Chapter 1

Wine, mathematics, and distant shouting were a terrible combination.

I groaned, rubbed my eyes, and made another attempt to add up the numbers crawling over the parchment before me. Finishing our administration for the month was the last of my tasks this morning. Just three more pages of paint and canvas purchases to go, and then I’d be free to leave this office – free to finally finish the dress I’d sewn for today’s victory celebration and make my way to the village square, where the long tables would already be filling up with roast lamb and grilled goat cheese and Nettie’s famous honey figs.

Just a few last sums – but doing sums would have been a whole lot easier if not for the one glass too many I’d had during the festival preparations the previous night. Or for the sound of my parents’ voices in their bedroom, loud enough to signal they were having one of their more vehement fights.

So much for the festive atmosphere.

I muttered a curse, grabbed another piece of scrap parchment, and scrabbled down some preliminary totals. No, that couldn’t be correct – there was no way my prudent, occasionally penny-pinching father had spent twice his monthly income on varnish. I’d probably misplaced a comma somewhere …

Vibrating through the walls and ceiling, the unmistakable sound of my mother’s sobbing reached me.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ I muttered out loud, shoving away from my desk. It was one thing to still be working for my parents at an age when I’d hoped to be long gone from this island. To continue attempting to work while they insisted on interrupting me with their dramatics of the day … I had better things to do.

I’d finish the embroidery on my new dress first. With a bit of luck, they’d calm down and leave the house soon; then I could quickly finish my accounting tasks before following them outside.

I slipped out of the office and crossed the wide-open space of Father’s workshop. Above my head – intelligible now with one less wall separating us – my mother was yelling about the neighbours and expectations and …

Recognisable even through the walls, my name.

I froze mid-step, holding my breath to better hear them. Gods be damned, what had I done this time? Had someone been gossiping about my six months on Ildhelm again? Or was it about men and marriage, as these fights were more and more often lately?

Ulda is pregnant with her second already, Mother had told me yesterday, her lips tight with annoyance, and she’s younger than you are …

Nobody had asked for my hand, had they?

Heart jumping into my throat, I trotted to the workshop door and opened it a chink. Their voices came much clearer now, unaware of my listening ear.

‘I’m telling you we can’t risk it!’ my father shouted, his voice accompanied by the sound of his heavy footsteps. I knew those footsteps. They rarely promised anything joyful. ‘That Othmar fellow has been studying magic for decades! If Em has even the tiniest slip—’

‘She hasn’t slipped for months! For years!’

‘You weren’t the one who had to explain to Matilda why her apprentice suddenly started burning dresses!’

My heart clenched at that. Two years and still the familiar sting of shame, loss, and guilt didn’t come any gentler than the day after that catastrophe. If they were afraid of me slipping again, for the festival’s high-born visitors to see, no less …

What were they planning to do? Lock me inside the house?

‘Fine, then let me explain the situation to your bloody Othmar!’ my mother snapped upstairs. Ah. That was the source of the dispute – she did not want to lock me inside the house.

‘There’s no explaining this!’ A door slammed, vibrating through every wall. More footsteps and a joyless laugh loud enough to make it through two closed doors. ‘He’s been hinting he might commission portraits for the academy gallery! The academy gallery! If he finds out my daughter is … is …’

I stiffened, waiting for the rest of that sentence. It didn’t come.

A disappointing little mess, carrying a shred of that erratic magic that should have died out of my mother’s family generations ago. Father had never spoken the words to my face, but then again, they weren’t hard to read in his eyes.

‘She could cost us an astounding amount of money,’ he continued, not as loud now, and almost pleading with her to see sense. ‘It’s not just Othmar, remember? That White City senator has mentioned he’s looking for someone to paint his family portrait, and you know how they feel about magic in that place …’

‘But you can’t just ban her from the festival, Valter! It’s going to be the celebration of the decade!’

I swallowed, anxiety churning in my gut. Of the century, more likely. A hundred and thirty years of forced tribute payments and finally Cathra had found a way to fight back against our rulers. The scientists and senators – they weren’t coming here to visit a little backwater island and have some roast lamb. They were here to see the iron ward around the beaches with their own eyes and determine whether they might use the same method to keep the fae off their own shores.

And to order portraits from Valter of Cathra. That too. If his embarrassment of a daughter didn’t spoil the prospects, at least.

‘Well,’ my father snapped. ‘It won’t be much of a party for her either if she accidentally obliterates the buffet tables, will it?’

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the plastered white wall, willing my mother to say something sensible. Come on. It would be so easy shut him up. Don’t talk about our daughter as if she’s a toddler prone to tantrums. She’s a grown adult, for the gods’ sake; you can hardly tell her what to do unless you threaten to cut her pay. She’s been preparing for the festivities for weeks like every single person in town, and wouldn’t it be a little unfair to ban her from the amusement just when she’s finished her dress for the occasion?

She cried, ‘But think of what the neighbours will say if she’s not there, Valter!’

The neighbours.

Right.

Ten years ago I might have stormed up the stairs and shouted at them to be reasonable. Five years ago I might have pled and argued. But after twenty years in this household, I knew shouting would only result in stricter measures, that pleading would only win me some additional glares and not an inch of goodwill.

I clenched my fists and swallowed down another fit of nausea, my attempts at accounting forgotten once and for all.

‘I don’t care about the bloody neighbours!’ my father burst out upstairs. ‘Are the neighbours’ commissions going to feed us for the next year?’

‘You don’t have to listen to their nagging for the next six months while—’

‘Nagging? You think nagging is the worst that could come out of this?’

My mother uttered a shrill laugh. ‘You forget there’s guaranteed to be nagging, while the chances of Em slipping are—’

‘I don’t care how small they are!’ He was shouting loud enough for the neighbours to hear now. I wondered if he realised. ‘They are there! That’s all I need to know!’

A breathless silence; I could picture them pacing around the bedroom, my father flustered and ruffled, my mother cold and severe. Their voices came softer now, the words harder to catch.

I tiptoed through the door and into the kitchen, all festive anticipation gone. With my cheek pressed against the kitchen window, I could just see the decorated pine trees on the town square, garlands and lanterns and the occasional banner. A dark, heavy dread settled over me, a weight that even the bright sunlight couldn’t wash away.

I had been naïve, of course, not to expect it. Had been naïve to think they would finally have let it go, that disaster of two years ago.

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering if I should have returned to Cathra at all. If I shouldn’t just have left them all behind, home and Miss Matilda and everyone I knew … but where should I have gone at the time, eighteen years old and penniless?

‘Emelin?’

Father, using my full name. That, too, never promised anything joyful.

I swallowed a catch of bitter regret and yelled back, ‘Yes?’

‘Come here for a moment, will you?’

Like an accused about to receive the judge’s verdict, I steeled myself and trudged up the stairs, not sure if I should pretend to have missed their shouting match entirely. They should know better than to think I had been that engrossed in my sums. Then again, the fact that they should didn’t always mean they would.

Mother stood leaning against the wardrobe, in the floral dress I’d made her last year. The hard lines around her lips spoiled every last illusion of festivity. Father was pacing between the bed and the balcony door, his cheeks too red, his lips too pale.

‘Em, your mother and I have been thinking about the celebration.’

Thinking, I wanted to say. Funny thing, I’m usually a little quieter when thinking. But snide retorts would only squander their last bit of goodwill and potentially half of this month’s pay.

I needed that money, little as it was, if I ever wanted to get out of this place.

So all I said was, ‘What is it?’

The explanation came out in a tangle of lies and half-truths, with the occasional honest confession thrown in – worried about my reputation if anything were to happen, surely I didn’t want to ruin the festivities either, and the honoured guests from the White City could cause me a lot of trouble – but of course they couldn’t keep me at home against my will, and either way, questions might be asked if I were to stay away from the festival …

‘So what do you want, Em?’

What did I want? That most treacherous of questions. What I wanted, at this point, was to get thoroughly plastered at that damned celebration. What I wanted was to wear the dress I’d made and eat the food I’d prepared and hear the mothers of the town compliment the garlands I’d sewn.

But that wasn’t the right answer.

Twenty years in this household had taught me that lesson, too, that the enquiry after my wishes was never an open question but rather a test, an assessment of my daughterly adequacy. Usually the honest answer meant failing that test. And failure resulted in days of cold silence and one-syllable answers to everything I said – or, if I was unlucky, yet another pay cut for my work as my father’s assistant.

The problem was that the right answer wasn’t clear today. Rather, there were too many of them.

Father’s right answer was that, indeed, I didn’t want to spoil the festivities and would gladly stay at home. Mother’s right answer was that I didn’t want to miss the celebration for a thousand gold coins but would be very careful not to draw even a fleck of colour or give any of the honoured guests reason to think me more than a boring, unremarkable young woman. Whatever I said, I was bound to displease someone, and the wronged party would take care to let me know.

I could take the risk, of course. Could join the victory celebrations and just make sure not to get near any colour I might accidentally lose control of. But I’d spend the full evening with my father’s eyes on my neck, and if I made even the smallest of mistakes …

I didn’t want to think about that possibility. I’d seen him after my return from Ildhelm. This would be a hundred times worse.

Mother would inform us of every gossiping housewife for weeks if I didn’t go, though. Would report every underhand remark to us, every sideways glance, and be an insufferable martyr about it.

By now I no longer cared about the entire damn celebration. I just wanted a way out of this corner.

‘Why don’t you tell them I couldn’t come because I didn’t finish my chores yet?’ I heard myself say, voice flat. ‘I’ll make myself useful here and do some work in advance. I’d enjoy having a free day tomorrow, after all the excitement.’

The neighbours would still gossip, of course, but not about my mother and her failure to keep the family in line. Just about me. And they’d done that since my hasty return from Ildhelm anyway.

My mother brightened. ‘Well, if you don’t mind a little white lie, Em …’

I lied, told them I didn’t mind, and they chose to believe me. Ten minutes later, they were on their way, into the loud buzz of voices three streets away.

I stayed behind in the silent house, cursing myself and my stupid unwanted powers for all I was worth.

I folded the laundry. I cleaned the kitchen. I reordered Father’s paintbrushes and gathered his aprons, cleaned out the sketches and studies he’d thrown away, and sorted his inks and paints.

By the time I was done, it was barely noon. On the square outside, music was playing, glasses were clinking, people were cheering. Most voices I recognised even from a distance; I could probably identify every one of the island’s less than two hundred inhabitants by their whispering.

My absence, if it had even been noted, didn’t seem to bother anyone in the slightest.

As had been the intention, of course. As my mother needed. But I found myself sulking into the kitchen like a petulant toddler, senselessly frustrated that no one had even bothered to walk by and offer me a piece of the honey cake I’d baked myself. Even if I was busy with a day of work, they could realise I would take a break or two, couldn’t they?

The thought of cake made me hungry. A quick search through the baskets and crates yielded a handful of fresh figs, some olives, and the remainders of yesterday’s bread. Not much, but it could have been worse. I had lived on less for months last year, when the harvest had been miserable and the yearly tribute rates higher than usual.

I sat down in the back garden, in the golden sunlight but out of view of passers-by, and tried to shut out the celebratory shouts a few hundred feet away as I chewed my bread. An odd thought, that we’d never pay tributes again. That we would never have a winged assembly land on our town square again, demanding money and food in the name of the Mother of all fae who ruled us. That we could harvest and keep the fruits and grains from now on, that we could eat what we had without having to put half of it aside, waiting in our sheds and cellars for the fae to come and get it.

Odd enough for it to seem unreal.

It might have seemed more real if I’d been there on the square right now, drinking and dancing with the rest of the town. Instead I found myself here, holed up like the village idiot, surviving on lukewarm water and dry bread.

I muttered a curse. I should just have told them what I wanted, icy glares and pay cuts be damned.

But showing up now and declaring my work done – that would only make matters far, far worse. Father liked unpleasant surprises even less than snide retorts. I’d have to keep myself busy and hope they would at least return with some of the roast lamb leftovers from the feast.

So how was I going to make myself useful for another few hours?

Sewing? But the thought of my nearly finished dress upstairs turned even the simple pleasure of needlework pale and useless. I’d finish it later, when the bitterness had softened. Today I was better off taking care of the more unpleasant chores; there was nothing left to ruin about the day, anyway.

The paints, then. We were running out of red; Father would appreciate a new supply.

I gathered my materials in unthinking routine, apron and gloves, cinnabar and egg, glass muller and palette knife. At least grinding minerals to powder didn’t require me to think. At least I could just focus on the work below my hands for a few minutes, grinding the soul out of every last grain of cinnabar until I had a bright red spoonful of vermilion powder so fine that even Father wouldn’t be able to find fault in it. I split the egg, added some of the white to the powder, and mixed it to a thick paste. Just a few drops of water, then, and a few more …

I was done far too quickly. The party still wasn’t over by the time I scraped the blood red paint into its jar, and it didn’t sound like it would be over soon.

I checked the other paints, but we still had plenty of most. No sense in making too much too long in advance. Time would only degrade the quality.

Perhaps I could clean something else upstairs. Otherwise I might as well sneak away and take a dive in the bright blue sea instead of continuing this useless loitering. As long as I made sure the neighbours didn’t see me apparently avoiding my chores …

I took off my gloves, then my apron, and froze.

Oh, fuck.

Somehow a bright red smudge of paint had escaped the sturdy linen of my apron and ended up on the front of my tunic, smeared over the white cloth like a handful of blood. As if I’d just committed a violent murder. Staring at that stain, on the tunic my mother had bought for me during their last trip to Rhudak, I damn well felt like killing something.

She wasn’t going to be happy if she came home to find the tunic ruined. Not happy at all. There would be lectures about not wearing expensive clothes around the workshop, and she would not even be wrong. Any credit I had earned by solving the impasse of my festival attendance would be wasted before I could even apologise for this blunder.

Fuck.

I closed my eyes and tried to stay calm. Tried to be reasonable and mature about this newest complication. I was no longer the little girl she’d send to bed without dinner. She couldn’t set on me with the dust beater anymore. There was no reason to be scared. I was an adult woman. I was here because I was working as Father’s employee – and fine, because I had nowhere else to go – and the worst she could do—

Well, the worst she could do was make me pay for the damn thing.

Would she? It had been a gift – mine to ruin, technically speaking. But she’d bought it for me so I’d have something presentable to wear when Father’s rich patrons came to visit. She might argue I needed a new one, and that she wasn’t going to spend her money on it.

I stood paralysed in the middle of the workshop, my mind whirring. I could probably prevent any serious consequences by announcing I would pay for the replacement before I even told her about the stain itself. It seemed worth a couple of coins to prevent the pleading and arguing and days of cold silence, at least.

But I would lose those coins.

