“Have you learned anything?” Isyllt asked when the girl was gone, turning her attention back to the demon across from her. She leaned back against the cushioned seat and crossed her legs.
He waved a hand. “Have some patience, witch. Can’t I enjoy your company for a moment without discussing business? It’s vulgar.”
Isyllt scooped a spoonful of crushed lavender and anise from a bowl on the table and poured it onto the nicked and polished boards. Dusty sweetness filled the air as she traced a sigil of silence through the powdered seeds and flowers. “A vampire lectures me on manners?” She rolled her eyes. “Besides, my company can’t be that enjoyable.”
He leaned forward, crystalline eyes abruptly serious.
“You’ve seen my home. Do you think I don’t want something different now and then?” He took her hand, caressing her palm with one gloved thumb. “Do you think I don’t yearn for a little warmth?” His fingers strayed to the hollow of her wrist.
She tugged her hand free. “Yes, wet and pumping from an artery.”
He chuckled, low and dark. “That too.”
The serving girl returned with a tray of liquor and food. Spider pressed coins into her hand and pulled the curtain shut behind her.
“Vulgar business first,” Isyllt said, “or you’ll feel the warmth of Mathiros’s torches.”
Spider sighed. “As you wish.” He uncorked the bottle and a heady green scent filled the alcove. The liquor was the same murky green as the verdigris for which it was named.
Isyllt raised her narrow glass, breathing in bittersweet spices. The fumes burned her sinuses, and the first sip seared her throat with viridian fire and made her eyes prickle. The burn eased into a lingering sweetness and she sighed. “As you were saying?”
Spider turned his glass between long fingers. “What Tenebris said about rabble is true, but there’s more to the matter than that.” He stared at his untasted drink, strands of cobweb-fine hair drifting in front of his face. “You saw her—sluggish as a snake in winter. That’s what happens to us when we age.”
Isyllt took a cube of herb-veined cheese from the tray and waited. For a moment she wondered if he’d lapsed into hibernation himself.
“Aphra and Tenebris only want to sleep, and they would
gladly bury the rest of us in their tomb as well, deny us the light. This doesn’t sit well with some of the young ones.”
“So they stray from the fold?” She sipped verdigris, its fire filling her stomach and licking through her veins. At least Spider had good taste.
He nodded, eyes glittering yellow in the candlelight. “Some run off, commit whatever foolishness catches their fancy.”
“Like mortal lovers and tomb-robbing.” She split a date with one fingernail and plucked out the pit. “What do the others do?” she asked, swallowing the sticky-sweet flesh.
He turned serious again—she preferred him mocking. “Some of us want to change things.”
Isyllt raised her eyebrows. “You sound like a revolutionary.”
He stretched closer, folding his long body over the table. “I do.”
A laugh caught in her throat and crumbled dry as dust. Her left hand curled before she could stop it, till healed fractures and silver-pinned tendon ached. She still had nightmares sometimes, though she never admitted them to anyone—dreams of the knife that stole her hand, and the blood and ash that followed.
“Let the elders sleep away the centuries,” he continued. “I’m tired of hiding in the dark, away from the wind and sky, not able to walk the streets for fear of torches and silver.”
Isyllt met his eyes, the impossible yellow of sulfur and buttercups. “You’re serious.”
“I am. I want your help.”
He reached for her hand again, but she pulled back and refilled her glass instead. “Why? What could I do?”
“You have influence in the overground. You know the king.”
She shook her head, and hardly felt her wounded shoulder through the warmth of alcohol in her too-thin blood. “Barely, and through unpleasant circumstances. I don’t have his ear.”
Spider shrugged. “You know those who do. The spirits whisper about you, you know. I’m not the only demon you’ve allowed to live, am I? You treat us like something more than abominations to be destroyed.”
“My service to the Crown sometimes calls for strange bedfellows. But the Arcanost and the temples rule the mages of Erisín, and neither of them countenance demons.”
“They might be made to learn. I want to renew the truce, on better terms.”
