I FOLLOWED KANE DOWN A ROPE BRIDGE AND THROUGH THE REMARKABLE
wooden city. It might have felt whimsical—magical, even—if I hadn’t known it was populated entirely by violent criminals. The sun had slipped behind a cloud, bathing every textured slat and mossy stretch of
rope in flickering shadow.
I clung to Kane as we climbed past burly men without teeth hacking into cured meat and women washing dingy linens, pouring the dirty water directly off the platforms and into the foggy depths below.
When we reached a decayed turret with a thatched roof, Kane peered inside and I did the same. It was empty save for two dusty mugs and a blue sparrow picking at a fetid apple.
“Is this where your guards are stationed?”
Kane lifted the empty mug to his nose and sniffed. “Where are they?”
He didn’t answer but the worry on his brow was clear. “Perhaps we should return tomorrow, with soldiers.”
I shook my head, emboldened by his earlier confidence. “We’re already here. Lazarus could come for Shadowhold any minute, and now that everyone who was evicted from Citrine is there . . .” I didn’t want to finish the thought.
Kane released a deep sigh, taking my hand as we walked down the rope bridge and farther into the heart of the city. We wove through throngs of uninviting, grimy faces. Up ladders and down ramps and back up winding
stairs with sections of rotted wood carved by mold and termites. I watched my feet out of an abundance of caution not to trip and fall right through.
A snapping sound had my eyes off my leather boots and up on a handful of rocks tumbling toward my head. I brought my hands over my face in cover, but the boulders hovered in midair, buoyed by a dark satchel of mist, before flying unnaturally to the right and toppling down into the trees and branches beneath us.
I caught my breath. “What was that?”
Kane shrugged, but concern played across his eyes. “Something shaken loose above us. Perhaps some children trying to give their new guests a head injury.”
I peered up at him. “You used lighte. You never do that.”
“Your face is too pretty. It would be a great shame to see it caved in.” I didn’t laugh. “Don’t deflect.”
“Don’t pry.” Kane offered a crooked smile and kept walking.
“I will never stop prying, and you know it,” I said, following after him. “Why did you do that?”
“To protect you.”
“You could have moved me out of the way. Why did you use your lighte? And out in the open like that?”
Kane stopped walking and turned to face me. There was nobody else on the canopied ramp. A single firefly whizzed past his brow. “Fae can harness lighte from various elements. Air, earth, metal, wind, water, fire, ether—the list goes on and on. My lighte comes from the depths of the earth. So I’m strongest, or the lighte flows out of me easiest, in places much like this. Surrounded by dirt, soil, wood. Sometimes the rotting leaves, the decay of the forest itself.”
“But you weren’t as strong in Reaper’s Cavern.”
He lowered a brow playfully. “Ouch.” When I blushed, he said, “That was stone, not earth.”
“That’s why you love Shadowhold. Why you prefer it over your palace in the city. It’s surrounded by dark woods.”
Kane continued to walk. “Come on.”
“And what about mine? It comes from the air?”
“You’re full-blooded, so it might be even wider. Air, sun, fire.” “How did Dagan know that?”
“He’s always been good at determining a Fae’s lighte source. Perhaps it was your bright and sunny soul.” He was walking ahead of me, but I could see the smile curving at his lips.
“I wasn’t very bright and sunny with Dagan in the beginning.” “A light like yours cannot be dampened by circumstance.”
We hiked up another set of stairs under a tangled mesh of vines and long, pointed pine needles. I wiped a spiderweb from my face. “What’s the rarest element a Fae can pull lighte from?”
Kane didn’t turn back to me as he said, “Blood,” but looked behind his shoulder at my audible gasp. “They are a very rare breed, the Hemolichs. Aleksander’s men. The one who betrayed us. Hemolichs draw power from corpses, wounds, even their own injuries, making them unmatched warriors. Some drink the blood of animals, mortals, or other Fae to keep their lighte strong. In Lumera, common slang for them is ‘vipers.’ But it’s a nasty slur.”
Before I asked one of a hundred follow-up questions, we pushed through a curtain of hanging willow and came face-to-face with two grim guards. One was missing an eye but hadn’t bothered with a patch of any kind.
“King Ravenwood of Onyx Kingdom. I’m here to see Killoran.”
Without another word, the one-eyed man lifted a stained fabric partition and we stepped into the covered fortress.
Lounged across a makeshift throne of knotted wood was a man who looked like he ate nails for breakfast. Leathered skin, cropped hair, and a stiff, mercenary mustache. Somehow bulky and lean, nearly all muscle, and presiding over a grotesque, dimly lit chamber.
Three topless women in beaded necklaces and skirts of gossamer were sitting around him like house cats. Haggard and hungry, each woman was chained to his throne with thin, crudely cut metal chainwork.
Men clad in rusted metal armor crowded the lair, each with their own unsophisticated weaponry—axes, clubs, and bludgeons. They packed the room like cramped teeth, all eyes focused on their leader.
Killoran’s throne sat before a wide, white marble table. Cluttered with weapons, chalices—
White marble . . . What kind of white marble could they—
Bone.