Oh, damn it. Why did I have to ruin this for myself? The coming days had promised to be so easy. With the fae ward finally in place and a few prominent new patrons for my father, I had been so sure we would be that simple, happy family again for a while. That family we were when I wasn’t causing trouble. When we could pretend that erratic magic of mine, that loathed fae talent that had run in my mother’s family for generations, simply didn’t exist.

Now I was causing trouble after all, and it wasn’t even magical in nature.

How much had the damn tunic cost? Judging by the quality of the linen and the fashionable cut, it would be a good two months of savings at least. My mouth dried at the thought alone. Two months of useless work, all because of one careless moment. Could I wash the stain out? But no, years around a painter’s workshop had taught me well enough that no amount of vinegar could get that bright red out of a surface so light. The only other option …

I swallowed. The only other option was the option they had most explicitly forbidden. The option that currently had me banned from the town square until every influential visitor had left the island again.

I could draw the colour out.

A terrible idea. But it would save me months of money and some inevitable lectures.

An unexpected, unusual flare of annoyance sent me moving, feet finding their way to the back door before my head had fully come to terms with the plan. If they expected me to burst into splashes of uncontrollable magic any moment, I might as well use the powers for once. If I was careful to not let anyone see me, if I didn’t destroy anything valuable, then what was the harm?

Damn it all to hell, then.

I slipped outside, into the dry garden. Using red magic inside sounded like an even more terrible idea, and nobody should pass by behind our house at this time of the day. My eyes scanned the garden, looking for something I could afford to destroy – not Mother’s cactuses, not the little tool shed … One of the earthen pots in the nearest corner, then.

Behind me, a chorus of loud voices was singing a triumphant ballad about one of humanity’s rare victories during the War. Utterly unaware, all of them, that mere minutes away, a scrawny twenty-year-old was using powers oddly similar to that same loathed magic.

I settled myself in the doorway and ran my left hand over the red stain on my stomach and hip, savouring the smoothness of the tightly woven linen. A small tingle ran from my fingertips up through my arm, the magic waking up within me, preparing itself.

Red for destruction.

I pointed my right hand at the earthen pot closest to the door and let the colour run through me. The red paled under my fingers, vanished, and the hard clay shattered as if I’d smashed a hammer into it.

Fuck.

That had been – a little too much power, perhaps.

I bit down an urge to curse out loud. Was nothing going to be easy, today? But I had to be sure I’d exhausted the colour from my clothes entirely so it couldn’t come back. A partly used pink, no matter how faint, would restore itself in a matter of hours, proving exactly what rules I had violated to get rid of it. Only a fully depleted surface would remain white forever, as I needed it.

I tried to squeeze some more destructive power out of the former stain, but the second pot I targeted remained whole. Good. Depleted, indeed. Now it was a matter of repairing the first one before anyone realised what had happened.

I ran upstairs and found a roll of bright blue linen I had intended for another dress. Good enough. If I didn’t use the colour entirely and made sure to hide the fabrics afterwards, the blue would be restored by tomorrow morning. My parents hadn’t set foot into my room for years; this couldn’t go wrong in any imaginable way.

With the blue linen in my arms, I ran back down, knelt at the heap of clay shards, and sucked in a breath. Blue for healing. I should be able to fix this.

And quickly, hopefully.

I kept my left hand on the azure of my fabrics as I puzzled the pieces of the pot back together with my right, ragged edge against ragged edge. A small flow of blue magic and they melted together again. Small pieces became bigger pieces as I worked, and bigger pieces became sizeable parts of the pot that had been blamelessly minding its own business until mere minutes ago. The blue paled more and more under my fingertips, until it was lighter than a robin’s egg and I didn’t dare to exhaust it any further.

The pot still wasn’t more than half repaired.

I cursed as I got up. I had another blue dress upstairs; I could probably get the rest of the work done if I used that magic, too. And if it was truly necessary, I could get a bit of blue paint from the workshop and create a blue surface to use …

First things first, I interrupted my own thoughts as I turned for the house. I’d have to see how far that second dress got me. Then I could—

Someone stood behind me.

I realised it halfway through my turn and jumped back like a startled goat – someone. A human-shaped silhouette, drawn sharply against the burning sunlight, stood quietly behind me in our humble, dry garden …

Watching me?

And only then did my eyes register the rest of their observations. Human-shaped, yes – but not human.

Not human at all.

The stranger was tall, with an advantage of at least six inches over me. His silky hair, so black it seemed to absorb even the blazing light of the sun, hung far below his shoulders, brushing a long, equally black coat. Below that, he wore a pair of knives at his belt, dark trousers, and leather boots reaching nearly to his knees, again black.

And behind all of that, spreading out on either side of his sculpted shoulders, a pair of dark wings shone like inky velvet in the sunlight.

Wings.

Fae.

Fae.

Every fibre of my body screamed alarm, expecting the silvery flash of a knife or a burst of red magic – and then nothing at all. But I breathed. I lived. And the fae male stood barely ten feet away from me, his dark, almond-shaped eyes fixed on my face, and didn’t move. As if finding me here, a sweaty, lanky human girl wielding rogue magic she shouldn’t possess, had stunned him as much as his presence frightened me.

My magic. He had seen my magic.

I wasn’t sure if I was breathing. I didn’t quite know what breathing was supposed to be anymore.

A hint of a breeze rustled around us, a whiff of cooler sea air stroking my clammy forehead. A reminder of my functioning senses, and somehow it was just enough to shake me from my paralysis. I had to be clever now. I had to think fast. If for whatever reason I had surprised him enough to silence him for two whole seconds, perhaps I could distract him for a few moments more. Give myself time to … to do what? Escape? Sound the alarm? Fight him?

Distraction. Distraction came first.

‘Oh,’ I forced myself to say. Miserable, miserable start. My voice was a high, hoarse shriek. Then again, at least I got something over my lips. ‘An unexpected visit. Would you like something to drink, perhaps?’

The fae male blinked.

An expression as perfect, as measured as everything else about him, and yet it sparked a flash of courage in me. At least he didn’t lunge forward to drive one of those knives into my chest. At least he didn’t draw the red from his black coat to blow me apart like I had shattered that pot mere minutes ago. So I swallowed and added, ‘It’s warm, and you must have been flying for a while. I should have some cool grape juice left?’

It was as if he didn’t even hear me. No response followed, not even the slightest movement. He just stood there, staring at me and at the pot at my feet and back at me, in stunned, lethal silence.

Silence.

Another thought hit me like a sledgehammer in the face. A whisper I’d heard so many times around the bonfires … They call him the Silent Death.

The Mother’s executioner.

They call him the Silent Death, because he kills without sound and leaves none capable of speaking in his wake.

My stomach turned as I staggered half a step back. No. No, I had to be jumping to conclusions. Other fae surely knew how to stay silent as well, and what were the chances the Mother would send her most feared killer to this island? But my memory droned on, the story as familiar as the nightmares it had given me. He marks his wounds in his skin, lest he forget an opponent who hurt him …

His face was a thing of impossible beauty, like an overly favourable painted portrait come to life – all sharp angles, all unreadable shadows. High cheekbones, hard lips. But a stark line of ink ran through one dark eyebrow, like a scar marked for eternity indeed.

My eyes sank to his hands. The bronze skin was marred by ink, cruel lines running over his fingers, the back of his hands, the onset of his wrist.

Oh, Zera have mercy on me.

A sound escaped me, something in between a meaningless syllable and a whimper. The Silent Death. The male who’d killed more people than I’d seen sunrises in my life, who had tortured and maimed and obliterated entire armies in the Mother’s name. He couldn’t be here. Close enough for me to smell their festive meal, hundreds of people were celebrating their victory over his kind – were celebrating that they had banned all of faekind from the island forever. But seconds passed, and still he didn’t go up in smoke.

Why hadn’t he killed me yet? My people had just declared war on his. If he’d come to seek retaliation, he might as well start with me.

Was he waiting for something?

‘Is there anything I should do?’ I managed.

He stepped back. Back. An easy, graceful retreat, but a retreat nonetheless. I abruptly shut my mouth and swallowed, feeling like thorny vines made their way down my throat.

His dark eyes flashed to the house behind me. Then over my shoulder, in the direction of the square, where the music and laughter sounded louder and louder. Then back to my face, piercing into my eyes with an intensity that made the rays of the midday sun feel like dull, powerless punches.

He nodded. As if to commit me to his memory. As if to mark me.

And with one mighty sweep of his wings, he vanished.

‘Father!’

I’d walked these sandy streets for twenty years, and all of a sudden, I was stumbling as if my feet were finding their way for the very first time. The infinitely familiar white houses were a blur around me, the smell of briny sea air and dry earth a threat rather than the usual reassurance. The music and singing on the main square had become a chorus of mockery, jeering at the fear still pounding in my chest.

‘Father!’

Stares of annoyance and ridicule followed me as I elbowed my way through the crowd, sweaty and dishevelled. For once I couldn’t be bothered to make myself invisible. Father – where was he? There, on the other side of the square, chatting with a velvet-clad gentleman in the shadow of the olive trees. Only when I called him a third time did he look up. The smile stiffened on his face as he met my gaze, moving over for that thin-lipped expression I could feel writhing in my gut like nausea.

Most days, that look would have warned me to get the hell out. Today no warnings could bring down the panic pounding in my chest.

‘Father …’

Next to him, the older man threw me a look of mild curiosity and said, ‘So this is your daughter, Valter?’

‘Yes. Emelin.’ It came out between clenched teeth. I didn’t want to know what I looked like, panting and pale as a bedsheet. Not the first impression he had wanted me to make on a new powerful acquaintance from the islands to the north. ‘Em, this is professor Othmar, from Rhudak. He is …’

I didn’t care. Not if we were all going to die as soon as the Silent Death returned with his brothers in arms. Struggling to control my heaving breath, I stammered, ‘Father, the fae … the fae are coming.’

‘What?’

‘He was here. The Silent Death.’ Ground out in short, panting sentences, the words sounded ridiculous even to my own ears. ‘The garden. He—’

‘The Silent Death?’

‘—stood behind me. I don’t know how long. Then … then he left again.’

My father stared at me, with those narrowed blue eyes so unlike my own. The man at his side stared at me. Half the town stared at me, I realised in the silence that fell around me as heads turned towards us and conversations faltered, faces turning blank as my words sank in.

Then someone chuckled.

An opening shot. Snorts and sniggers rose from the audience surrounding us as the people I’d known for all my life, the people who’d known me for all my life, returned to their lavish luncheon and resumed their chats, their voices now laced with laughter. Next to my father, Othmar’s lips were trembling. My father himself sucked in a breath between his teeth as a disconcerting red rose on his face.

‘Is this a new way to avoid work, Emelin?’

‘No!’ A cold hand clenched around my throat. ‘Please, Father, I swear—’

‘If you had seen the Silent Death, Miss Emelin,’ Othmar said kindly, reaching out to pat me on a sweaty shoulder, ‘you wouldn’t be standing here to tell us the tale.’

‘Fine, perhaps he wasn’t the Silent Death!’ I wanted to break something. Wanted to draw the red from my father’s best jacket and blow a tree to splinters, if only it would make them listen. ‘But there was a fae male standing in our garden – I swear to the bloody gods, he was here, with wings and knives and everything, and he’ll be back soon, and—’

‘Emelin.’ Stop, that tone said. Stop immediately and perhaps you’ll still have dinner tonight. ‘That’s enough. Fae can’t enter Cathra anymore. There’s an iron ward around the island, remember? Whatever you’ve seen, it can’t have been the Silent Death or any of his brood.’

‘But … Father, please, I wouldn’t just—’

He closed his eyes, visibly suppressing a sigh. ‘Professor, if you’ll excuse us for a moment …’

‘Of course, of course,’ the older man said, still looking gently amused. The master painter’s dim-witted daughter. No need to blame the poor lass for her madness, was there?

‘Please,’ I said again, but Father was already dragging me away from the square, away from the mocking glances and the stealthy sniggers. I spotted my mother amidst a small group of housewives, rolling her eyes at them with an expression on her face I knew all too well.

Only around the first corner did he stand still and release my wrist. A vein pulsed dangerously at his temple.

‘Is this some far-fetched attempt at revenge for keeping you away from the feast, Em?’

‘I’m not lying,’ I said, sounding shrill like a liar. ‘I was … I was working in the garden, and then I turned around and he was standing behind me with his enormous black wings and his—’

‘It’s impossible,’ he snapped. ‘You know it is impossible. They can’t cross iron. We checked the ward this morning, and it’s still in place. Couldn’t you at least have come up with a sensible lie?’

‘But—’

‘Enough!’ He sucked in another sharp breath. ‘Do you have any idea what you just interrupted? Othmar may have ordered portraits for half of his department, and we’ll just have to hope he won’t be so put off by your ridiculous little show that he—’

‘But I didn’t—’

‘You embarrassed me, Emelin!’

The words burst out like a wild animal breaking free, loud enough to be heard on the square behind. He jerked back his head the next moment, clenching his jaws as if to keep the ugly truth in after all – but there was no unspeaking it. There was no unhearing it.

Something dulled in my chest as I stared at him, at the face I knew like the back of my hand. Thin lips curled into a furious sneer. Skin flushed with red blots. I’d embarrassed him – and I always had, hadn’t I? A failure of a daughter, grown up to become a failure of an assistant. A daughter who resembled some far ancestor of his wife rather than him, who had inherited powers that should have died out with my great-aunt Gisele, who – in spite of all his attempts at discipline and regulations – still couldn’t behave as befitted a member of his household. An embarrassment, indeed. A shameful secret to be kept far from the public eye.

‘I see,’ I said hoarsely.

He took a step back, breathing heavily. ‘Go home, Em.’

‘Alright.’ Even the fury had sizzled out, leaving nothing but lifeless resignation behind. ‘I’ll just … finish the chores, then.’

‘Yes. Very well. Excellent work.’ As if that meagre excuse of a compliment would compensate for the words he’d just hurled into my face. ‘Don’t stay in the sun too long. Perhaps the warmth made you imagine things.’

A peace offering. I couldn’t be bothered to object anymore.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Go home,’ he repeated. ‘We’ll see you tonight.’

I didn’t move. He muttered a curse and awkwardly patted me on the shoulder, then slid past me and hurried back to the square. Back to his impressive guests and his portrait commissions. Back to the meat and the merriment and the mocking whispers about the mess of a young woman he’d raised.

Behind me, the clamour of voices and flutes had risen to its original volume again, as if I had never stormed onto the square to blurt out my warning at all.

Go home.

I did not go home.

I didn’t repair the rest of the pot. I was an embarrassment anyway, whether they knew about my magic use or not.

Instead I made my way to the coastline, kicked off my slippers, and walked.

It took me three hours to walk the full perimeter of Cathra, wading barefoot through the foam and the shallow blue water, following the endless line of iron. Bar after bar lay in the white sand, the ends nailed together by the blacksmith’s apprentices. The ward held. There was not a single gap to be found, not a single hole through which a murderous fae male might have sneaked onto the island.