“The truce will fall to pieces as soon as Mathiros returns.”
“We’ll catch the thieves, return what was stolen. Find the ones who hurt you.” He took her hand again, held it tight. “We can help each other.”
Verdigris scorched her throat, hitting her stomach with a burst of heat. Her voice was raw when she spoke. “Help me catch the thieves, and we’ll continue this conversation.” It was a lie, she told herself. She couldn’t get involved for so many reasons, not the least of which were her nightmares. But she wasn’t about to admit that.
He lifted her hand to his cold lips. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Show me progress before you add me to your revolution.”
His smile gleamed. “Don’t worry. They’re rabble, as Tenebris said. We’ll track them down.”
“Tonight? The trail is likely already cold.”
“You’re wounded and need rest. Tomorrow we can hunt.” He tilted his head, watched her from under pale lashes. “I thought perhaps we could continue another conversation tonight.”
She shivered. Her blood was spice and fire; the smoky air dizzied her. “You still want to show me your scars?”
“Among other things.”
Isyllt laughed, trying to ignore the tightness in her stomach. Too much drink, too little food. Too much old grief. She should find Ciaran, find somewhere warm….
Spider raised her hand to his lips again, rough tongue flicking over one fingertip. She shuddered, but didn’t pull away. A fang pierced her skin. She closed her eyes, biting her tongue to stay silent.
Spider released her. A jewel-bright drop of blood glistened on his lip. “You look sad, little witch. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “History.”
He unfolded himself from the seat, holding out a hand. “I’ll help you forget it.”
“No one can do that.” She brought her palm down on the scattered charm, hard enough to sting and rattle the cups. The music and soft murmur of voices washed over them again, deafening after their absence. She pushed past him, pride and practice keeping her pace steady when she wanted to stumble.
She bumped shoulders with a cloaked patron on her way past and murmured a hasty apology. Pale blue eyes flashed in the shadow of a hood as the man glanced at her and she nearly swore; she would have to pass a gossipmonger like Varis Severos with her face uncovered.
She scrubbed away a glaze of tears when she reached the top of the stairs, cursing herself for a dozen types of fool. The damp night air was a welcome relief from the haze below. Spider caught up with her before she left the alley.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It isn’t your fault.” When she didn’t turn, his hands settled on her upper arms, cool and light. She wanted to lean into him; after a heartbeat, she did. It was foolish, worse than foolish. But his touch set her magic tingling, and maybe warm and safe weren’t what she needed tonight.
She led him through her wards. She led him to her bed.
Candlelight warmed his skin to the color of old ivory; shadows pooled in the hollow of his chest, the valleys between his ribs. White ridges of scars crisscrossed his abdomen where her silver blade had opened his flesh. She remembered the blows that had caused them: two before he struck—reflex at stumbling on an unexpected demon—and the third and deepest after, to drive him off. They had managed to sort the situation out before any more became necessary.
“Dead thing,” Isyllt whispered, laying a hand over his silent heart. The scholarly portion of her mind noted the lack of function in undead sex organs, which was only sensible. The rest of her was distracted by the feather-light touch of his claws.
“Necromancer.” He pulled the pins from her hair and its weight slithered down her back. The smell of poppy oil mingled with serpentine musk. “A good match, I think.”
She took a hairpin from him—silver, and sharp—and
pressed the tip to his breast. He made a low noise in his throat as skin popped and a dark bead of blood welled. It tasted of death and anise, bittersweet and tingling on her tongue. Spider laughed and pushed her down against the pillows.
She snuffed the candle with a thought; his skin and glittering eyes were the brightest things in the room. She closed her eyes and let the dark take her, darkness and cold and the heat of poisoned kisses.
Kiril came awake with a start, eyes sharpening against the dark as magic crackled around his fingers. A breeze stirred the drapes and a pale stripe of moonlight fell across the end of the bed, silhouetting the slender shape standing there. The shadow moved, and orange demon eyes sparked.