Femurs and sternums I’d worked on my whole life—my stomach heaved as I realized I was regarding a table crafted of human bone.
But my stomach—it wasn’t a pit of nausea. No, it swirled and turned with something . . . different.
A tender, troubling pleasure. Like pressing on a bruise. And my head—
Images were jumping into my mind that had no business being there: lips and ice, glass shattering and expanding, the echoing drops of blood on a silent, marble floor—
“King Kane Ravenwood,” Killoran roared heartily. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
I shook my head violently to dispel the uncanny feeling.
“Killoran.” Kane dipped his head in greeting. “Just some swift business.”
“Don’t be daft. Let me offer you a drink. Or one of my wives?”
My blood boiled as I took in the glee in which Killoran dipped his head toward the brunette behind him. “Gisal here has a tongue that will—”
“No,” Kane cut in, voice savage, before straightening himself. “That won’t be necessary. We are looking for a sword that was mistakenly brought here five years ago. My armorer needs a look through your weapon cache. Should only take her only a few minutes to find.”
“Even a pretty young king like yourself must know—nothing is given for free here.”
Kane’s lip curled upward and it sent a shiver down my spine. “What can I offer you? A great weapon hewn in your name? Enough meat and bread to last a year? More spirit than all your men can drink ten times over? Name your price.”
Kane seemed so calm, so at ease—almost as if he was having fun with Killoran.
Killoran grinned up at the bald man to his right before turning back toward us. “Do you know what it’s like here in the winters?”
Kane’s face remained bored. “Can’t say that I do.”
Killoran grinned again, but this time his eyes had grown cold. A foreboding feeling dropped into my stomach.
“In the wintertime, just a few months from now, the sun will fall behind the cliffs’ edge before noon every day. All of Hemlock, plunged into unforgiving darkness for hours and hours before night even begins. Can you imagine how pale we all become? How thin when it is too dark to hunt well? How bored we get? Do you know what boredom does to those like us with demons in our heads?”
Kane’s eyes narrowed.
“And you must know what it’s like in the heat of summer. When this asshole of an island begins to cook and boil like the depths of a valley? When our wells run dry and bodies—men, women, children—begin to pile up? Can you imagine the stench? Do you know what cooked, rotting human flesh smells like?”
I swallowed hard against the nausea that twisted, greasy and bitter in my stomach. I knew his words were a threat. Kane must have felt similarly, because he stepped in front of me, ever so slightly, his hands resting casually at his sides, though I swore black thorns danced around his knuckles.
Kane bared his gleaming white teeth. “I’ll flay the skin from your muscles before I grant you freedom.”
But Killoran only laughed. “Freedom? Is that what you call your world out there? Free? No, pretty king,” Killoran drawled. “Your world is not my freedom. Despite Hemlock’s fickle isle, I have everything I could possibly want here. Out there, in your world, I am a nobody. A murderer, a rapist—” I flinched at the word, and Killoran’s eyes lit with delight. “Just a scummy piece of human grime. But here—” Killoran gestured to the stacks of rusted swords and spears lined against the walls, the abhorrent table before him, covered in dented steel goblets. The gaunt, chained women at his feet, and
the men who would lay their lives down for him without a single beat of hesitation. “Here, I am a king. Just like you.”
Kane’s jaw went stiff, and I swore I could feel the rage radiating off him. Rage at this man, dangling our safety like a rat above a python’s open jaws. Rage at the comparison between the two of them. On his worst days I knew this was how Kane saw himself. Ruthless, cruel, self-serving.
“There’s nothing we can offer you?” I asked, surprising both myself and Kane.
Killoran leaned forward with interest, giving me a broad, hateful smile. “So, the armorer girl can speak.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, that peculiar, distant aching in my stomach back once more. “So she can.”
“I never said you have nothing to offer me. In fact, you can offer me the one thing I need most.”
“Well, get on with it. I have dinner plans,” Kane said, running a hand through his hair, the picture of disinterest. “And even more important ones for dessert.”
Killoran sat back in his throne and the wood groaned behind him as he lifted his legs. The thin blond girl who had been next to his feet moved without hesitation underneath them, contorting herself into a human footstool.
I swallowed pure bile but didn’t give Killoran the satisfaction of looking away.
“When I came here, I was only seventeen. An orphan with few options, I had joined a crew of men in the Blade Moors, done things that would pull the breakfast from green eyes over here”—Killoran pointed a blunt finger at me—“and was given a one-way ticket to Hemlock with the very man who had taught me all I knew.
“I had thought we were bad, but the men and women in this place . . .” Killoran huffed a rueful laugh. “I had no idea of bad. But it turned out I didn’t have to be the baddest, or the meanest, or the toughest.” Killoran ran a hand over his mustache. “I just had to be the smartest.
“Night three, I killed the man who had raised me—who had taken knives and lashings for me. I plunged an axe into his esophagus in front of thirty other men.” Killoran chuckled as if it was a fond, silly recollection.
“The next day, the entirety of Hemlock followed me. My own band of merry warriors.” Killoran grinned wide, all too pleased with himself. “It took me years to grind my way to where I am now. Years, and lives, and more sacrifice and hard work than you’ve ever known in your life, pretty king.”