And yet I had seen the bastard. No amount of smothering warmth could have made me imagine something so perfectly frightening – something so hauntingly beautiful.

But no cloud of fae warriors arrived to put a bloody end to the festivities. When I returned home, the sun now a red jewel just above the horizon, the party was still going and my parents still hadn’t returned home.

All as it should be – except for that short, silent meeting in the garden.

I paced through the living room for another hour, fear and confusion warring for preference. Was I going mad after all? Did the Silent Death have secret powers enabling him to cross even the ward we’d made? Or was iron just not as effective as it should have been, despite all reports of the metal keeping fae out?

This was not the moment to ask the men and women who’d done that research, presumably.

I’d hauled myself into bed by the time darkness fell, unable to think of anything better to do. If he hadn’t come back yet, perhaps he wouldn’t come tonight. Tomorrow I’d see if anyone could help me figure out the situation.

But no matter how hard I tried to reassure myself, I lay awake for hours. When sleep finally found me, I dreamt of swooshing velvet wings and dark eyes so bottomless they might lead straight to hell.

Chapter 2

I woke to the smell of fire.

It wasn’t the homely kind, the festive kind, fire smelling of freshly chopped pinewood and dripping meat. This was a sharp, foul smell. The stench of something that shouldn’t be burning but burnt nonetheless.

I groaned into my pillow and tried to make sense of the world around me. Fire? There had been fire that afternoon, on the square – for the celebration. For the iron ward around the island. The fae, the winged male in the garden … No, he had to be a figment of my dreams …

With another groan, I rolled to my back and blinked open my eyes. The light peeking between my ragged curtains danced along the walls with an unusual orange glow.

Fire.

At once, all sleep vanished from my mind.

I jerked upright and jumped out of bed, pulling the tangle of thin sheets with me. They knotted around my ankles as I made for the window, and I nearly stumbled face-first into the wall before I even reached the curtains. Heart hammering, breath heaving, I yanked the heavy cloth aside and froze.

Before me, the world was burning.

Hungry flames rose from every single house as far as I could see, licked at the curtains and the roofs and ate its way through the wooden beams and plastered walls. Thick, whirling smoke fumed into the night sky above, and swarms of sparks burst from the inferno wherever I looked, leaving the dry trees and grass smouldering where they landed. Even through the thin glass of my window, I heard the roaring of the flames, the crashing of collapsing roofs and walls.

No other sound disturbed the eerie vision. Nothing else moved.

I staggered away from the window and raised a shaky hand to my upper arm. No. This couldn’t be real. A thought for my paralysed mind to cling to – this had to be a nightmare. Soon I’d wake up and find the skies clear again, the town peacefully asleep. Soon …

I pinched the skin of my upper arm between thumb and forefinger, hard. A flare of pain pierced through me. Real pain. A real touch.

No.

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. I was just going mad; it was the better alternative. I had imagined the fae male too, and all of this was a simple, terrible lie …

But what if he had been real?

I stood there, stupefied, bare feet glued to the wooden floor, as the realisation sank into my thoughts.

It hadn’t been madness. It hadn’t been the warmth. That brutally graceful vision in the garden had been as real as the sun and the grass and that cursed broken pot – he had been there, and seen me, and spared me for whatever unfathomable reason.

And now he had come back. And brought death and utter destruction with him.

Fear splintered through me, shattering the numbness of my thoughts for the first time. Out. I had to get out. Was our house burning already? The small hall was black as ink when I threw open my door and fled my room – somehow the walls had withstood the gruelling heat so far. Two steps and I was at the other door, the one that led to my parents’ bedroom. Here the smell of smoke was thick enough to make my eyes water, but only a faraway shine of fire lit the walls.

The room was empty.

I stumbled to a standstill in the doorway, my breath squeaking in my throat. ‘Mother?’

No answer. Louder, I tried, ‘Father?’

Nothing.

Head spinning, I staggered inside. A messy bed. An open closet. Shirts and dresses strewn over the floor, as if someone had searched my parents’ wardrobe, then thrown a fit when the object of their interest was nowhere to be found. A misplaced, ridiculous rage rose in me – I’d organised that closet just yesterday, damn it. Wasted half an hour folding my father’s favourite shirts and my mother’s beautiful summer dresses, and after all that work …

After all that work, those shirts and dresses were nowhere to be seen.

It took a while for that thought to come through.

Their clothes were gone. And not just their clothes – there used to be bags beside the closet, too, the bags my father used for his many trips to the other islands. Now there was nothing in that corner of the room. I turned around, breath catching in my throat, and grabbled underneath my mother’s pillow. The necklace she took off at night – gone.

Gone.

They had fled already? Fled without me?

My body no longer felt like my own as I pulled back my hand and wobbled out of the room. It walked down the stairs all by itself, my feet understanding the necessity of flight better than my mind did. The pungent stink of smoke barely reached me anymore. Even the fear had numbed to no more than a dazed, lethal confusion. I should have armed myself before I stepped out, I vaguely realised. I should have been wearing more than a knee-length white nightgown that might catch fire as soon as the first sparks got caught in the linen. But I wandered onto the street like a sleepwalker, noting only that my parents’ coats were both missing from the rack in the hall.

The world was still oddly, eerily silent as I walked.

Smoke churned all around me and turned my breathing into a laboured panting. My eyes stung. Through the tears, I saw only the greedy flames, swallowing everything and everyone I had known in my life – eating people alive in their beds, and yet there were no screams, no cries for help. Had they all left? Had they just forgotten me, left me to burn to death?

But my house didn’t burn. Fire raged down the full length of the street, and through the streets beyond as far as I could see, shrouding every single building in flames and sparks. And yet my house was still covered in darkness. Someone had spared it.

Someone had spared me.

I hadn’t been forgotten at all. Quite the opposite – I had been remembered.

But if I was supposed to survive the night …

Something moved in the corner of my eye.

I jolted around, heart slamming into my throat. A weapon. I should have brought a weapon. But here I stood, empty-handed and dressed only in useless, colourless white – and fifteen yards away from me, a study in stillness against the background of the twisting, blazing flames, he stood.

Wings folded in, this time. Long hair bound behind his head. Hands tucked into dark gloves. A dark god ascended from the pits of hell to wreak havoc upon all those who wronged him, to mark his triumph in fire and blood – but there was no trace of triumph on his face. Only cold, ruthless calculation. Only death.

I should have fled.

But what would have been the sense in fleeing? His eyes had locked on me, a predator’s gaze. If I ran, he would be faster. If I swam, he would fly. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and in this blazing, unreal nightmare, what did I have left to flee for?

I raised my left hand to my face as if to wipe aside the locks that had escaped my loose braid. My fingertips stroked over the dark brown strands – dark brown. Three parts red, two parts blue and yellow each.

Red for destruction.

I flung the magic at him.

The spark of red shot from my fingertips, hurled at him with ten times the force I’d applied to that garden pot. It should have hurt him. It should at the very least have left a nasty cut wherever it hit. But the Silent Death merely raised a hand, as if that commanding gesture would hold the magic back, and caught the flash of power in the palm of his gloved hand like a man catching a fly. The leather didn’t burst. His face didn’t betray a hint of pain. Somehow he had … absorbed the attack?

Was that something he could do? Was it something anyone could do?

I staggered two steps back, flames roaring at me from all sides, and fired a second desperate burst of red at him. He easily stepped forward and snatched the magic from the air again. Then didn’t stop walking. Closer and closer he sauntered, with long, unhurried strides, as I stumbled backwards, away from him, not daring to turn my back on him. Was this an attack? Was he going to kill me after all? But he had magic too, and I wouldn’t be able to deflect his attack like he had done with mine … So why would he even need to come closer? To use his knives? Was he about to slit my throat, and was this the last I’d see of the world, a burning ghost town and a sky full of smoke and dancing sparks?

I had just attacked him. He had no reason to spare me – none at all.

‘Please,’ I ground out. I didn’t want to beg. I didn’t want to offer him that satisfaction. But my tongue spoke for me, clinging to some survivor’s instinct I hadn’t known I possessed. ‘Please, don’t kill me – I didn’t mean …’

Didn’t mean to kill him? I had damn well meant to kill him. Still he remained quiet as he continued to close the gap between us, close enough now for me to distinguish the details of his chiselled face in the flickering golden light. He looked … grimmer than that afternoon. There was a tension around his hard lips that hadn’t been there before, a shimmer of sweat in his dark hairline. His eyes didn’t let go of me, a fierce, focused look of what was nearly … need?

Oh, Zera have mercy.

Was that why he hadn’t killed me yet – was I his reward for his hard work of the night? His toy to fill the hours until even the last ashes of Cathra had stopped smouldering? Move, my thoughts screamed at my legs, but my body had taken root in its spot as he strolled closer, closer, closer. The knives at his belt reflected the firelight in blinding, dazzling fragments. The darkness of his eyes didn’t reflect any fire at all.

‘Please,’ I whispered.

He lifted his left hand to his chest and loosened his long black coat. The expertly tailored shirt below was unbuttoned at the chest, revealing a glimpse of a muscular torso that made me want to throw up. I didn’t want to know the rest of that body, that living breathing instrument of murder and destruction. I certainly didn’t want to touch it. But he ignored my wordless sputtering, tugged the coat off his shoulders …

And handed it to me.

The world seemed to freeze around us. I blinked at the dark piece of clothing half an arm’s length away from me, a velvet creation worth more than the house in which I lived. The fae male didn’t pull back. He didn’t look away. He just stood, his face an unreadable mask of dark, lethal power, and waited.

Did he want me to take it? Why?

‘I – I don’t need a coat,’ I managed.

He raised one eyebrow a fraction and didn’t move. An unexpected but most welcome flare of anger burst through me, shaking the life back into my limbs. That patronising look, that fae arrogance – as if I was little more than an unwitting fool.

‘And even if I needed one,’ I added, my voice trembling, ‘I’d rather freeze than wear yours.’

He shrugged and threw the heap of velvet into my hands without waiting for further objections. I clenched my arms around the warm fabric by reflex and staggered back, away from him. His dark eyes finally let go of me.

‘What are you going to do with me?’ I whispered.

He waved that point away, sizing up my house with a few quick glances. His tattooed left hand trailed lightly over his thigh as he lifted his right arm and aimed it at the walls; a flash of magic and the black of his trousers turned a drab dark purple. Yellow for change. The walls of my house, clay and white plaster until a moment before, had turned into wood.

Oh, no.

Not Father’s paintings. Not Mother’s flowers. Not my fabrics and my needles and my dresses – but the Silent Death stepped back and picked up a burning log from the sand of the streets.

‘No,’ I said.

Another flash of magic. The door swung open, the lock ruined.

‘No!’

He didn’t look back as he stepped forward, the makeshift torch in his hand.

I didn’t know what I was planning to do, didn’t know what chance I had of stopping him. But I leaped forward before I gave myself the time to figure it out, throwing myself between him and the door, my left hand clawing into the dark coat in my arms. The black was the only weapon I had.

The Silent Death stopped his advance, examining me with a look of what was not yet surprise, but at least … interest.

I lifted my chin and held his gaze, ignoring my own shaking knees and laboured breathing. He was near enough now for me to distinguish the long lashes framing his dark eyes. From so close, he seemed even taller; in the flickering firelight, his high cheekbones became edges as sharp as any knife. Behind his shoulders, his wings shifted slightly. The motion looked like preparation for attack.

How often did people throw themselves into his path? How often did they live to tell the tale?

‘Please,’ I said again. I didn’t know where I was going, what cards I had to play. But he had spared me. He made my parents disappear and kept me here. Didn’t that mean I was somehow valuable to him? ‘Please, you’re burning all I have. Let me at least keep something before you—’

He was already shaking his head before I could finish, with the weary sigh of a man forced to endure the company of a particularly aggravating toddler.

He sighed. My rage eclipsed the light of my good sense for a moment.

‘That’s all you’re going to do? Sigh and shake your head at me?’ I spat out a laugh, clenching my trembling fingers even tighter into the black velvet. ‘Imagine you’d stoop to speak to me. You might just sully your sacred voice by using it in the vicinity of some lowly human, and—’

He flung the burning log aside, back into the sand, and surprise made me shut my mouth mid-sentence.

Without taking his eyes from mine, the Silent Death drew something small from the pocket of his trousers – a leatherbound notebook, barely larger than the palm of my hand. With it came a pencil shorter than my thumb. In his crudely tattooed fingers, it looked like it could snap in two at the slightest twitch.

‘What …’

A slender hand beckoned me closer. I blinked but staggered forward – closer to the danger, closer to his knives, but disobeying seemed the deadlier option. The fae male turned his gaze to the notebook, silky strands of long hair falling over his face as he scribbled. In a tight hand, barely readable in the red light of the roaring fires, his words appeared.

Much as I’d love to treat you to the sound of my sacred voice, circumstances forbid me at the moment. Explanation follows.

I lifted my gaze back to his face and opened my mouth, momentarily lost for words. His brows drew together in a clear, cold-hearted warning to shut up.

I did not shut up.

‘You can’t talk? You …’

The way his wings came up and down suggested a shrug.

‘Oh.’ The Silent Death, indeed – was it a matter of necessity, rather than some imposing reputation he liked to cultivate around himself? I uttered a breathless laugh and said, ‘Where are my parents?’

He sighed but lifted his pencil to the parchment again. Gone.

‘Do you mean you killed them, or—’

No. Sent them off. He nodded at the fire behind us and added a quick Everyone.

‘You made the entire town leave? Where would they …’

White City.

I had trouble breathing all of a sudden. The only human city that had never been conquered by fae, that didn’t pay tributes to the Mother – but to buy your place into it cost a fortune, and for over a hundred people to emigrate there …

‘They’ll never get in.’

They will.

‘What …’ I shook my head, breathing a baffled laugh. ‘Why would I believe you would ever help them like that – why would you …’

He produced another irritable shrug as he underlined a few words at the top of his page. Explanation follows. Then, without waiting for my answer, he stuck both notebook and pencil back in his pocket – the voiceless equivalent of demonstratively shutting his mouth.

‘Oh, no,’ I said, stepping back and scanning his arrogant face for clues. None of this made sense. He might as well have killed all of them, somewhere out of sight, and returned to feed me his lies for whatever mysterious reason. I wasn’t going to put my blind trust in the Mother’s most feared killer, the last fae in the world who’d have reason to grant a village of rebelling humans such clemency. This was the same male who had tortured a little girl in Phurys to death before her parents’ eyes. Who had single-handedly slaughtered three dozen adult men at the Miners’ Uprising twenty winters ago. ‘That’s not enough. That’s not even close to—’

He moved forward so fast I never even saw him coming.

