The beasts snarled as she rolled over her shoulder to break her fall. But they made no move to attack as she popped to her feet in a dead sprint, moldy leaves and moss tangled in her hair.
Mist rippled out from her cloak, the dark magick inside the gauzy fog stroking her legs and arms. The prodding turned to clawing as the darkness looked for a way around her runestone’s protection.
Crap, crap, crap, crap—
An ungodly noise filled the forest as the ravens poured from the trees, screeching. Their feathered wings beat against her cheeks. Their claws scraped against her skin. The trees howled and groaned.
She focused on her footfalls, the mist swirling into an angry sea around her, her breath coming in and out strangled and hot.
The beasts roared again, their growls echoing through the woods. Faster! She pelted through curtains of low-hanging moss and hurdled fallen trees. But she felt caught in a nightmare where no matter how hard she ran, invisible quicksand sucked at her legs and tangled her feet.
Where are they? She swung her head left and right, searching for the Shade Lord and his monsters. Branches tore at her cloak and face, and she whacked at the crooked limbs with her blade, imagining they were the Shade Lord’s claws.
Her pulse thrummed in her ears. She knew these woods. Knew which trail led to the wall and which ones led to the deep ravines that would break her bones. Any other day she could navigate them with her eyes closed.
Now, though, her vision tunneled, her brain went cloudy with fear, and all she saw was a gray labyrinth of trees. Trees and darkness and fog.
Fog that hid monsters.
A fallen cedar appeared inside the mist and she leaped over it, batting away a raven raking her eyes.
What are you doing, idiot?
Running was pointless, stupid even; she was wasting energy that she would need to fight. Yet the panic inside wouldn’t let her stop. Her thoughts whirled like the mist, her legs pounding the earth in cadence with her ragged breath and frenzied heart.
She’d stabbed a Shade Lord. He knew she was responsible for his Shadowling’s deaths.
Runes, she’d stabbed a Shade Lord!
Not a Shadowling. Not a common Noctis. But a Shade Lord, the most dangerous and powerful kind of Noctis. Unfortunately for her, this particular Shade Lord was also the dark ruler of the Netherworld, and husband of the Shade Queen’s daughter—if the myths and Bell’s tomes were to be believed.
The opalescent runewall rose through the trees, moonlight glimmering off its surface.
“Thank the Goddess,” she rasped as she clawed her way up the steep hill to the runewall. Clenching the blade between her teeth, she scaled the pale stones, her hands tangling in the morning glories and jasmine that blanketed the wall.
As her fingers scraped over the rough stone, bright-orange runes briefly flickered to life, fading back into the stone just as quickly.
An earthy flavor tingled over her tongue, rich and coppery, with the slightest hint of licorice.
But it wasn’t until she scrambled over the top and paused to catch her breath that the whisper of cinnamon hit, and she realized what she tasted.
No. Unease twisted her gut, and she held up the dagger, bile burning her throat. Thick black blood coated the edge of her blade. The blood of the Shade Lord imbued with dark magick.
Her tongue throbbed and ached, a cool, fluttery sensation spreading from the lips and working its way down her throat and into her belly, a swarm of frost-winged butterflies.
She leapt from the wall and landed hard on the dewy lawn, trying to ignore the cold knot between her shoulder blades as she hurried back to the castle, the sound of the ravens’ caws following her through the garden.
Haven always trusted her instincts above all else, and now they were telling her she had done something irrevocably stupid. She could almost feel the world shift slightly, as if her actions had changed the future somehow.
Goddess Above, what had she done?
Archeron Halfbane watched Prince Bellamy Boteler’s Companion Guard cross the yard and enter the garden trail, her boots quiet against the rock path that wound through the moonberry trees.
The girl moved with a quiet, sanguine grace few mortals possessed, her sharp gaze flicking over the landscape in practiced sweeps. The obscenely large floppy hat she normally wore was gone, exposing the strange hair she kept knotted and hidden under caps and scarves and hoods.
Beneath the moonlight, her hair appeared ashy-blonde, tinged with just the whisper of rose. But during the day, the few strands that escaped her hat were bright rose-gold, the color of the winter orchids that grew along the terraces of Effendier.
Tilting his face to the stars, Archeron sniffed the air, a low growl rumbling in his chest.
Why would she cross the wall tonight when it was obvious a Noctis was around?
It was beyond him how she’d stayed alive this long, the little fool. For a mortal, she had the Goddess’s blessing and the Shadeling’s luck.
As she slipped by him, blind to his presence, he sunk into the shadows of a marble archway. Mortals—even well trained ones—barely noticed the world around them. They were slow and weak, their magick useless.
The few Royal mortals that could access the Nihl had to rely upon runes, and even then, their attempts to harness the Nihl were clumsy and uninspired at best.
Out of sheer boredom, Archeron trailed the girl for a spell, slipping easily in and out of the shadows. He’d watched her many nights darting through the gardens and crossing the wall. She almost always came back smelling of Shadowling blood and grinning like a mortal fool.
But now, her shoulders were tight, and instead of taking time to inspect the night blooming star flowers, which seemed to fascinate her to no end, or play in the several fountains that dotted the gardens—a childlike habit that amused him—she scampered across the courtyard and disappeared inside the city gates.
Archeron rolled his shoulders. Where was the longbow usually strapped to her back? Or the soft rattle of arrows inside her quiver only he could hear?
Pulling more air into his nose, he picked out the faint but pungent tinge of fear in her scent, intertwined with her usual smell of sweat and the jasmine soap she favored.
He hadn’t thought to study the expression on her face; unlike his race, the Solis, mortals had trouble managing their emotions. Instead of learning to control them, they tried to mask their feelings behind an absurd mask.
Years of this had taught Archeron to overlook mortal features altogether, and most of the time he could gather what he needed from their gestures and voices alone.
And yet . . . had her cheeks been paler than normal? And her lips had been frowning. At least, more so than usual.
Archeron snarled. A mortal problem, not yours, he reminded himself. He came to the gardens to forget about the people of this court, not worry about the missing weapons and tight shoulders of a fool who tempted death every night.
The Prince’s Companion Guard was an annoyance, a slip of a girl darting among the blood roses and disrupting his solitude. For the entirety of his enslavement to this realm, while the mortals chased their silly dreams in their beds, the garden after sundown had been his alone.
Still, as much as he resented the intrusion, he also found himself hoping she made it back from her nightly hunts.
Which, somehow, the little fool always managed to do.
Once, driven by boredom and curiosity, he crossed the wall to watch her. She slayed two Vultax that night, no small feat for a mortal girl. An Effendier Sun Queen would have made it look prettier, but they’d been trained from birth in the art of warfare, and every act of violence was transformed into a languid dance one could hardly look away from, even the victim.