Remus gargled, light fleeing his eyes. And with a heavy thud, his corpse toppled face-first into the dirt, the last feeble beats of his heart drenching the road a deeper red. Just as she’d always dreamed it. Just as she’d always wanted.
Dead.
Ashlinn hung still, horror on her face. At Mia’s back, she felt more shadows gathering, clustered about their owners at the garrison tower’s door.
The Revered Mother.
Solis leaning on her shoulder, bleeding and bruised.
Hush, silent as death, a fallen blade in one clenched fist.
Aalea and Spiderkiller behind him, supporting Mouser between them.
Even though they were beaten and bloodied, not one of the assassins was darkin. Not one cowed by the Trinity in Ashlinn’s hand. And faced with five of the most accomplished murderers in the Itreyan Republic, the girl did what anyone would have done in her position—lust for vengeance be damned.
Ashlinn turned and ran.
Hush and the Ministry staggered from the tower, none in a state to give chase. But with the Trinity now disappearing down the street, Mia found the pain fading, rolling over onto her belly and quietly retching. Turning to Cassius, she crawled to his side, fingers clawing the dust. The Lord of Blades was curled in a ball, clutching his chest, face twisted. Mia murmured softly, pulled his bloody hands away, paling at the sight of the wound. Eclipse was whining, pacing, ears pressed to her skull. Black teeth bared.
“…
FOOL CHILD, HELP HIM
…!”
“… I—”
“…
HELP HIM
…!”
Cassius tried to speak. Unable even to breathe. He coughed, sticky red on his lips, clutching Mia’s hand and holding tight. Drusilla hobbled to his side, the other Ministry members sinking to the dirt around him.
“You can’t die,” Mia pleaded. “You promised me answers!”
Cassius grimaced with the pain of it, every muscle in his body tensing, back arching. He fixed Mia in his stare, and she felt it in her bones. Something primordial; crushing gravity, agonizing chill, a terrible, endless rage. Something beyond the hunger and sickness she felt when he was near. Something closer to longing. Like lovers parted. Like an amputee. Like a puzzle, searching for a missing piece of itself.
She wanted to ask him. Who he was. Who
she
was. If he knew anything of the darkness outside or the darkness within. She was so close. She’d waited so long. The questions roiled behind her teeth, waiting for her to breathe them, but Mia found the breath caught in her lungs. Cassius reached up with scarlet hands, pressed his palm to Mia’s cheek. Smearing his blood down her skin. It was still warm, the scent of salt and copper filling the girl’s lungs. The man marked one cheek, then the other, finally smudging a long streak down Mia’s lips and chin. Anointing her; just as he might have in the Hall of Eulogies, if this moment, this ending, this tale, had been a different one.
Anointing her as a Blade.
And with one final sigh, silent as he’d been in life, the Black Prince left it.
Taking Mia’s answers with him.
The shadowwolf ceased her pacing. Lifting her head and filling the air with a heart-wrenching howl. Lying down in the dirt beside Cassius, trying to lick his face with a tongue that couldn’t taste. Pawing his hand with claws that couldn’t touch.
Mister Kindly watched it all silently. No eyes to fill with pity.
The storm winds rolled in off the bay, cold and bitter. The tattered killers hung their heads. Mia took Cassius’s hand, the warmth of his skin fading against hers.
And into the wind, she whispered.
“
Hear me, Niah. Hear me, Mother. This flesh your feast. This blood your wine. This gift, this life, this end, our offering to you.
”
She sighed.
“
Hold him close.
”
EPILOGUE
Swordbreaker stood in his hall, watching the rain rolling into Farrow Bay.
Nevernight had been struck and his city was mostly silent, his people hunkered down at their hearths while Trelene and Nalipse raged outside. The Ladies of Oceans and Storms had been quarreling long of late. Winter had been bitter, the twins constantly at each other’s throats. Hopefully this would be the last great storm before thirddawn—Swordbreaker could see Shiih’s yellow glow budding on the horizon beyond the clouds, and the third sun’s rise heralded the slow creep back into summer.
He looked forward to it, truth be told. Winters were fiercer here in Dweym than any place in the Republic. The chill was growing harder on his old bones with each passing year. He was getting old. He should have stepped aside as Bara of the Threedrakes already, but his daughters had married a pair of fools, both more brawn than brain. Swordbreaker was loathe to gift the Crown of Corals to either of his troth-sons. If Earthwalker were still here …
But no. Thoughts of his youngest daughter did him no good.