One merciless wingbeat, and an unwavering arm caught me around the waist before I had even started running, pinning me against a chest as hard as granite.

‘Let me go!’

He dragged me with him like a bag of grain, throwing his burning log through my front door as he passed it.

‘Please.’ I was sobbing all of a sudden, kicking and elbowing, failing to create even the slightest bit of wiggle room. ‘Please, just let me check if they’re alright – just let me say goodbye, wherever you …’

His arm loosened a fraction, and I clenched my left hand into his dark sleeve and fired a burst of red magic into the wrist holding me. With a sharp hiss, he let go. Not invulnerable, then. I leapt forward without looking back and sprinted down the street with his black coat still in my arms. Closer to the burning houses, the heat was so intense I could barely breathe. But I had to run, I had to be fast. If I could just get to the jetty, see if the boats were indeed gone …

The sand before me moved.

Moved and changed colour. Suddenly the street was no longer a street but a tangled mass of vines, snaring around my feet and climbing up my bare calves, my knees. I screamed and flailed my arms through the air, trying to regain my balance.

A hand locked around my wrist, warm and inescapable.

Wings slammed around me, and my feet were pulled off the ground, out of the vines’ hungry reach. A second arm reached around my lower back, and again the Silent Death pulled me against his chest as he soared farther down the street, never more than a few feet above the ground. At the edge of town, he landed in a single supple motion and put me back on my feet, without releasing my arm.

‘You bastard,’ I managed breathlessly. ‘You—’

He stepped around me, back into my view, and placed a single commanding finger over my mouth.

Every sound dissolved in the back of my throat as his gaze locked onto mine again.

I wanted to bite. I wanted to swear at him again for daring to touch me like that, the pressure of his finger so dangerously firm against my lips. But his eyebrow rose a fraction, and without a voice to accompany the gesture, I couldn’t for the life of me tell if it was amusement, impatience, or bloodlust. Just in case it was the latter, I nodded.

He pulled back his finger, breaking eye contact to check the knives at his belt.

‘And now?’ I breathed.

I barely heard myself over the noise of another house collapsing, but perhaps those pointed ears caught sound more easily than my own. With his free hand, he yanked his coat from my grip and swung it around my shoulders like a Rhudaki cloak.

‘I’m not cold,’ I insisted, trying to back away. The scent of soft velvet and warm skin closed around me, and I couldn’t stand how human, how pleasant it smelled. ‘You set an entire town on fire. Staying warm is really not going to be …’

He nodded upwards. I fell silent again.

‘You’re saying … the sky is colder.’

The Mother’s murderer shrugged and scooped me into his muscular arms, drawing me against his chest again.

‘No.’ It had become a meaningless chant, without conviction or hope. Zera help me – was he going to abduct me? Like fae males did, and the women they took were never seen again … ‘No, please, I …’

His wings flared out behind him, hiding even the burning, smoking ruins of Cathra from my view for a moment.

‘No.’

His wrists didn’t yield under the full force of my nails. His hand around my knees effortlessly held my legs in place. For a last dangerous moment, I considered putting a hand against his black-clad chest and sending a burst of red into his face, because even if he’d kill me in retaliation, at least I’d go down fighting …

Then velvety wings swept out around me, and with three majestic strokes, we shot towards the smoke-stained heaven, leaving the sizzling, smouldering ruins of my life behind.

Into the night.

Into a nightmare.

I gave up on struggling. Hundreds of feet in the air, the infinite sea stretching out below us, hurting the fae male who carried me would inevitably send me plunging to a useless, senseless death.

The glowing remainders of Cathra sank below the horizon within minutes, and then there was only unending night around us – the dark sea below and the bright starry sky above and nothing but me and my kidnapper in between. His arms were unwavering, a cage from which no escape was possible. His wingbeats followed a calm, steady rhythm, like the beating of a heart. Around my frozen body, those wings were all that moved in the stillness of the night.

But there, miles away from our shores already, a small fleet of lights floated on the water.

I gasped as the Silent Death changed course and soared closer towards them. Boats – I could distinguish boats and oars in the light of dozens of lanterns. Sails, too, although there was little wind on this night. I knew those sails, the brightly coloured cloth I had painted together with my father when I was barely ten years old. Sun and sea had paled the fish we had drawn on our fleet, but I could still make out the blue smudges even from hundreds of feet away.

My people. They were alive.

But as soon as I sucked in a breath to cry out for them, the Silent Death abruptly swung in the opposite direction.

‘No!’ Tears were burning in my throat all of a sudden. ‘Please, fly closer – I’ll be silent, I promise. Just let me see – let me check …’

I felt his deep sigh even through the velvet of his coat, but he did as I asked.

None of them looked up to the sky as we flew over them. I saw dozens of familiar heads gathered in the little boats, organising hastily packed bags and food provisions. Heard Ram and Ellard shout commands at the boys who held the oars. And in the first boat, the one bravely cleaving the dark waters towards the north …

Mother and Nettie were singing.

Behind high walls, as white as snow,

Where snowbirds sing and lilies grow …

The ballad of the White City.

So they were going. They were really, truly going, to that place where most humans only dreamed of living – where there were no yearly tributes, no abductions, no rebellions. Where they would be safe.

Where I might one day see them again.

I clung to that thought as we left their small fleet behind and flew out to the south – a straight line to the Crimson Court, into the arms of the Mother herself. One day, I would escape whatever fate this fae murderer had planned for me. One day I would find my way to the north all by myself. And I would find my father in a new workshop, painting for the richest of the city; I would find my mother singing in her rooms. And even if Cathra would never exist again, my family would.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered into the night.

Not for his mercy, wherever it came from. Not for that last glimpse he had allowed me of life as I’d known it. But for the hope he’d given me – for a new, simple goal that could keep me standing through a night that had shattered my future and left me flailing in a world that would never be the same again.

Chapter 3

The stars shifted above us as we flew. Every now and then, the shine of fire reached us from the horizon, a sign of other islands, of civilised life. After a while, a thin sheet of water droplets clung to my face and hair, and my hands and feet slowly grew cold as ice. I refused to notice. If I felt the cold, I’d have to be grateful for the warm velvet coat draped around my shoulders, and I’d rather have dropped a thousand feet to my death than do any such thing.

We must have been flying for hours by the time the lights loomed before us.

The island was larger, much larger than I’d ever dared to imagine, stretching over miles and miles of the horizon as we approached. In the night, it lay glittering in the sea like an answer to the starry sky above. The edges were darkest, only the occasional lit window betraying that buildings stood closer to the coast as well. But towards the centre of the island, up the slopes of its hills and mountains, the place was brimming with life and light. Fires flickered behind the windows, and strange glowing orbs illuminated the streets between. Behind that sprawling city, built on the island’s highest mountain …

The Mother’s home. The Crimson Court.

The palace’s towers rose from the earth in cruel, razor-sharp peaks, like the jaws of some hideous monster that should never have survived to this day and age. Elegant, perhaps, and grand and majestic, but it radiated an ancient power that clenched cold around my heart.

This, then, was the heart of faekind.

The place where humans went, never to be seen again. The seat of the High Lady who’d demanded our sacrifices of food and gold and labour every year, until finally Cathra had taken its stance …

And paid the price.

What in the gods’ names was I doing here?

Surviving. The word welled in me like an answer given by someone else, someone far wiser than my stumped, twenty-year-old self. That was what I was doing here: surviving. Because I was going to travel to the White City one day, and to get to the White City, I would have to stay alive.

Life really wasn’t so complicated when you had a clear goal in mind.

So I didn’t try to run as the Silent Death gracefully landed on a broad marble terrace and put me back on my feet. Running probably wouldn’t improve my chances of survival – not while I was still dressed only in a flimsy nightgown and a black coat that reached nearly to my ankles. Not while I was surrounded by—

Were those dogs?

Yellow eyes stared at me from the darkness behind the terrace’s marble balustrade. I could make out no more than the moving silhouettes of the creatures, as tall as cows, but prowling through the gardens with a predatory agility that told me they were something far, far worse. In the distance, too far to determine what direction it came from, something howled as if to announce our arrival.

I found myself slowly backing towards the castle’s open gate.

The entrance loomed before me like a mouth stretching wide to swallow me, looking dangerously close to the portals of hell that my father had once painted for a clergyman from Asval. The outer walls of the castle were built from a marble so red that it looked like they were gleaming with fresh blood. Inside, behind those high doors, a broad gallery waited to welcome us, the walls between the pillars covered in brightly coloured frescos of battles and victories, violent compositions of shredded wings and bloodied corpses.

Red for destruction, indeed.

The Silent Death didn’t give me time to take in my new surroundings. He grabbed my wrist as soon as I passed through that towering doorway and pulled me with him, his free hand resting on the hilt of one of his daggers. Red and gold and white marble opened up around us, every next corridor more lavish than the last.

And here I was, wet and dishevelled and dirty – a pathetic human captive.

The Silent Death didn’t falter as he tugged me along, through the pillared galleries and the majestic halls of the palace. In this place of deadly grandeur, he was deadlier still, a creature of murderous shadows in his black leather and velvet. I trotted after him, my shorter legs barely able to keep up with his long strides, and tried my best not to slip, not to stumble. I wasn’t sure if he’d stop if I fell. The hand locked around my wrist suggested he might drag me all the way to wherever we were going.

Fae eyes were everywhere. I wasn’t going to give them the pleasure of seeing me treated like an old bag of dirt.

The halls were quiet at first, then grew noisier and busier the farther we made our way into the castle. I’d never even realised there were this many fae in the world. They were tall, all of them, although the Silent Death was still one of the tallest; they dressed in all colours of the rainbow, their heads and necks and fingers wrapped in exquisite gold and silver and gems. Some were olive-skinned and dark-haired like the male pulling me with him, but just as many of the court’s inhabitants were dark like burnt umber or as pale as the people of Cathra, their hair ranging from the brightest honey-blond to a black so deep it was nearly blue.

The looks on their faces were all the same, though, derisive sneers and suppressed sniggers as they watched my graceless stumbling behind the infuriating elegance of my captor’s stride.

It didn’t matter. I could handle laughter. At least I was still alive.

I didn’t know how long we had walked when the Silent Death stopped dead in his tracks at a pearly white door. It looked like every other door in that particular corridor, but he pushed it open without hesitation and shoved me into the room behind without a word of apology. It seemed to be an office of sorts. By the light of only the small glowing orb at the ceiling, I couldn’t tell what the towering piles of books and parchments were about.

My abductor shut the door behind him. My heart slammed into my throat again – but he turned his winged back towards me as if I weren’t even there, as if it hadn’t occured to him in how many unpleasant ways he might make use of this sudden privacy. With two steps, he was at the cabinet at the other side of the room and flung it open.

‘Still no explanation, I suppose?’ I said bitterly, tucking his coat a little closer around my shoulders. I had intended to snap, but after hours of flying in the cold, my voice had weakened to a hoarse whine. Didn’t matter. The displeasure came across well enough.

He turned his head towards me, his scowl a wordless command to be still and stay put. No answer, yet again, and the fury in my veins reached a boiling point in the face of that persistent, careless silence.

‘You could at the very least tell me if I’m supposed to survive the night.’

He furrowed his brow, grabbing his notebook from his pocket again. His bronze fingers picked a lead pencil from one of the desk’s many drawers and scrabbled down a hasty note.

Could have killed you in more efficient ways.

‘You might have been in need of an innocent virgin to sacrifice for some fae ritual.’

He scoffed and turned back to his silent rummaging.

‘Look,’ I said sharply, ‘you can pretend I’m stupid all you want, but your kind does have a habit of making humans disappear without a trace. What else am I here for? Warming your bed?’

The Silent Death snapped towards me again, for the first time with a hint of bewilderment on his vexingly perfect face. I couldn’t help feeling a tad offended, despite the source of the insult.

‘I’m not that ugly.’

His lip curled up a fraction, but again he turned away without answering me and pulled three browned parchment scrolls from the mess of documents. I suppressed a violent urge to snatch them out of his hands and slap him in the face with them.

I was going to survive this place. Hitting a fae murderer in the face with his own documents wasn’t the safest of strategies, even if he needed me for whatever reason.

‘Please. Just …’

Later, he scribbled in his notebook, his fingers clearly strained below those scar-like lines of ink etched into the skin.

‘Later? You destroyed my home and kidnapped me and now you want me to wait?’

He nodded without looking up from the first parchment scroll as he unrolled it, gave it a single glance, and rolled it up tightly again.

‘And at least look at me when you answer me.’

His eyes met mine for the shortest moment, their dark depths shimmering with something that could be a warning as easily as cold, inhuman indifference. Watch your words, that look told me. You’re speaking to the fae whose name alone can make grown warriors shiver, who could turn you into a bloody heap of bones and gore without even batting an eye. The fae who spared your people only by an unusual show of mercy and who has no reason to extend that mercy beyond reasonable limits. Know your place.

I knew my place. It was located somewhere among the ranks of the perpetually stupid and the unreasonably stubborn.

‘That’s better,’ I said.

He blinked.

And looked away. Without turning me into a bloody heap of bones and gore.

A small spark of triumph burst through the numbness – so he needed me alive, indeed. And no matter how coldly and unfeelingly his eyes shot along the text, no matter how utterly in control he seemed, there were still ways to throw him off balance.

Observations to store meticulously in the back of my mind. They might well be the best weapon I had.

He didn’t throw the second scroll aside as fast as he’d discarded the first one. I caught a glimpse of long lists of names and dates, neatly arranged in rows and columns – but he found what he was looking for a moment later and chucked the three rolls back into the cabinet before I recognised any of the names.

‘And?’ I said.

He grabbed his notebook again, tore off the upper page and stuck the rest into his pocket. Planting that single page on the desk, he wrote, Don’t say a word about your magic.

I blinked. ‘What?’

She’ll hurt you.

He threw the pencil back in the drawer it had come from and laid his left hand against his black-clad thigh. A red flash, and the note crumbled to dust on the wooden surface of the desk.

‘Do you mean …’

This time he didn’t even bother with warning glares. I bit my tongue as he pulled open the door again and gestured for me to follow, not dragging me out by the wrist this time. With the words of his letter still etched into my mind’s eye, I was dumbfounded enough to obey.

She’ll hurt you.

There was only one person he could reasonably be referring to – but was the Silent Death, of all fae, keeping secrets from the Mother?

No time to ask questions. No time to even wonder. Again he led me through the labyrinth of marble and gold, identical hallway after identical hallway, spiralling staircase after spiralling staircase, until I was sure I would wander around for the rest of my life if I lost sight of his dark wings for the shortest moment. I didn’t know if he would even notice if he lost me. He never slowed down or looked back even in the most crowded of corridors; a path cleared itself around his tall figure wherever he turned.

Even the people he killed for knew to fear him. And yet …

Don’t say a word about your magic.