Kane’s jaw tensed. “My patience is waning. What is it you want, Grim?” I wished I could speak directly into Kane’s mind. He’s playing with us. Let’s go. We’ll come back with your army. The bizarre feeling that hadn’t left since I entered the room was spinning wildly into spiked fear and
carving at my insides. I wanted to leave. Now, now, now—
“You haven’t even heard the end of the story! So young, so impatient.” Killoran clucked his tongue. “I’ve ruled the island for two decades now. The longest anyone has ever held on to this throne. And now, after all I’ve done for the people of this island, all the factions I have aligned, I hear there’s a mutiny brewing?” Killoran’s eyes had narrowed into slits. “I don’t need your weapons, your finery, your provisions. What I need is to prove my power. My smarts.”
I didn’t know who moved first.
Kane’s night-black lighte wrecked and thrummed through the room, against the walls, punishingly loud and metallic on my tongue. It spun around us—out of his hands like sable crows’ wings, sailing through the lair, slicing Killoran’s men with the razor edges of dragon scales, talons, and poison fangs. Ropes of that guttering power flew from Kane’s spine, his hackles raised, and strangled a snarling man I hadn’t even seen coming.
And the blood—
So much seeping, oozing blood—
The men, dropping one after another, some sliced at the throat, gore pouring into the threads of their clothes, others carved through the skull or cracked down the chest like ripe, halved fruit.
But one of Killoran’s men was already grasping me around my middle and hauling me backward. I cried out, unable to yank free—
But I drove my elbow into his nose, a satisfying crack reverberating in my ears alongside the feel of more blood—warm, wet blood—seeping into the fabric of my blouse. The man behind me barely flinched.
I screamed again as he wrenched me away from Kane—
Kane.
Kane, who would decimate all of them. All these humans. They would— Where was he?
I struggled to crane my head down, fought the man who held me, my spit flying, teeth gnashing, and finally, finally, when I was able to look beyond the ceiling—
All the blood in my body turned to rigid ice.
Kane was on the ground, face crushed into splintered wood, near unconscious. His arms were pulled behind him by one lone thug, a knee denting into his back. The guard had wrapped a chain—lighter in color than iron, but appearing heavier than steel—around Kane’s wrists.
Kane groaned and struggled against the man until he tied a leather gag around his mouth.
“What’s wrong with him?” I shrieked. “Why can’t he move?”
“Lilium chains,” Killoran said, stepping around a river of dark blood from one of his slain men. “The only alloy that can suppress a Fae’s power. A prisoner or two have been brought to the island still in them over the years. They’re near impossible to get off. Had to slice through my fair share of wrists to collect the metal. Neat trick, huh?”
Killoran feasted on the shock that spread over my face, a body still twitching by his feet. “Oh, you thought I didn’t know your king was Fae? After all my years here, all the men delivered from the Onyx Kingdom? Men who spoke of a king that never ages, who is never seen alongside his prized dragon, who has, on rare account, been seen using darker magic than any sorcerer or witch?”
I shook my head. I had no words. None, save for “Please—”
“The Fae king of Onyx has power that I need. Power that will allow me to stay in control.”
What kind of power could he take from Kane? He couldn’t have his kingdom, and Kane would never serve another king, let alone a despicable monster such as—
Harvesting.
That’s what he meant. He’d harvest Kane’s lighte.
The thought was more sickening than the thug’s arms wrapped around my middle.
“And you,” Killoran said, stepping around a bound Kane as if he were a heap of garbage. “The king’s pretty armorer will make a perfect meal for the beast. Did I neglect to mention the creatures that we share the island with? Who crawl up from the depths below when they’re hungry?” Killoran shook his head, laughing to himself, and that woozy, swirling pit in my stomach doubled. I cringed as the sensation crawled through my body like vermin. “I’ll be honest with you. I make it sound a lot worse than it is. Their dinner is but our meager entertainment.”
Tears pooled in my eyes. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. I needed to use my lighte.
But all I had mastered was healing and forming a protective bubble around myself and others. Aside from that, I had only ever produced destructive rays of energy that set anyone near me aflame or turned them into red mist.
I couldn’t risk hurting Kane. Not when he couldn’t protect himself. “Onyx Kingdom will have your head,” I vowed. “King Ravenwood’s
army would go to the ends of the continent for their king.”
“Oh, dear! A mass of men already weakened from fighting two other kingdoms. However will my army of violent, depraved prisoners beat them? An army of men and women who had to be the strongest, the most vicious, to survive.”
I didn’t exhale.
The warlord raised a single brow. “If Onyx Kingdom tries to invade my
island, where I know the landscape better than my own ass cheeks, they
deserve to be slaughtered.”
Kane, near unconscious, groaned from the ground.
“Relax, pretty king.” Killoran shook his head. “I’m not going to hurt your men unless they come for me first. You two really have the wrong idea about me.”
Killoran was out of his Stones-damned mind. I struggled against the man who held me, his nose still dripping blood down the back of my shirt. “You have no idea what you’re do—”
A blow to my temple sent my head swimming with pain, and a swift darkness overtook me, alongside the sound of Kane’s muffled roar.