That time was gone, and her along with it.
Swordbreaker turned from the bay, hobbled down the long stone halls of his keep. Servants bowed as he passed, eyes downcast. Thunder rumbled across the rafters above. Arriving in his chamber, he closed the door behind him, looked to his empty bed. Wondering at the cruelty of life; that a husband should outlive a wife, let alone a daughter. He took the Crown of Corals from his brow, placed it aside, lips curling.
“Too heavy of late,” he muttered. “Too heavy by far.”
Lifting a decanter of singing Dweymeri crystal, he filled a tumbler with quavering hands. Put it to his lips with a sigh. Staring out the window as the rains lashed the glass, shuffling to the roaring hearth and sighing as the warmth kissed his bones. His shadow danced behind him, flickering along the flagstones and furs.
He frowned. Lips parting.
His shadow, he realized, was moving. Curling and twisting. Snaking across the stone, drawing back in upon itself and then—great Trelene, he’d swear it blind—stretching out
toward
the firelight.
“What in the Lady’s name…”
Fear bleached Swordbreaker’s face as his shadow’s hands moved of their own accord. Reaching up to its throat, as if to choke itself. The old bara looked to his own hands, the goldwine in his cup, a chill stealing over him despite the fire’s warmth.
And then the pain began.
A soft burn in his belly at first. A twinge, as if from too much spice at evemeal. But it quickly bloomed, growing brighter, hotter, and the old man winced, one hand to his gut. Waiting for the pain to pass. Waiting for—
“Goddess,” he gasped, stumbling to his knees.
The pain was fire now. Hot and white. He bent double, the crystal cup slipping from his hand and skittering across the stone, the spilled goldwine gleaming in the fire’s glow. His shadow was fitting and shaking now, as if it had a mind of its own. The old man’s face twisted, slow agony clawing his insides. He opened his mouth to call for the servants, for his baramen. Something was wrong.
Something was wrong
…
A hand slipped about his lips, muffling his cry. His eyes grew wide as he heard a cool whisper in his ear. Smelled the scent of burned cloves.
“Hello, Swordbreaker.”
The old man’s words were muffled by the hand. His guts ablaze.
“I’ve been waiting for a chance to get you alone,” the voice said. “To talk.”
A woman, he realized. A
girl
. The old man bucked, trying to break her grip, but she held tight, strong as gravebone. His shadow continued to warp, to bend, as if he were on his back, clawing at the sky. And as the pain doubled in intensity, he found himself doing just that, flopping belly up and staring at the figure above him through the tears of agony in his eyes.
A girl, just as he’d thought. All milk-white skin and slender curves and bow-shaped lips. Out of the darkness at her feet, he saw a shape coalesce. Paper-flat and semitranslucent, black as death. Its tail curled around her ankle, almost possessively. And though it had no eyes, he knew it watched him, enraptured like a child before a puppet show.
“I’m going to take my hand away, now. Unless you plan on screaming?”
The old man groaned as the fire in his belly burned. But he fixed the girl with eyes full of hate. Scream? He was Bara of the Threedrake clan. He’d be damned if he gave this skulking slip the satisfaction …
Swordbreaker shook his head. The girl withdrew her hand. Knelt beside him.
“Wh…” he managed. “Wh…”
“Who?” the girl asked.
The old man nodded, stifling another groan of pain.
“You’ll never know my name, I’m afraid,” she said. “It’s the shadow road for me. I’m a rumor. A whisper. The thought that wakes the bastards of this world sweating in the nevernight. And you
are
a bastard, Swordbreaker of the Threedrake clan. A bastard I made a promise about to someone I cared for, not so long ago.”
The old man’s face twisted, fingers clawing his belly. His insides were boiling, burning, all acid and broken glass. He shook his head, tried to spit, groaning instead. The girl looked to the spilled glass of goldwine. Fire twinkling in black eyes.
“It’s Spite,” she said, pointing at the glass. “A purified dose. It’s already eaten a hole in your stomach. It’ll chew through your bowels in the next few minutes. And over the next few turns your belly will bleed, and bloat, and fester. And in the end, you’ll die, Swordbreaker of the Threedrake clan. Die just like I promised him you would.”
She smiled.
“Die screaming.”