I wanted to think. I wanted to be clever. But my mind was slowly caving in under layers of fear and grief and fury and simple, numb shock; trotting after his winged back without collapsing on the cold marble floor of this palace seemed enough of a challenge already. So I focused on keeping up. I focused on surviving. The rest, hopefully, could wait.

It was before a broad, copper-and-ruby plated gate that the Silent Death eventually stood still and grabbed my shoulder. As if he thought I might try to run if I found out what awaited me behind those doors.

That, more than anything else, immediately made me want to run.

But he was holding me. I had nowhere else to go.

So I allowed him to push me forward as the gates slowly opened before us. Allowed him to escort me into the immense hall that lay beyond, its white walls not built from those large marble blocks, but from smaller, browner …

Bones.

The hall was built out of bones.

Thousands, millions of them, stuck together with crude iron nails to form walls higher than three of Cathra’s houses stacked on top of each other. High above my head, they came together in sharp arches, decorated with dozens and dozens of grinning skulls – human skulls.

Human bones.

My knees buckled. If not for the unyielding fingers clasped around my upper arm, I might have dropped to the floor and never gotten up again.

But the Silent Death pulled me forward, and I had no choice but to stumble after him. Around us, the crowd gasped and fell silent as it caught sight of us, and with a hasty flurry of wings and dresses, a path cleared through the centre. It led straight to the monstrosity on the far side of the room, a hundred feet away at least.

It was, presumably, a throne.

But the creation was larger than any throne I’d seen in my life, larger than any throne my father had ever painted. Constructed out of more polished bones, it stood taller than an average human house and was broad enough to seat a small crowd. Yet in the middle of that abundance of space, surrounded by heaps of silk pillows and velvet draperies, only a single woman presided over the room.

There was nothing motherly about her. Nothing soft or warm or gentle.

The Mother carried the air of an icicle come to life, as if the soul of a shard of glass had been caught in a fae body. A face like a powdered porcelain doll, with large blue eyes and pillowy lips. Long, white hair – not blonde, but white, the empty colour of exhausted magic. A body that curved and dipped in all the right places, the contours of it perfectly visible through the many folds of her shimmering, semi-transparent silver dress.

It was a beauty that made me want to jump behind her murderer’s back, pull his wings around me, and hide from her gaze until we left the hall again.

He still held my shoulder, however. His hands pushed me forward, closer and closer to that gruesome beauty on her throne. The firm grip of his fingers was a constant reminder of his words – don’t say a word about your magic. Oh, Zera help me. I’d be lucky if I managed to bring a single sensible word to my lips.

But I would survive. I would survive.

I kept my gaze on the marble floor below her feet and walked on, fighting my body’s desperate reflex to turn and run. To think that I’d been home only hours ago. That I’d thought a hot sun and some dirty aprons were the worst of my problems. It struck me so violently I nearly burst into tears before the eyes of the gathered fae court, that I’d give my life for a list of boring chores and one of my mother’s irritated lectures now.

The hand at my shoulder abruptly halted me, and I stood still, my eyes focused on the smooth marble before the colossal throne. The Silent Death pushed me down. I fell to my knees without another thought. From the corner of my eye, I saw him do the same, albeit infinitely more elegantly.

‘Creon,’ the Mother said.

Her voice was like the tingling of silver bells, high and clear and devoid of all affection. I tried to recall if it that single word had been among the Faerie vocabulary they had us learn on Ildhelm. Then the Silent Death looked up beside me, and I realised that his moniker was probably not the name he had received from his parents at birth.

Creon. Hard and cold. It suited him.

The hall was silent. His lips didn’t move. But the High Lady on the throne hummed a note of approval, as if she’d heard him speak nonetheless. Her answer came in their own language, of which I knew no more than a few sentences – but I heard her say Cathra. I heard her say myris – death.

Again there was a short silence, and this time she laughed. ‘And your companion?’

In my own language, suddenly. The words were intended for my ears now. But the Silent Death didn’t even glance at me as he answered in that mysterious, wordless way.

‘Amused?’ Another melodious tingle of laughter. ‘The gods have mercy. We all remember what happened last time a young lady amused you a little too much, don’t we?’

Some cautious sniggers rose from the fae audience. I glanced aside from beneath the brown tangles of my hair, but Creon’s hard face didn’t show a trace of shame or annoyance. His full lips curled into a smile of faint amusement – amusement and a hint of cruel arrogance. The first smile I’d seen from him, and it confirmed everything I hadn’t wanted to know about his sense of humour.

He’d probably found it rather entertaining to torture that girl to death in Phurys, too. May have smiled just like that when he cut the faces of his Vernari prisoners to shreds.

I stifled a shiver. Perhaps I’d best not even wonder what had become of the last young lady who’d amused him.

Whatever his answer was, the Mother seemed content. Her next words came out even more sweetly and sounded even colder. ‘Look up, girl.’

I froze. Next to me, Creon sighed, the loudest sound I’d ever heard him make, and pulled me to my feet without so much as a look at me. I staggered to keep my balance and again heard the lords and ladies of the court giggle behind my back – louder this time, now that the object of their amusement didn’t wear two deadly knives and an even deadlier glare.

Somehow I raised my head and forced myself to meet the Mother’s gaze.

Her blue eyes may have been large like a doll’s, but they couldn’t possibly be mistaken for a young woman’s eyes. There was a wintry cold to them, an infinite frost. Had anyone told me that these eyes had been around to see the mountains grow and the islands rise above the water, I would have believed it.

I was nothing under that gaze. A spindly child in a cheap nightdress and a coat that didn’t belong to me, barefoot and with unkempt hair. I could see her take note of every deficiency as those immortal blue eyes slid over my body and back to my face in a single, blood-curdling heartbeat.

Then she pulled up the corners of her doll mouth. I’d have preferred for her not to.

‘What is your name, girl?’

‘Emelin, Mother.’ I barely breathed the syllables, familiar as my own skin. She heard them nonetheless, or perhaps the male next to me had already introduced me.

‘Emelin.’ She seemed to taste the sound of it. ‘How charming. What do you think of our court, Emelin?’

I’d rather swim back all the way home through the cold and tempestuous ocean than spend a minute longer in this place. True, but not a survivor’s answer.

‘It’s beautiful, Mother,’ I forced myself to whisper.

‘More beautiful than the island you come from?’

More beautiful than Cathra – this place of cruel luxury for which so many of my people had died? Something inside me withered. But I couldn’t let it show, not if I wanted to survive … I was a simple, unremarkable human, I told myself, meek and helpless, of the kind that certainly didn’t possess any magic. I was amusing and compliant. No snarky reply had ever tainted my lips.

It wasn’t hard to look weak in front of this massive throne, under that withering stare. The knowledge that she could split me in two with a snap of her fingers was enough to press the sensation of powerlessness deep into the marrow of my bones.

‘The Crimson Court compares to Cathra like you compare to me, Mother,’ I said meekly, lowering my head.

She laughed out loud. ‘Oh, you’re delightful, indeed. Tell us, girl, did the people of your island suffer enough for the transgression they committed against us? Creon assured us they suffered terribly as they died.’

Creon’s breath caught next to me.

Zera be my witness, I was going to kill him. I was at the very least going to hurt him very, very badly for making me do this, for making me stand here without the slightest bit of explanation or preparation. But if I was ever going to take my revenge, I had to be a timid, powerless human in the Mother’s eyes, and timid, powerless humans didn’t fling destructive magic at fae murderers, no matter how much they deserved it.

So I kept my eyes focused on the floor below her feet, desperately blinked away the sharp tears that threatened to well in my eyes, and muttered, ‘I don’t think anyone could ever suffer enough to make up for their shameless disregard for your generosity.’

‘Not even Creon’s punishment of fire and blood?’ she purred. ‘Of parents watching their children burn alive?’ She sounded like she was taking great delight in every word – every inaccurate word. Nobody had died burning – nobody had died at all. I had seen them sail away alive. So either she was luring me into some dangerous fae trap—

Or Creon had lied again.

What game was the Silent Death playing, exactly?

‘His punishment came close to sufficient, Mother,’ I managed. My heart was hammering so loud I was sure she would hear it even from the top of that hideous throne, but I forced myself to continue, forced myself to utter those treacherous words she wanted from me. ‘But he should have taken the tribute they withheld from you first and made sure to send it to you rather than burn it. They still managed to rob you of your rightful belongings.’

‘Such a clever girl,’ she purred, curling a long white lock around her ringed fingers. ‘Do you hear her, Creon? You’ll have to find us the equivalent of the Cathra tribute elsewhere to reassure your little human. We expect it from you soon.’

He gave a quick bow. Judging by the short silence, his answer was not very elaborate this time, and the Mother’s response came in their own language again. Before I had made sense of the few words that sounded familiar to me, Creon’s fingers locked around my upper arm and pulled me into a curtsy.

‘Thank you, Mother,’ I squeaked, although I wasn’t sure what for. But she laughed behind me as her murderer dragged me away again, and no flashes of deadly magic followed at my heels.

I’d survived.

I’d survived.

Despite the worthless fae male next to me, despite his cruel lack of help or assistance, I had survived – and as that realisation sank in, it only fanned my anger. Explanation follows. To hell with that. To hell with his evasive silence and his useless warnings.

‘So,’ I hissed from the corner of my mouth as he pulled me out through the copper-plated gate, ‘do I have to wait for your explanation of the burning children, too?’

He didn’t look my way as he pulled me across the broad marble expanse that unfolded around us, to the open window that looked out over the sprawling roofs and towers of this hideous castle. If not for the heads still turning our way, I might have refused to follow him.

‘Where are we going?’

He shrugged as he raked his free hand through his silky hair, pulling loose the bun that had held his locks for the entirety of the night. A gesture like a man taking off his armour. Were we nearly at our final destination, then?

‘Are you at least planning to give me answers on our next stop? Or do I have to wait until you mysteriously recover your voice for me?’

His side glare was another clear warning, and I ignored it. Damn him – I’d survived. If he’d gone to such lengths to get me here alive, he could handle a snide remark or two.

When I didn’t avert my eyes, he gestured at the window, then held up his hand with the fingers spread wide.

‘Five minutes?’

He gave me a curt nod, the golden light of the orbs playing over his face with that movement. I sucked in a breath and stepped forward, closer to the tall, muscular body towering over me.

‘Fine, then. Let’s go.’

He scooped me into his arms in reply, and with a powerful wingbeat, we shot into the void again.

Chapter 4

Our destination was the only truly dark patch on the entire island, a ribbon of land enclosed between the outer walls of the palace and the coastline beyond. We descended along the slope of the mountain so fast that I was pretty sure my heart had permanently moved into my throat by the time Creon finally slowed down. How the bastard handled this speed himself …

Perhaps he simply didn’t have a heart to move anywhere, I decided as he landed and pulled his hands off me so quickly I nearly dropped bottom-first onto the ground.

We stood in what looked like a small forest, on a barely illuminated path of stepping stones lodged into the earth. Behind us, the path led up the mountain, back to that cruel castle. When I turned back to investigate the other direction, the Silent Death was already walking away from me, forcing me to hurry after him.

There were no golden orbs here, no burning torches to light our way. Only tiny flecks of light shone in the trees along the path, as if handfuls of stars had fallen to the earth and taken refuge between the rustling leaves. Even the building that emerged between the trees before us was as good as dark. I saw nothing but a row of pillars at first, covered in vines and roses, standing their silent guard in the shadows. Only as we approached did the silvery roof of the pavilion catch my eye, and the stained glass windows spanning the overgrown frame. In the darkness, it was impossible to distinguish their colours.

The world was silent here. Not too far away, I could make out the rushing of the sea, a sound so familiar that I nearly broke down crying on the spot.

‘Do you live here?’ I managed.

He nodded, stepping onto the porch that circled the pavilion without looking back. I expected him to reveal some kind of key, but he merely laid his right hand on the glass between two pillars, and it melted away to let him through. I followed him inside, half expecting the window to grow back just in time to slam in my face. It didn’t.

The room behind was an even bigger surprise.

I wasn’t sure where I had expected the Silent Death to spend his days, but after the obscene abundance of the palace we’d just left behind, a good amount of gold and marble had been the least I’d counted on. What I could see of this place by the faint shine of the lights outside, however, was strangely … cosy?

I faltered two steps into the building, unable to make sense of my surroundings for a moment.

Creon either didn’t notice or didn’t care about my confusion as he walked farther into the dark room and made a quick gesture with his right hand. Little lights glowed up around and above us, turning the round space into a small firmament of its own. In that warm, almost cosy glow, the details of the pavilion’s interior became visible – the reddish wood of the sculpted pillars, the windows in a thousand different shades of green and white, the smooth birchwood floor. To my left, a heavy stove and a sink formed a small kitchen corner, bordered by a long table on one side and a shelving rack with food supplies on the other. To my right stood a heavy velvet couch and a desk surrounded by impressive book cases. The farthest side of the single room was occupied by a wardrobe and a bed large enough to accommodate an entire family, covered in dark blue blankets and pillows that appeared so soft I could feel my sweaty, grimy skin call out for them.

The only place to sleep in this entire household. That thought immediately stifled my temporary adoration, to replace it with a far healthier sense of biting hate.

I was not going to sleep in his bed. I’d rather make myself at home on the floor than anywhere close to that savage body.

Creon didn’t even glance at me as he made a round of the room, throwing quick looks behind the bookcases, beneath the bed, and into the heavy wardrobe. His movements were efficient and deliberate, even the slightest twist of his fingers measured by the inch. A creature of utter perfection – the ugliest kind of perfection.

He didn’t fit into this soft, homely place. As if a dark panther had prowled into a child’s room, looking for blood.

For a moment, I found myself wondering if it was even his home at all. If he hadn’t simply seized the place for himself to house me as long as he needed me, so as not to introduce me to the dark, murderous den of sinful delights where he normally spent his nights.

But Creon finally finished his inspection of our surroundings, and judging by the way he tucked in those large black wings, the room was declared safe. Which meant I now had more important things to worry about than the poor sod forced to hand over his home to kidnapping victims.

‘Are we alone?’ I said.

He nodded, squatting to unclasp his boots. His thighs tensed below his dark trousers as he did, muscles tightening against the cloth in what looked like a silent, ruthless warning.

I ignored it.

‘Does that mean I can shout?’

He came up, stepped out of his boots, and gave me another impassive look, eyebrow raised with a hint of resignation. If you absolutely must, that glance seemed to say, but do you really expect to get anything done with such mortal dramatics?

Before I could open my mouth, he turned away and strolled towards the stove, his footsteps inaudible like a cat’s against the birchwood.

‘Hey!’

He lit the fire, filled a kettle, and put it on the stove without a reaction. Even those simple domestic chores looked like preparations for murder in his ink-scarred hands, as if he was bringing the water to a boil only to drown someone in it.