His breath left in a hiss and his hands clenched. “Phaedra—” He rarely spoke her name; it felt strange in his mouth.
The bed shifted under her weight. His throat closed as she settled against him. Her conflagrant perfume had faded to spice and embers; beneath that she smelled faintly of meat, and of nothing.
“I’m lonely, Kiril,” she whispered. Not a seductive whisper, but a lost and childlike one. “So lonely.”
Maybe it was the darkness sparing him her face, or that his defenses were still scattered from sleep. Maybe it was the need in her voice, in her fingers closing in his nightshirt. Maybe it was his own grief and guilt. His arm tightened around her.
“I know.”
“I loved Ferenz. For all my foolish sins, I loved him.
He died because of me, and all the vengeance in the world won’t bring him back.”
There was no answer for that save the obvious. He stroked her hair instead. So alien, the press of dead flesh. Of any flesh. There had been no one else in the three years since he broke with Isyllt. She had been all bone-thin angles and clinging sea-wrack hair, sharp-nailed and biting. Phaedra was fuller, softer, stomach and breasts ripened by age and childbirth. He couldn’t control a shudder, so strong he thought his flesh would crawl from his bones.
Phaedra made a choked little sound. “Is it so awful to touch me?”
“Yes. But not because… of what you are.” He wanted her close and vulnerable if he was to stop her; he pretended that was why he let the words leave his tongue. “You are the worst thing I’ve ever done. Out of a lifetime of murder and lies and schemes. You are the unforgivable deed.”
“Do you want my forgiveness? Are you asking for it?”
“I could never do that.”
“No. You never would.” She buried her head in the crook of his neck; no breath stirred his skin until she spoke. “Hold me. Please. I have bad dreams.”
He didn’t believe in forgiveness, or atonement. But he held the demon in his arms and stroked her hair until she grew heavy and still. And, eventually, after the moonlight had crawled away and died, he slept too.
He stands on a tower of grey stone, overlooking a dizzying drop. The hands on the crenellated stone are not his, but white and slender and ringed with gold and rubies, laced
with fine scars. Black hair whips around his face; the stomach beneath heavy skirts has barely begun to round.
The dream is not his own. He knows that, even as it ensnares him. He might escape it, but perhaps he believes in penance, if not atonement.
Far below, beneath the castle walls and the sheer plunge of cliff, the Ardos¸ River runs cold and wild. The wind tastes of snow, and slices to the bone as it rushes down the winter-dark slopes of the Varagas Mountains. Riders approach from the south, faint with distance on the winding road. They will be here soon.
He turns, trapped in her flesh as he is trapped in her memories, to face the man standing behind them. Ferenz Darvulesti. Tall and lean and hawk-nosed, with deep-set green eyes shadowed by heavy brows. A warrior, swathed in leather and fur and mail with a sword at his hip, but his hands are gentle as they close on Kiril-and-Phaedra’s arms. He speaks, but no sound accompanies the shaping of his lips. There is no sound at all, not even the wind. Only the empty and aching silence of what is past and gone.
The man kisses them twice. Once hungrily, pulling them close till cold steel links bite their flesh. And again, soft as a snowflake on the brow. A kiss of benediction, or forgiveness. Then he turns and strides down the frost-rimed steps, knuckles white around his sword hilt.
Phaedra-and-Kiril raise a hand, and a cloud of ravens bursts from a lower rooftop, fighting the wind on soundless black wings to reach them. They have their own defenses to marshal, even as Ferenz readies his soldiers below. The riders draw ever nearer; this will end soon, one way or another.
* * *
Kiril woke to dawnlight and an ache like cold iron in his chest. He could still feel the wind’s bite, the press of rough lips on his mouth. The weight and softness of foreign limbs.
He needed no oneiromancy to parse the meaning of it. A true dream, a memory, bleeding out of Phaedra and into his mind. Whether she did it on purpose as punishment, or whether the pain of recollection was simply too strong to contain, he couldn’t say.