Another shape coalesced beside the girl. Another shadow, staring at Swordbreaker with its not-eyes. A wolf, he realized. Growling with a voice that seemed to come from below ground.
“…
SERVANTS COME. WE SHOULD AWAY
…”
The girl nodded. Stood. The two shadows watched him. The life in his eyes. All the wrongs and the rights. All the failures and triumphs and in-betweens.
“If you should see him in your wanders by the Hearth, tell Tric hello for me.”
Swordbreaker’s eyes widened.
The girl’s voice was soft as shadows.
“Tell him I miss him.”
The darkness rippled and the old man found himself alone.
Only his screams for company.
The choir was singing again.
The ghostly tune had returned by the time Mia and the Ministry trekked out of the Whisperwastes, Naev and Jessamine and their search party in tow. The insides of the Mountain had run red with blood, dozens of Hands and acolytes laid out in nameless tombs in the Hall of Eulogies, the Lord of Blades beside them. The names of Justicus Remus and Centurion Alberius were carved in the floor among the Church’s other victims, and Mia took no small pleasure in standing upon them during the service. The only graves they would ever know.
The Revered Mother had spoken the eulogy, honoring those fallen in the Mountain’s defense, praising those who saved the Red Church from calamity. The Ministry were gathered about her, solemn and silent. The few Hands who had survived the slaughter sang the refrain, their song thinner than in turns past.
Mia had stared at one of the new tombs the entire while. Just another slab set in the wall, no different from the rest. Its face was unmarked and its innards were empty—his body was never recovered after all. But when the mass had ended and the remnants of the congregation shuffled off into the dark, she’d knelt by his stone and taken out her gravebone dagger and scratched four letters into the rock.
TRIC.
She pressed her fingers to her lips, then her fingers to the stone.
The speaker had been true to his word, returning to the Mountain once he knew it was safe. Adonai had resurfaced, Marielle beside him, the weaver’s broken fingers bound in splints. It took months for the digits to mend and Marielle to recover her skills. But when she did, her first task was to repay the debt she owed Mia for saving her and Adonai’s life.
She had given Naev her face back.
The woman was waiting outside the speaker’s chambers for Mia’s return from her visit with the Bara of the Threedrake clan. After the girl had washed away the red in the bathhouse, Naev embraced her warmly, kissed either cheek. And without a glance to the chamber or the speaker therein, the woman had escorted Mia back to her room. Naev still wore her veil—perhaps accustomed to it after years of hiding her face, perhaps knowing like Mia did that in the end, it hadn’t mattered what they’d looked like, but what they’d
done
that counted.
Perhaps because she simply liked veils.
The pair stopped outside Mia’s bedchamber, Naev opening the door with a smile. The rooms in the Blades’ corner of the Mountain were bigger, more private, shrouded in evernight. Mia’s bed was big enough for her to get lost in. She hated sleeping in it, truth be told. Too easy to feel alone. But she’d been anointed by Cassius before the entire Ministry—no matter Drusilla or Solis’s misgivings, she was a Blade now. Here was where she’d stay until the Ministry assigned her to a Chapel. She’d requested Godsgrave, of course, but where she might end up was anyone’s guess.
“Before I forget…”
Naev nodded to her bedside table. A tome wrapped in black leather sat on the wood, bound with a silver clasp.
“The chronicler sent it for you. He said you would know what it meant.”
Mia’s heart surged in her chest. She thanked Naev again, shut the door behind her and flopped onto her mattress. Mister Kindly faded into view on the bedhead, Eclipse at the bed’s foot. The two shadows stared at each other with their not-eyes, mistrust crackling in the air. Mister Kindly had counseled Mia long and hard that Eclipse had no place at her side. But the shadowwolf had seemed utterly bereft with Lord Cassius dead. She’d spent turns wandering the Mountain’s belly, howling her grief. Mia had finally hunted her down at Drusilla’s request, asked Eclipse to walk with her, since she had no other to walk with. The shadowwolf had stared at her long and mute, and Mia had thought she’d refuse. But as the girl had looked down at the darkness beneath her feet, it had grown darker still.
Dark enough for three.
Mia picked up the book from her nightstand, stared at the cover. Strange symbols were embossed in the leather, hurting her eyes to look at. Flipping open the clasp, she saw a note, written in the chronicler’s spidery hand. Seven words.