‘I did not ask for tea,’ I snapped between clenched teeth. ‘I asked for answers. Is it really that hard to—’

He gave me a quick, tired glance over his shoulder and gestured at the long table between us. Sit down, that gesture said. Be patient. And shut your mouth.

‘No,’ I said.

He shrugged and turned away from me again.

‘No.’ My voice rose as I stamped forward – only two steps towards him before I thought better of it and changed course. Perhaps physically challenging the Silent Death would be a little too much madness, even after the effort he’d made to bring me here alive. So I stalked to his desk instead, snatched the first notebook and pencil I could find from the drawers, and slammed them down onto the table.

‘Anything else you need?’

Creon finished making his tea as if he hadn’t heard me, with what seemed to be demonstrative calm at this point. I fought my rage and frustration, clenching my nails into my palms until he eventually took the kettle from the fire, sauntered towards the table, and sank down on one of the low padded stools. No back rest, I noted. Probably uncomfortable with those wings. Only after pouring two mugs of steaming tea did he finally meet my gaze and raise that scarred eyebrow at me again.

‘Don’t you dare give me that look,’ I said quietly.

His face didn’t change in the slightest – an exquisite statue of bronze and black in the soft glow of the lights. Only his eyes were alive, brimming with dark menace below those long lashes.

‘This may just be another day at work for you, but I just saw my entire bloody life destroyed!’ Where did that sob in my rising voice come from? I wasn’t going to cry, for the bloody gods’ sakes – not for him to hear. ‘You didn’t even let me say goodbye to my own damn parents! And then you paraded me around in front of her and made me say … say …’

My lips couldn’t find words sharp enough for all I wanted to say, all I wanted to throw into that irritated, uncaring face until it bled.

He sighed, gestured for me to sit down, and held out a demanding inked hand. As if reaching two feet over the table to grab the pencil himself would be an impossible effort after all his hard work of the night.

I did not sit down. The restless rage buzzing through my limbs didn’t allow me to. In a useless, powerless burst of fury, I snatched the pencil from the birchwood surface and flung it into the Silent Death’s lap.

He picked it up from his muscular thighs as if this had been the plan all along.

Suppressing a curse, I stumbled towards him. He was writing already when I stopped next to him, his pencil twirling over the parchment in a more regular hand than his previous scribbles. You’ll be able to write to your parents later.

Too late and too little, an ocean away from them. ‘Then what would have been the harm in just letting me see them before—’

Also, he continued, ignoring me, they’re not your parents.

My snapped question froze in the back of my throat.

He put his pencil down again and turned to look up at me, his eyebrow raised a fraction, his face so impassive that it had to be a challenge.

I blinked. I let my gaze slide over those two little sentences again. A laugh escaped me, and I hated how uncertain, how timid it suddenly sounded.

‘What?’

He turned back to the parchment. You wield magic. You’re half fae.

‘Of course I’m not half fae,’ I snapped. ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s just – it’s something that runs in the family. My mother’s great-aunt also—’

She didn’t.

‘You have no idea! You didn’t know her!’

Might have, he wrote, and I would have thought it a joke if he hadn’t put it to parchment with such an air of unflinching arrogance about him.

I sucked in a breath and contemplated punching him in the face. Might have. How old was he? As an immortal creature, with the reputation he had … likely more than a century.

A lot more than a century, if I was unlucky.

‘It’s just some erratic talent that runs in the bloodline,’ I said, more feebly now as that thought spiralled out of control. He might be absolutely ancient. Was I going to tell him what his magic was and wasn’t able to do? ‘My great-aunt—’

No.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ I bit out a laugh. ‘And how would you know?’

Your mother told me.

Words abandoned me.

Mother. Told him. The empty bed, the vanished bags. How long had I been sleeping while he woke them, told them to pack their bags, and asked them about me and my history?

And in the face of death, they’d informed him—

Not your parents.

The world turned around me, the floor rocking beneath me like we were floating on a wild sea. No. It couldn’t be true. Great-aunt Gisele, that’s what they’d told me the first time I accidentally turned my doll into a small heap of dust – the same great-aunt who’d given me that golden skin and those brown eyes no one else in the family seemed to share …

No one else.

Oh, Zera have mercy on me.

I dropped into a seat. It was all I could do not to sink to my knees before the Silent Death’s impatient watching eyes. But even with a soft padded stool beneath my body and my fingers clenched around the edge of the table, the world didn’t stop shaking.

‘What … what else did they tell you?’

You were a foundling. They didn’t dare get rid of you. Foundling’s curse.

Leave an abandoned child to die and its soul would haunt you for the rest of your life. I swallowed thorns and bitter dust down my throat.

‘But then they must all have known. Not just my parents. The entire village must have known they weren’t …’

Yes.

Stealthy glances as they passed me by, even when I was just a toddler. The children sprinting away from me whenever I rounded a corner. The sympathetic pats on my mother’s shoulders whenever she mentioned me, the lines that had hardened into her face over the years.

I felt like fainting.

‘But then why … why did they never tell me …’

They were afraid.

‘Of me?’

He nodded, black locks dancing around his face and shoulders.

‘What in hell would I ever have done …’ I sucked in a deep breath, tried to cool the nausea that roared through me. ‘What did they think – that I’d run to the nearest fae island and betray all of Cathra to my newfound family if I’d known?’

Exactly.

‘You are not my family.’

Creon sighed, as if to remind me he was well aware and as glad of it as I was. I clenched my fingers into the table so tightly that it hurt.

‘Did they know where I came from? Who my other parents were?’

He shook his head.

‘And then you let them go? Everyone in the village? Why?’

I thought, he wrote, his ink-covered fingers slowing down for the first time, that you’d prefer for them to survive the night.

‘Oh, how very damn courteous.’ I uttered a mirthless laugh. ‘And you didn’t think I might prefer to go with them? That I might prefer not to have my life ruined at all?’

There was no saving Cathra.

It took a few breaths before I dared to trust my voice. ‘She – she sent you there to kill them. All of them. Because of that iron ward they made.’

Creon nodded.

‘Does iron even have any effect on you?’

He shook his head.

‘Oh. Gods. They were so convinced it would work.’ I sucked in a trembling breath. I shouldn’t think about what might have happened if anyone else had come to answer the island’s refusal to pay its tribute, but the burning hell of the town wouldn’t vanish from my mind’s eye so easily. ‘They collected all these first-hand witnesses who swore they had seen fae restrained by iron bonds.’

His face remained emphatically expressionless as he wrote, Some fae make an effort to keep the lie up.

‘Bastards.’ I scoffed. ‘And you never thought to rectify that story?’

She’d find out.

‘Oh, poor you,’ I said, voice dripping with venom. ‘And then you might have to deal with a stern talk and some warnings?’

I’m past the warnings.

That gave me pause. Past the warnings? But the Silent Death was one of the Mother’s most loyal servants, wasn’t he? Wasn’t his name mentioned in one breath with her own – her personal weapon to wield?

‘Would she kill you?’

Yes.

I looked up from the parchment, scanning his face for a hint of dramatics. All I found in his clenched jaw and tight lips was a cool, calm resignation.

‘Why?’

He sighed. Because she can’t afford to risk treason from my side. She knows I might be one of the few in a position to bring her down.

His fingers hesitated for a moment as he lifted his pencil off the parchment again – at the dangerous, treacherous sentences spelled out in those thin lines of lead. Bring her down. The Mother would undoubtedly have his head for those words. And yet he’d scrabbled them down for me so easily, as if this was nothing new to either of us. As if we’d known each other for years, tested and tried each other’s loyalties until we dared to trust each other even with knowledge that could kill in a heartbeat.

Bring her down.

It was madness. All of this was madness. The Silent Death was the Mother’s lethal right hand and had been so for centuries – all stories said the same, stories my grandparents’ parents had already heard from their grandparents. A ruthless, merciless murderer, delighting in the bloodshed she offered him. A mage powerful enough to turn whole armies to dust with a flick of his fingers. And yet …

He had saved my life.

Why? Why?

‘How long have you been working against her?’ I asked slowly, wrapping my arms around myself.

He stiffened for a moment, then raised his pencil to the parchment again. The cruel ink lines on his hands seemed to shift below his skin as he wrote, I’m hardly working against her. But I’ve been mitigating damage since the Last Battle.

The Last Battle – the last desperate charge of humanity against the Mother’s fae armies, a hundred and thirty years ago. A battle we had pathetically lost, and since that day, human islands answered to the Crimson Court, handing over tributes every year. Food, if they were lucky. People, if they were less so.

‘You’ve been taking your sweet time, then,’ I said sharply.

I was waiting.

‘What for?’

You.

I blinked. Closed my eyes a little longer, then looked up again. The word still stood where I’d last seen it, the dark grey lines gleaming mockingly at me from the smooth surface of the parchment. Me. A scrawny twenty-year-old human – no, half human – of unremarkable descent and even more unremarkable power. And yet this epitome of brimming magic and darkness needed me?

‘Why?’

You’re unbound.

I released a breathless laugh. ‘What in the world are you …’

She bound our magic. For all of us. He wrote in short, snappy strokes now, an explanation he didn’t want to think about. When we wield our powers with the intention of harming her, they have no effect. I’m unable to hurt her with my magic, and so is all of faekind.

‘I – I’ve never heard of that.’

It was done long ago. Before the wars. It’s how she gained dominance over all fae.

I stared at the words and then at him. A killer of nearly unlimited power, they whispered on the human isles. Bred and trained to destroy. And yet …

Unable to harm her.

Was this why no fae had ever rebelled against the Mother’s reign in the centuries she’d spent on that throne? Not just because they were happy enough to live in a world where humans did the work and they reaped the profits, but because they had no choice?

She’s careful, Creon wrote and underlined that last word to clarify that this was not just a matter of the occasional check, to make sure no child with magic powers is born without her knowing.

My mouth was dry. ‘Not just fae children?’

When fae females give birth, the child is bound immediately. Unmarried human women who give birth always do so with a physician around to check whether the father may have been fae. All human children at the court are checked within their first year, too. Fae males are not allowed any affairs with humans on other islands, under threat of death – which is why they usually turn to abductions. He tore off the page and continued on the other side, Whoever your parents were, they must have gone to great lengths to hide you.

My parents. I was hit by a vision – a nonsensical, dramatic vision – of a fae flying through the night sky with my new-born body in his arms, away from the Mother, into safety. Leaving me on the doorstep of a childless painter and his wife …

I shook my head, nearly violently. The truth wouldn’t be so grand, so heroic. For all I knew, my father was simply some vicious fae male who’d forced himself upon my mother, and she somehow managed to smuggle the child she’d never wanted out of her hands … Glad to be rid of me. Like the parents I’d known for all my life, the parents who’d fed me and raised me, would have been glad to be rid of me, if not for the foundling’s curse hanging over their heads. Like they’d fled Cathra and left me to the questionable care of the Silent Death.

I wanted to throw up.

Creon was writing again, without any questions from my side this time. I just checked the register of human children on this island in your birth month. Your name is not on it.

First thing he’d done – before I was even introduced to the Mother. Because if my name had been on the list, I should have introduced myself under another one for the woman who kept such obsessive records of every single child born at her court. Hell’s sake, did the bastard think of everything?

‘So does that mean my parents aren’t from here?’

His nod was slow enough to prove his doubt. Or they were cleverer than she is.

I managed a laugh. Cleverer than the Mother. A hundred and thirty years since the Last Battle, and finally someone had managed to smuggle a child with magic gifts unbound into the world—

Me.

That child was me.

I needed a drink. A strong one. And a bath – gods, I really needed a bath. My thoughts clung to that wish with ridiculous fervour. He should have a bathroom somewhere here, shouldn’t he? Or was I supposed to just dive into the sea to clean myself, take a piss between the trees outside if the need arose?

Not what I should be thinking about now. I had magic to consider, and treason and rebellion. But in the night of the Crimson Court, sharing a table with a cold-blooded creature of violence and darkness I could no longer make sense of, bathrooms felt like a much more manageable subject.

His face remained hidden behind the long locks of his dark hair as he sighed and wrote, Don’t panic. We have time.

‘I’m not panicking.’ My voice cracked. I was absolutely panicking, and the bastard could at least have been polite enough not to notice. ‘I’m just confused. How would you feel if someone suddenly told you that you weren’t fully fae?’

The fingers around the pencil stiffened for a moment. Panicked.

I scoffed. ‘I can’t afford to panic. What would you have done if I’d collapsed into a crying mess before that throne?’

He hesitated, the tip of the pencil balancing a fragile fraction above the parchment. When he eventually scribbled his words down, he did it so quickly that it seemed he was afraid of changing his mind.

You did well with her.

Was he trying to soften me with compliments now, after hours of little more than testy glares at me? I scoffed again. ‘Would have been a lot less dangerous if you hadn’t made me see her without the slightest bit of information.’

Checking the archives was a risk already. She never allows me to wait before I see her, and I can’t afford to raise her suspicions about you.

‘At the price of my own wellbeing?’

You’ll be a whole lot worse off if she finds out who you are.

Because I was his weapon now. His treasured unbound little mage, the first real danger to her hegemony after decades of uncontested ruling. I shoved away from the table so abruptly that I even alarmed myself.

‘So how exactly were you planning to make sure she doesn’t?’

Creon just looked at me.

That infuriating, impassive look again. Either he was calling me stupid for not figuring it out yet, or he was trying to make me beg for more information. He liked this, didn’t he? Liked being the unchallenged authority, the highborn fae bringing his amusing human captive to her knees—

Amusing.

Oh, for the bloody gods’ sakes.

‘Before that throne …’ My words came out through clenched teeth, as if I were holding back the urge to vomit or to punch him in the face. Perhaps both were true. ‘You told her you found me amusing.’

He quirked up a scarred eyebrow, just a fraction. I wasn’t sure if it was an apology or an unsubtly conveyed hint that I could suck it up, and for our mutual peace, perhaps I shouldn’t press him for clarification of the gesture. I probably was amusing to him. Some pesky twenty-year-old with illusions of understanding – how many steps was that ancient mind ahead of me?

‘You don’t want me to follow you around like a stupid, swoony human utterly obsessed with you, do you?’ I said – slowing down as the sentence continued, because with every subsequent word I heard falling from my own lips, it sounded more likely that this was exactly what he’d want from me.

He shrugged as he picked up his pencil. Doesn’t sound good to you?

I huffed a laugh. ‘I’d rather die.’

Then you’ll be glad to hear that’s indeed your best alternative.

‘Oh, piss off.’ I pulled my legs to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, resting my face against my knees. ‘This is the best you could come up with? Why didn’t you just tell her that you abducted me to lock me in your bedroom? Then at least I wouldn’t have to pretend I liked you.’

