throwing something.
A sharp slash of heat whips across my abdomen.
There’s four feet between us but she might as well have a knife in hand.
Blood magic.
And here I am, with only my shadows to save me.
I know when the odds are against me. I punch into shadows, reforming on the window ledge with one hand clapped over my wound. One last look back, where I catch her startled glance, and then I throw myself out the window.
The wind catches me, and then I Sift again.
Gone.
Unseen.
But not unnoticed.