One of the soldiers pivoted sharply to walk by my side, escorting me across the bridge. On the other side, more towers soared into the sky. Five guards stood before another iron portcullis.
I’d actually imagined myself walking across this bridge before. But in my imagination, there’d been a distinct lack of severed heads, and I’d been wearing shoes.
As we approached, the second portcullis heaved and groaned upward. When the gate was high enough for me to walk under, the guard led me through. Here, a cobblestone path carved between impossibly high walls.
No ravens swooped overhead. In fact, everything in here seemed dead. No birdsong, no butterflies or moths. Just the cloudy sky above us and the stone walls rising up around us like a prison, until we reached an open archway. We turned into it, and the soldier led me through into a grassy courtyard.
As I walked, I tried to get an idea of the layout of the place, to take in every tower, every room. If Alice lived here once, where would she be?
The central castle rose up on a hill before us, gleaming like a polished pearl—a paler color than the surrounding walls. Four stony spires reached for the heavens like sharpened bones. The stark beauty was forbidding and breathtaking at the same time.
A sense of wonder washed over me as I walked barefoot in the grass.
This place was two thousand years old. Two thousand years of Albian history around me. What had these walls seen? The invasions from the barbarian hordes from the north, the executions of kings and queens, the murders of princes, the coronations, the spells of the great sorcerer Johannes Black. The intrigues, the parties, the scandals, the menagerie of lions and bears and monkeys from faraway places. And all of it in a castle on an ancient hill, constructed over the buried head of the first Albian king. The Raven King’s severed head lay somewhere beneath this grass.
Never before had I felt such awe.
And among the flowers, I spotted something very interesting indeed. Here and there, the grasses grew with nightshade—the leafy plants and deep purple flowers, yellow stamens in the center.
Once, Alice had taught me to use them to subdue the police officers guarding a ship. We’d poisoned their beer—just enough to make them delirious and knock them out, so we could rob the ship. Odd that it grew here.
As we approached the castle on a gravel path, I caught a grim sight to my left: a gallows, with four bodies swinging in the breeze, the wood creaking forlornly.
A thin tendril of fear curled through my chest as we climbed a set of stairs to the central castle.
At the top, I cast one last glance out onto the courtyard, and pieced together a mental picture of the entire place. An outer wall with eight dark gleaming towers, an inner wall with thirteen towers, and both of those structures surrounding this ancient castle. A second building stood between the castle and the river—the soldiers’ barracks, I thought. Where the rank and file would sleep.
“You must enter.” For the first time, I heard the soldier speak, in his faint accent from the southern land across the sea.
He bowed his head. “The count awaits you.”
Inside, we crossed into a hall of gray stone, with great columns reaching to the ceiling. The soldier’s heels clacked over the floor, echoing off the walls. It was gloomy in here, only the light of torches dancing over the walls. But when we went into the next hall, awe stirred in my chest again.
A vaulted ceiling soared a hundred feet above me, the stonework like intricate, skeletal blooms. Columns rose from the flagstones as if they’d grown from it thousands of years ago. A ray of light broke through the storm clouds outside, and shone through stained glass windows on the left, flecking the floor with gold and blue and red. The windows depicted angels, rising and falling from the heavens.
A golden throne stood at the far end—empty.
The soldier backed away from me, then stood by one of the columns.
My bare feet felt freezing on the cold stones. A few moments later, an enormous man prowled into the hall. He was barefoot for some reason—also bare-chested. He wore low-slung trousers, and a blue cape draped over his shoulders, flecked with tiny diamonds that shone like a starry sky. Candlelight shone over his warm bronze skin, and his chiseled chest and abs—tattooed with the phases of the moon. By his height alone, I could tell he was an angel, too.
He drank from a wineglass, and flashed me a smile. “You’re the amanuensis.”
“Zahra’s the name. Zahra Dace.”
“I’m Lord Sourial. Did you not see fit to wear shoes? Or something … I don’t know, more respectable?” His brown, wavy curls hung to a square, dimpled chin.
“You’re not wearing shoes. Or a shirt.”
He shrugged. “Ah, but a lord doesn’t need to be respectable. When a rich man is barefoot, it’s eccentric. It only adds to my appeal. In your case, you look like a bedraggled slum-dweller.”
“I must have lost my shoes when the count started murdering everyone just outside. My humblest apologies.”
It wasn’t entirely true, but I felt I needed some sort of retort to meet his obnoxious disdain.
His hazel eyes narrowed. “Murder? I’d call it a well-deserved execution. You’re not telling me you support the rebels, do you?”
Perhaps my retort hadn’t been the best idea. “I don’t know anything about them.”
“Well, I’ll bring you to the count. He’s expecting you.”
As we walked, I felt it pulsing off him—the power that crackled like electricity around my body, making my pulse speed up. It was a dizzying sense of the divine that made it hard for me to remember where I was, what was up and what was down.
At the end of the hall, Lord Sourial pushed through a wooden door. There, Count Saklas sat behind a mahogany desk, his cowl pulled up. Light beamed through a diamond-paned window behind him. Bookshelves lined every wall. Forget the wings, the power, the wealth—the real difference between them and me was knowledge. And I wanted some of that.
The door slammed behind me.
It was just me and the death angel.
He had no fire burning in the hearth, only dead ashes. The chilly air raised goosebumps on my skin. He seemed a beautiful, divine being sculpted from darkness.
But a sense of wrongness seemed to stain the air around him, his eyes too bright under that hood, the air around him too dark.
He rose from his chair and walked around his desk, his gaze sliding over me. “Zahra. You’re hiding something from me, aren’t you?” His deep voice skimmed up the back of my neck. “Turn around.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, and turned to face his desk. He crossed behind me. I felt it then, the rush of his magic over me that was so like the rush of tingling heat from the feather. I could hardly remember what he’d just said to me.
“Put your hands on the desk.” Pure, shadowy power emanated from him, sliding across the bare skin on my back.
I’d come here knowing what I was in for, knowing what I was doing. I’d chosen this because I had to know what happened to Alice.
I felt like my pulse was racing out of control, my skin hot all over.
I did as he said. I put my hands on the desk, leaning over it.
He leaned over me, one hand next to mine. Warmth from his chest beamed over me like the rays of the sun, and I felt the steel of his body against mine. His masculine scent slipped around my body like smoke.