It took a few moments of silence before I realised I wasn’t going to get an answer without looking at him. But when I lifted my head again, he wasn’t writing. He hadn’t even lifted his pencil yet. He just sat there, staring at me, his dark wings flaring a little wider behind his back. His lips were pressed tight – a cold, hard line of exhaustion.

‘What?’ I said sharply. ‘Fae males do it all the time. Would she have batted an eye?’

With a sharp gesture, he snatched his pencil from the table again. I don’t.

‘What?’

And never have. If I suddenly started the practice after all these centuries, that would raise her curiosity more than we need.

‘And dragging young women out of burning towns just because you find them amusing is a more established habit for you?’

A shadow slid over his face. If you were to spend your time fawning over me … His slender fingers paused above the parchment. That’s something a previous version of me might have found amusing, yes.

‘Your previous version was even more of an asshole than your current version,’ I muttered.

Yes.

Not the answer I needed, damn him. I wanted denial. I wanted him to defend himself so I could hate him even more for it, hate everything about him for the sacrifice he was asking – demanding – me to make. Sucking in a breath, I planted my feet back onto the floor and said, ‘So what made you change your mind about that pastime?’

The War.

‘Did you fight for her in the War?’

For a part of it.

Good. That made the hate come easier, indeed. Because it meant at least some of the stories I knew about him were true – the slaughter on the battlefields, the massacred villages, the arrogant, invulnerable killer. I clenched my teeth and said, ‘I see.’

He raised his eyebrow.

‘Bold of you to think I’d happily do your bidding under those circumstances.’

I didn’t ask for happily.

‘No, but you’re strongarming me into playing your whore, regardless.’ I was spitting out the words now. ‘You could have asked me before we went to see her, and instead—’

Alternative suggestions?

Even the cool air in my lungs couldn’t soothe the anger burning in my chest. I had no alternative suggestions. He knew I had no alternative suggestions. But even then … ‘Would have been better to arrive at this plan together, at the very least!’

He made a disparaging gesture, as if to say, details.

‘You don’t even want to work together, do you?’ I said, digging my nails into my palms. ‘You just want a weapon. And weapons don’t disagree with whatever stupid plan your stupid fae brain comes up with. Weapons just shut up and take orders.’

No reaction. Not even a shrug.

‘I never even said I would agree to whatever you want me to be.’ The words were spilling over my lips as if my tongue had found a life of its own. ‘Would have been wise to first check if I even had any intention of risking my life for … for …’

The Silent Death just looked at me, unmoving. Like a spider in its web, waiting for my thoughts to get ensnared in their inevitable conclusions.

Risk my life. To give all of humanity a chance at freedom.

How could I not want it?

Without the Mother, the fae empire would no longer be half as powerful. If some of them would indeed rebel after they were free from their bindings, if that would destabilise the empire enough to give the human rebels some advantage – that would level the playing field significantly. It didn’t matter that I wanted to cry at just the thought of looking into the Mother’s frosty eyes again, that the prospect of staying here made my gut clench into a cold, fearful knot. Quite as usual, it was not about what I wanted.

And the Silent Death knew it. Knew it and sat waiting for me to admit it, dark and powerful and utterly in control of every word I would speak.

Bastard.

Something hardened in my chest. An unexpected firmness – the sensation of decisions making themselves.

No. This was not how we were going to play the game. Perhaps he’d grown to expect immediate surrender after spending centuries in the company of fae who’d bow to his every whim and command – but he’d also waited decades and decades to find an unbound mage willing to work with him. He needed me. More than I needed him, perhaps.

If I were to be a weapon, he would be mine to wield in turn.

So I folded my arms and met the unsettling darkness of his knowing, probing eyes. The Silent Death. Mage, monster, murderer. And I might just be the one who held the best cards here.

‘It all sounds like a highly unpleasant business,’ I said slowly. ‘Honestly, if sleeping in your bed is the prize of staying here, I’d rather smuggle myself onto the first outgoing ship and take up a silent life in the countryside.’

Something like amusement rose on his face. Somehow it didn’t soften his features – if anything, the opposite. It’s a pretty comfortable bed.

I snorted. ‘Company can make or break any party.’

What are you afraid of?

‘I’m not afraid. Just furious.’ I let out a laugh. ‘You’re not even going to offer me your couch, are you?’

People pass by. Would give you away.

I closed my eyes and tried to breathe the calm into myself. He was right. Why was he always right? But crawling into his bed – putting myself so near to his sculpted body, making myself so vulnerable around him … If anything less than the future of humanity had been on the line, I may have bolted anyway.

But I had no choice. Imagine travelling home without going through with this – travelling to the White City or wherever else home was to be found these days. If I ever told anyone about the Silent Death’s reason to take me with him, they’d be furious I hadn’t grabbed the opportunity. If I never told anyone … A lifetime of secrecy, a lifetime of bitter regret with every community slaughtered in the Mother’s name.

Not an option. Even if I wanted nothing more than to get out of this place, out of the Silent Death’s menacing company, it didn’t matter.

I had no choice. I was going to do this. The only freedom I had was in the exact conditions for this unholy alliance, and that freedom at least I had to use well.

I opened my eyes and took the leap.

‘Your kind makes bargains, don’t they?’

His eyebrows shifted, slowly, as he turned back to his notebook. Our kind.

‘Say that one more time and I’ll punch you in that pretty face.’

He blinked, surprise flickering in his gaze for a moment. It wasn’t a hesitation – not yet. But it came close.

Noted. So?

‘I propose a bargain,’ I said, swallowing my nervousness. There were two things I knew about fae bargains: firstly, that they couldn’t be broken, and secondly, that fae were uncannily creative in fucking you over anyway. ‘I’ll help you to overthrow the Mother. In return, you will protect me.’

He considered that for a moment, glancing over me as if to estimate my worth. I’ll protect you whenever you don’t put yourself in danger.

It took a heartbeat or two for that condition to make sense. Whenever I didn’t put myself in danger – which meant I couldn’t count on him to keep me safe if I continued to insult fae murderers or run away from him.

He’d paid attention over the past few hours, apparently.

‘Don’t know why you think I’d ever endanger myself,’ I said sourly, ‘but fine. And you’ll keep your hands off me in that bed, too.’

As I was planning to. He looked up from his writing, eyes mocking me. Unless you change your mind, of course.

‘I’d rather fuck a cactus,’ I informed him.

Interesting. Let me know how you like it.

My face flushed. Oh, damn it. He was toying with me – I was allowing him to toy with me. Time to get back to business. Time to perhaps surprise him for a moment.

Snapping my eyes back to his face, I added, ‘And I want you to help me find my parents – the ones who made me disappear before I could be bound.’

My real parents? Were those the words I should have used? Nothing about them seemed even remotely real to me.

Creon raised an eyebrow, considering my proposal for a few moments. Then he picked up his pencil again and wrote, Won’t be easy to find them.

‘Bringing down the Mother won’t be either.’

Both close to impossible. But finding your parents may be the more impossible task. They clearly went to great lengths to avoid being caught.

To avoid being found even by their daughter? I pushed that spark of discomfort aside and forced myself to shrug – a worry for later. ‘How long did you wait to find an unbound mage, again?’

Creon slowly sat up straighter, folding his arms over his muscular chest. His dark eyes narrowed as he ran his gaze over me, the gesture emphasising his dark eyebrows and high cheekbones even more sharply in that stunning, hard face.

What had he expected? A meek twenty-year-old who would, with tearful gratefulness for sparing her parents’ life, bind herself to him for eternity?

‘I’m willing to take on the Mother first, though,’ I added, smiling at him in a burst of obstinate recklessness. At some point, something other than those small sparks of surprise should emerge from behind the indifferent arrogance and the authoritative elegance, shouldn’t it? ‘I’m not the heartless one here, you see.’

For a fraction of a moment, he sat motionless.

Then he shrugged.

And that was all – that same uncaring shrug again. He didn’t even blink. Because why should he? I was just a bumbling almost-human, a tool to achieve whatever his goals were, to be discarded again as soon as I had fulfilled my purpose. He’d wash me and my snarky remarks off his hands as easily as he had washed the blood of his thousands of victims from his hands—

I swallowed. Those hands, covered in strange, scar-like ink. How often had human blood coated that tanned skin?

Breathing. I had to keep breathing.

I had to keep the whirlwind of my thoughts to the background of my decisions, had to know better than to let my fear and disgust cloud the path to my survival. It didn’t matter how much I detested him and his callousness. It was none of my concern what, exactly, was going on behind those hard eyes, what had made him risk his life to defy the Mother. This was just business. Rational, opportunistic business. He needed me, and if I wanted to save my people and get out of here alive, I had a use for him too.

The rest would figure itself out.

‘So,’ I said, and I tried to keep the slight tremble from my voice, ‘are you willing to seal a bargain?’

He threw his pencil aside and extended a strong, tanned hand towards me.

I should think about this for longer. I shouldn’t close bargains in the middle of the night, after surviving fires and hours of flying and a meeting with the Mother of faekind herself. But at least this deal would keep me safe from him, and I wasn’t going to sleep anywhere on this island without at least one person to protect me.

I swallowed my disgust and laid my fingers in his.

His ink-marred hand was softer against my fingers than I had imagined, save for the callouses formed by his weapons. My own hand looked small and pale in his grip, and so infuriatingly vulnerable.

‘I’ll help you defeat the Mother,’ I said hoarsely. ‘You’ll help me find my parents – both pairs of them. You will not harm me.’

He nodded.

Was there any magic I ought to use now? Why had I expected my newfound fae blood to somehow provide me with the knowledge I needed about these things?

But as I opened my mouth, the air between our intertwined fingers turned warmer – lighter.

A reddish glow radiated from every spot where his hand touched mine, lighting up our skin and the veins below. Tendrils of light slipped out, twirling around our hands like whisps of smoke. I gasped and nearly pulled back, but the grip of his fingers was a vice now, and he held me in place as the light between our palms intensified to a blinding beam so strong I could see the shadowy outlines of my bones through the back of my hand. The warmth grew to a blistering heat, and yet somehow it didn’t hurt.

Something hard and sharp stuck into the inside of my wrist.

‘Ow!’

The light and heat vanished as if they’d heard my cry. Creon’s fingers loosened, and I yanked back my hand, instinctively flexing my fingers to check if they still functioned. Only then did I see the mark on the inside of my wrist – a small, gem-like crack in my skin, glowing reddish in the cosy light of the pavilion.

My breath caught. As I looked up, the Silent Death sat studying his own mark, an identical shard of something hard and smooth embedded in the bronze skin of his wrist. Like a ruby caught in human flesh. Like a drop of blood turned into diamond glass by whatever magic had sealed our bargain.

‘Red,’ I whispered, ‘for destruction.’

Creon smiled, and it was a smile that promised murder and ruin indeed.

Chapter 5

The bed was too soft. The room too quiet. The Silent Death’s winged silhouette far too close.

I lay in the silk and velvet of these unfamiliar pillows and blankets and didn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep. Even after a night that should have exhausted me to near death, my mind stubbornly refused to slow down, and my muscles remained tense like tightened bowstrings no matter how often I ran my thumb over that reassuring mark on the inside of my right wrist. I was safe, I repeated to myself again and again. The bargain wouldn’t allow him to hurt me even if he wanted to. And why would he want to hurt me, if I was his only chance to kill the High Lady he’d apparently wanted dead for over a century?

But my blood still pumped through my veins at twice the usual speed – an itchy, twitchy restlessness buzzing just below my skin.

His only chance.

Me.

None of this seemed real. None of this seemed right. Hours ago, I had been scrubbing floors and cleaning kitchens. Hours ago, I’d walked Cathra’s beaches and slept in my own bed. And now I’d somehow ended up in the hands of the most dangerous killer of my time, a pawn in whatever long game the Silent Death was playing.

A shiver ran through me, and then I could no longer stop shivering.

He was so close, his silhouette a slender, muscular threat beside me – close enough that I could feel the rhythm of his breathing through the vexingly soft mattress, close enough that he only had to stretch out an arm to pinch me against his ink-scarred torso. Which he wouldn’t do – he had closed a bargain on it. And yet I didn’t dare to turn my back on him, as if my eyes were all that kept him to his word, a cobweb chain restraining his baser instincts.

My shivering had become a violent shaking. I had to clench my teeth to keep them from clattering.

Don’t panic, the bastard had written, but I was panicking now – senseless, useless panic – and I couldn’t bring myself to stop. I was all alone here. I was entirely, pitifully alone at a deadly fae court, an eternity away from everyone and everything I’d ever known, at the mercy of a ruthless fae killer who needed me only until I’d fulfilled my role as his unbound little weapon. If he killed me tomorrow – if he killed me tonight – who would even know?

I was looking down at myself all of a sudden, watching my own trembling body from the starry sky above. A scrawny little human, surrounded by miles and miles and miles of ocean as far as the eye could see … Alone. Alone. Helpless and small and altogether pathetic, and—

Creon stirred next to me, turning his back to me. One of his dark wings came up with the movement and settled over my blankets, a light, reassuring weight pushing me deeper into the mattress. Steadying me – grounding me.

An immeasurable relief swept over me.

A calm so deep it seemed to come from somewhere else, someone else – like a soft woollen blanket wrapping itself around my thoughts and stifling the mortal fear that held my heart in its iron grip. My restless, shaking limbs struggled against it for a moment, then gave in. My whirring mind gave a last few panicking twitches, then slowed. Every muscle in my body relaxed as the sudden sense of calm flowed into the very tips of my toes and fingers, filling me with a warm, soft certainty.

With a muffled whimper, I curled up tighter beneath the blankets and squeezed my eyes shut, still savouring the soothing pressure of Creon’s wing over my torso.

Perhaps all I’d needed was a hug. And for lack of any loving arms to hold me, perhaps this was enough of an alternative.

I hadn’t expected to fall asleep before sunrise, in a murderer’s house, grieving the home I’d never see again. But the panic finally dissolved as my body loosened, and within minutes, I sank into a deep, dreamless sleep that wiped the last of my fears from my mind.

I woke to a world of heavy blue velvet and pale green sunlight – colours so soft, so soothing, that it took a moment too long before I realised where I was.

On the Mother’s island.

In a bundle of pillows and blankets in the Silent Death’s bed.

I jolted up, fluffy white pillows tumbling onto the floor around me. The bed was empty, and so was the rest of the room. With the morning sunlight filtering through the green and white of the stained glass flowers, it struck me again how peaceful this pavilion looked. Hard to imagine that this was the place he returned to after a long day of setting farmers on fire and flaying children alive to wash the blood off his hands, pour himself a nice cup of tea, and read a book by the cosy light of the glowing orbs until bedtime.

Where was he now? Off to kill more rebellious humans? I sure as hell wasn’t going to make him tea if he returned all bloody and soot-stained in a few hours.

I groaned, rubbed my eyes, and flung my legs out of my makeshift bed. The white carpet on the floor was so fluffy I could lose sight of my feet in it. I shuffled around a little, enjoying the sensation of the soft wool between my toes more than I wanted to admit.

So. Here I was.

Miles and miles away from everyone and everything I’d ever known, and yet the violent despair and nostalgia didn’t return. Perhaps the world had changed too much. Perhaps even nostalgia required some vague sense that my old life had at least been real, rather than a dream that was already fading now that I had opened my eyes.

Had it been real? Apparently I’d never been who I thought I was. Not Emelin of Valter’s house, painter’s assistant, former seamstress’s apprentice, and unremarkable human cursed with an unfortunate bloodline of stray magic. Instead I’d always been the half fae daughter of unknown parents, the world’s only known unbound mage.

And now I’d become a player in a war that had started centuries before I’d even been born. A war that I alone might be able to end.

It wasn’t exactly optimism that I was feeling. It was more like … determination. The sooner I had all this madness behind me, the sooner I could make my way to the White City. The sooner I could see my parents again. So it was about time I figured out what exactly I was supposed to do in this place and got to work.

What could I do?

Get to know this island and this court. Understand the heart of the conflict I’d only ever seen from the fringes of the world, from the backwater island where news arrived weeks or months after the events had taken place. Figure out Creon.

No – the Silent Death. Calling him Creon made him sound like a creature with a heart, and the bargain that didn’t allow him to harm me shouldn’t make me forget exactly how much of a danger he posed. There was no reason to ascribe him a sense of mercy and morality just because he’d saved my village. That had been a decision of pure calculation, an easier way to win me over. The fact that he hadn’t bothered to stop killing and torturing in the Mother’s name even when he was no longer loyal to her – well, that should tell me all I needed to know about the value he attributed to human lives.

The value he’d attribute to me, if I no longer fitted his goals. But what exactly those goals were …

I had no idea what game he was playing. Why did he even want to usurp the Mother? What had made him change his mind about their alliance all those decades ago, and why had he continued to fight in her name, rather than flee the court to spare himself the bloodshed? For all I knew, he had ensnared me in some double-edged plot that would turn against me as soon our bargain ended.

Fae were fae, after all. The Silent Death more so than any of them.

Somehow the thought didn’t frighten me like it should have. Perhaps my blood was showing after all.

Half fae. I glanced down at my body and barely suppressed a scoff. Fae females at the Crimson Court were tall and round-breasted and altogether stunning. I was … lithe, Helmer had said on Ildhelm. Bony, my mother used to tell me. A head shorter than even the shortest fae I’d seen, wingless and bland. Whatever blood my fae parent had given me, it wasn’t worth much.

But even a human body could do with a bath, and since Creon was still nowhere to be seen, I decided I may as well risk it.

The bathroom beneath the pavilion was a softly lit dream of blue and gold, with an ivory bathtub the size of a small lake and warm water if you turned the right tap. A full apothecary’s worth of bottles and herbs was gathered on the shelves against the back wall. Last night, Creon had taken two minutes to point out where I could find towels and washcloths. Now a small pile of clothing lay waiting for me on the rack beside the bath – three dresses and some underwear and a few ridiculously soft pairs of socks. Enough to get through the first few days. Where he’d found these things was anyone’s guess, but I was relieved enough to be rid of my nightgown not to ask questions.

Although, not relieved enough to start feeling grateful. I’d rather have been on that boat with my parents than in a thousand of these baths.

I filled the tub, double-checked the lock on the door, and undressed myself. Even with a few very thorough glances at the mirror, I couldn’t recognise anything fae-like about myself. Round ears, boring brown hair, and eyes that didn’t really have any definable colour at all. A bit of brown, a bit of green. The shade of sickly ditch water.

Only that golden skin had to be a relic of my fae blood. Even if it was a little lighter than Creon’s, it didn’t seem unlikely that one of my parents had belonged to his people.

I abruptly turned away from the mirror. The idea of being related to him – to any of them – gave me goosebumps of the most unpleasant kind. All my life, fae had just been the bastards who showed up once a year to demand a portion of our harvest and the money my father had earned. On the bad years, somehow, the portions tended to be higher. When anyone objected, the rates doubled.

And all that time, my parents had known I might be one of them – in blood, at least. Had been scared of what I might do if I ever found out.

Hadn’t they realised I’d rather bleed every drop of fae blood from my own veins than betray them?

I slid into the bath and shivered at the sudden warmth. One day, I would find them again and explain everything. Tell them that I understood the secrets they’d kept from me, that I didn’t even mind about the whispers and the cautious glances I’d never been able to make sense of. That I …

But was any of that true, really?

I groaned and reached for the collection of foams and salts and soaps. Perhaps this was not something I needed to figure out today. The Mother wasn’t dead yet, and as long as she was still sitting on that monstrous throne, my exact feelings about my parents’ lies weren’t the most urgent problem in my life by far.

Over the course of half an hour, I tested every bottle I could find, so that the bath water was a glittery soup of pearly white and purple swirls by the time I climbed out of the tub again. My skin felt cleaner than it had done in years and smelled of lavender and jasmine and something that came closest to … twilight.

I picked the prettiest dress on the pile, a light blue one with a pattern of white irises and slightly puffed sleeves that hid the worst of my boniness. With my hair wrapped in a towel, I made my way back upstairs. Creon was still nowhere to be seen, but a tray full of food had appeared on the birchwood table, with a note next to it.

I snorted. If he was so eager to avoid me during my stay at his house, he could have left me alone entirely.

But the sight of breakfast made me realise I was hungry enough to chew down half a cow, so I shoved my annoyance aside and fell down on last night’s stool. As I snatched a bun from the pile of bread, I pulled the note closer and let my eyes glide over the lines – scribbled down in the most regular writing I’d seen from him so far. Did that suggest he’d spent more time thinking about this message?

Just so you know – all food is coming from fae farms close to the court. No tribute payments or human labour involved.

If you’re looking for me, I’m around the beach. Don’t wander off to the east. There are hounds in Faewood.

No tribute payments. I tore a first bite off my bun and realised it was a relief indeed. The bastard, with his bloody courteousness.

I ate three buns and one of the flaky, buttery, crescent-shaped pastries I’d never seen before but loved from the first bite. Then I spooned all the remaining marmalade from its jar because it was sweeter than anything I’d ever tasted in my life and my tongue kept craving more every time I promised myself it would be the last spoonful. Thank Zera’s merciful heart that this dress wasn’t cut too tightly, because it may have burst at the seams in my first hour of wearing it.

When I had eaten enough – a little more than enough, perhaps – I put on my socks and went to look for a way out of this pavilion.

I found a pair of shoes first. They were a little too big but also more expensive than anything I had ever owned in my life, so I decided not to complain. There was no door to be seen anywhere, but Creon’s note suggested I should be able to find my way to the beach and therefore probably out of this house. I prodded some windows. They all refused to melt away like the one through which we had entered yesterday.

After a few minutes of frustrated deliberation, I picked Creon’s black coat from his wardrobe and blew a window to smithereens with a well-aimed burst of red magic. He’d probably be able to repair it, and I didn’t expect many fae would be waiting for a chance to break into the Silent Death’s home during a few minutes of his absence.

I tiptoed carefully through the mass of brightly coloured shards and then fell into a trot down the hillslope.

The sea was near – I could hear the infinitely familiar roll of the tide again, a few hundred feet away at most. The air had that comforting briny weight to it. I found my way between the holly and hawthorn, pines and bayberry, the landscape so similar to that of Cathra that I imagined for a moment I would see the familiar jetty loom up behind the low dunes. But when I finally reached the edge of the grey-green forest, the coastline looked nothing like the one I could follow with my eyes closed at home.

It was breathtakingly beautiful, though. Such a cruel trick of fate, to make everything in this hideous place so deceptively dreamlike, too.

Ivory sand stretched out from my left and my right, disappearing behind dunes in the distance. Behind the beach itself, the water was a deep azure, frothing powdery white where the gentle waves broke over the sand. And there, in the surf …

He sat with his back towards me, barefoot and shirtless, close enough to the sea for the water to brush over his toes with every wave rolling towards him. The dark wings growing from his shoulder blades were surrounded by corded muscles that rolled and shifted with every breath he took, my view of that raw, ruthless power unimpeded now that most of his black hair was bound into a loose bun behind his head. They moved with the sea breeze, those wings, their smooth shimmer catching the sunlight from a hundred different angles with every slight shift. Even the scar-like ink lines covering his back and shoulders couldn’t take away from the eerie perfection of the vision before me.

It took me a moment to realise my mouth had sagged open.

I snapped it shut again because I wasn’t a silly little human fawning over him, and I wasn’t going to grow into any such thing either. It wasn’t my fault he was stunning enough to steal the breath away from anyone with eyes. The knives at his belt should have been a clear enough hint that the beauty went no deeper than that scarred bronze skin.

Steeling myself, I kicked off my boots and socks and walked towards him, savouring the familiar feeling of the sand between my toes. Time to get this over with, then. He had probably heard me approaching anyway; the longer I stood there hesitating, the more it would seem I was quietly ogling him from behind.

Which I absolutely wasn’t. I wouldn’t even think of it.

‘Creon?’

He slowly turned around, muscles and wings shifting in unfairly alluring ways. A few loose locks fell along his temples to his chest, framing the sharp lines of his profile with even more unfair artistry.

A murderer, I reminded myself as I bridged those last few feet between us, clenching my fists until my nails stung into my palms. The male who had delivered a Khonnian revolutionary to his family in twenty-seven meticulous pieces. Who had tortured that northern sculptor until the poor fellow betrayed his very own children to the fae forces looking for traitors.

If I focused on those stories hard enough, imagined the blood on his hands and the corpses bearing the traces of his knives, I could taste the disgust in the back of my throat again. Good. His beauty was just another cruel fae trick, but I wouldn’t let it defeat me. I was going to be civil, perhaps, but nothing more than that. Composed and cooperative, but never compliant.

If he wanted blind obedience, he had found the wrong mage to toy with.

He followed me with his eyes as I sank down into the damp sand beside him. I gave him my most boring, most civil smile and said, ‘Morning.’

His nod was presumably a greeting to the same effect; it was his only reaction before he turned back to the sea and continued his gazing at the faraway horizon. In the distance, the vague green outline of another island was visible. I searched my memory for a while, but my geography lessons had never covered the islands so far to the south.

‘Mind if I ask a few more questions?’ I said.

Creon gave me a sharp look. He wielded a great variety of sharp looks, I was starting to realise, and I should probably make some effort to learn to recognise them. This one looked like a more or less inviting expression, but by yet another cruel trick of fate, that particular category dangerously resembled the glare that had told me to shut the hell up last night.

Better to start with the easy questions, just to be sure.

‘Is it impolite to ask fae how old they are?’

He sighed but extended a finger into the wet sand and started tracing lines. 368.

Born a good two centuries before the Last Battle, then. Plenty of time to commit a generous number of atrocities before his change of mind during the War. I tried to focus on that point and not on the consequent fact that the lethal predator sitting next to me had seen roughly twenty times as many summers as I had.

‘And when did you start training your magic?’

He threw me a suspicious look. Good gods, was that too much to ask already? I gave him my most helpless shrug and said, ‘I suppose I’ll need some training, too. I’d like to know what I can expect.’

He wrote, 2.

‘What – you were two years old?’

A nod. He had taken up his staring into the distance again. I tried to imagine the male next to me as a tiny winged toddler, drooling into his bib and wobbling unsteadily on his little legs, but the thought wouldn’t make sense to me no matter how long I dwelt on it.

‘Why?’ I said.

Born to.

‘To join her forces?’

He nodded again. I pursed my lips and considered those two words – two years old and promised to the Mother by some unholy bargain? That might make a mess of anyone’s moral compass, admittedly.

I nearly groaned. No. Stop it. Even raised by fae warriors, anyone could realise that torturing humans to death was not a particularly honourable way to spend your days. And even after he seemed to have realised it, he hadn’t quite changed his ways in the past thirteen decades since the end of the War.

I wanted to ask why his parents had given him away like that. What trickery the Mother had applied to acquire a child so young in service of her. But that really didn’t have anything to do with my own training prospects, and digging too fast and too deep likely wouldn’t improve my chances of success. So I shifted my shoulders in my comfortable new dress and said, ‘Why did you change your mind during the War?’

He didn’t move. Didn’t even make the effort of looking aside or shaking his head. As if I was talking to a statue – to a solid brick wall.

‘I take it that’s a refusal to answer?’

It was barely a nod, more like a slightly violent twitch. I decided to take it as a nod and told myself I shouldn’t be surprised. I was a tool to him, after all – a tool for which he was willing to risk a midnight abduction or two, a tool that needed breakfast and clean clothes, but no less a tool for any of those reasons. It made no sense for him to hand over unnecessary information, let alone information that I might use to get through to him.

‘Alright.’ I stuffed the small flare of anger behind my new wall of bland, mature civility. ‘More current affairs, then. Do you already have a plan to deal with her?’

He shrugged. Presumably that didn’t mean he had no idea himself, so I took it to be a “sort of” kind of shrug.

‘Outline of a plan?’

Another nod.

‘Can you tell me more about it?’

He hesitated for a moment, then wiped his earlier writings from the sand and wrote, Not here.

Not out in the open, where unfriendly ears might be listening to us in whatever way. Not with only the beach available as writing material. Fine, I could see that. So I pulled up my knees, mirroring his position next to me, and returned to my previous point.

‘About that training – it might be somewhat urgent for me to learn more about my magic.’

This time, his raised eyebrow seemed to be an invitation to elaborate. So I steeled myself and said, ‘I might have broken one of your windows.’

His eyebrow nudged up another fraction.

‘I couldn’t find a way to make it melt and grow back again,’ I said sheepishly. ‘And I wanted to get out. You’ll have to teach me that particular trick.’

He drew in a very deep breath, shoulders and chest rising with the movement. The bastard really should have been wearing a shirt, damn it. Had he taken it off on purpose? Not to do his morning exercises and enjoy the warmth of the sun, which was still pleasant at this time of the day, but just to play his dangerous fae games with my poor mortal mind?

Mortal. Was I still mortal?

I shivered and decided to shove that thought into a dark corner of my mind for the long-term. If I was unlucky, it would turn out to be a very long term indeed.

I can train you, Creon eventually wrote, as if he had needed the loss of a window to convince him on that point.

‘Good. When?’

He tilted his head at me, running his eyes over me in an obvious investigation of my physical state. I scoffed.

‘Don’t worry. You only burnt down my village and kidnapped me last night. It’s not as if I’ll collapse if you make me draw some colour now.’

His expression turned a little more sceptical, but he wrote, Now?

I jumped up. ‘I’m ready.’

After all, the sooner I got this operation behind me, the sooner I would find my family again.