His eyes ignited with sentience and strategies far beyond instinct. Rearing again, the Pegasus came down within inches of Vesper’s head. The prince dove, rolled through the ash, and dropped his knife in exchange for Cyprian’s fallen sword. He brought the long blade up and felt a jolt. In the same move, he twisted his torso so the beast’s hooves came crashing down upon his ossified abdomen.
Every bone in Vesper’s body reverberated like a metal gong being struck. His rib cage hummed, shaking his heart, but he spun to his feet. He stood, panting. Sweat beaded the edge of the eel-skin hood fitted snug over his hair. He lifted the sword high to fend off another attack. A fiery sludge drizzled along the blade’s edge, so hot it melted the silver. Vesper realized he’d made contact in the same instant the Pegasus did.
The beast grunted and backed up, plugging the one way out of the clearing. His left wing hung limp where it joined his muscular shoulder. The black feathers shimmered with the same molten ooze that coated Cyprian’s sword: blood.
A moan of sympathy shuddered through Vesper’s throat.
Glancing once at his wound, the Pegasus’s eyes lit to a furious red, and he lifted his head high, prepared to release a rain of fire.
Vesper crossed his arms over his head, having nowhere to run. His eyes closed instinctively to shield from the brilliant flash of light. But instead of being engulfed in flame, he heard a small crash to the left.
The prince’s eyes snapped open to see a gangly boy plunge out of a fresh-made gap, breeches ripped up to his knees and shirt hanging in shreds beneath a vest. His dingy skin and even his buzzed, dark hair sported punctures where thorns had gouged him on his way in. Blood slicked his unshod feet, yet he seemed oblivious to any pain as he shoved Vesper back and stood between the prince and the Pegasus.
The beast stomped and grunted, a froth of cinders flecking his mouth.
“Step back, son,” Vesper said, grasping the boy’s scrawny elbow and readying the sword. “This is no ordinary creature.”
The boy shook him off and tramped forward three more steps, eyes locked on the winged horse. There was a mental tug-of-war taking place; Vesper had been on the outside of enough silent conversations over the past few years to recognize one.
With an ear-shattering bellow, the Pegasus spun and thundered down the path he’d been blocking, swallowed by smoke. The boy stood frozen, watching after him. Vesper stepped up, and the lad’s head barely came to his chest. So small to be so brave.
“Thank you, son.” Vesper placed a gloved hand on his slender shoulder. “Let me help you now. We have food . . . water . . . clothing and shoes to spare.”
The boy grabbed the prince’s wrist with his own gloved palm, spun, and slammed his head into Vesper’s chest. The prince’s golden shin gave out and he fell backward. He struggled to catch a breath as his attacker pried the melting sword from his fingers and flung it aside.
The boy’s lips, strangely pretty beneath their smudges, were pressed tight—as if holding in screams. He used his hands, signing to Vesper: I am no one’s son. And I don’t need help from one who makes a living of savagery. Then he scrambled back toward the path to pursue the Pegasus.
Intrigued by the boy’s knowledge of the ancient language, Vesper lunged and caught his ankle. His hand slipped in the blood smears, but managed to hold on and topple his opponent onto his back. The boy landed, a gush of breath bursting from his lungs. He struggled—kicking, biting, scratching.
“Hold still!” Vesper gritted his teeth as he dragged him closer. He’d had an easier time taking down the cadaver bramble. Of course, he didn’t wish to break or harm this particular adversary, so he reined in his full strength. But what the boy lacked in brute strength he made up for in speed and wiles. He was matching the prince move for move.
Vesper took a cuff to the chin that left his skull ringing. “Would you stop? I simply want to talk to you!”
The boy snatched Vesper’s half-buried knife. A toothy grimace glared white against his grungy face as he lashed out with the blade. A canine snarl broke from the smoky pathway. Vesper only had time enough to leap to his feet as a red fox dashed in, fangs bared. The boy stood and tucked the knife in his vest. Growling quietly at his side, the fox backed toward the path. Sooty clouds hung heavy in the opening, a black fog waiting to swallow them. As the lad ducked in beside his pet, he cast a final glare at Vesper.
The prince couldn’t move. Those eyes, peering out from the darkness, shifted to an amber so bright they illuminated a thousand lashes, a quality the prince had failed to notice earlier during the chaos. Now the lashes were all Prince Vesper could see: so long and feathery they resembled the lacy, crystalline deposits of water vapor frozen in mid-drizzle upon branches and shrubbery in Nerezeth.
No one in the day realm had eyes like that.
“You don’t belong here,” Vesper murmured.
Huffing, the boy kicked a plume of ash toward him, then sprinted into the dark passage, the fox following at his heels.
Vesper stood in the floating ash. Awareness came back in increments: the scent of the beast’s blood—metallic and scorched along the melting silver sword; a slight itch across his skin where the golden plates slowed their thrumming; the taste of ash coating his lips; the nicker of horses, the call of jackdaws, and Nysa’s growling barks; the sound of his troop hacking at their thorny enclosure.
Dolyn, Leo, and Luna broke through first with axes in hand. Next, Nysa scampered out alongside Selena and Alger, with Thea and Tybalt close behind. Black soot smudged everyone’s silvery-white hair, eyebrows, and pale flesh.
“Are the others all right?” Vesper asked, lowering a hand to scratch the spaniel behind her ears.
“Cyprian was burned,” Selena answered.
Vesper cursed and started toward the opening.
Selena stopped him. “He’s all right. Luna is wrapping the wound.”
Vesper nodded. Luna had bandaged his own wound earlier. Her experience as a field nurse was already proving beneficial.
Selena managed a self-deprecating smirk. “Cyprian will be furious that I told you. He hopes to hide his injury. He wanted me to find you, so I’d stop fussing over him.”
Vesper shook his head, attempting an answering smile. “I highly doubt that’s true. Since when has Cyprian balked at your attention?”
She bit her lip and her white lashes fluttered down. Vesper wondered what had happened between the two during the interim while he was separated from everyone.
“And the horses?” He dragged off his hood and released his dark hair. Right now, he was more than Selena’s brother. He was their leader in this foreign land, and they’d almost all ended up as kindling.
“They’re good enough. Just spooked.”
He watched Nysa snuffle around the clearing. “Did any of you see what took place in here?” He lifted the sword that had disintegrated to half its size.
Leo stepped over. “Cyprian won’t be happy about that.”
Vesper fought a bout of sympathy. The sword had been a gift from Sir Andrian. Cyprian’s father had recently passed away of the same sickness that killed Vesper’s own. When the molten blood started oozing toward his hand, Vesper dropped the blade again.
Luna nudged the sword’s handle with her boot toe. “We were watching as best we could through the slits. A Pegasus?”
Vesper raised his eyebrows. “It would seem.”
“And who was that poverty-stricken child?” Luna asked, weaving loose silver hairs back into her braid and wiping smudges from her neck.
Vesper rubbed his bruised chin, still mystified by the lad’s courage. I am no one’s son, he’d signed. “An orphaned stripling. Unable to use his voice. His wrists and ankles were as small as twigs, yet he staved off my death by simply standing there.”
The boy had proven himself a worthy sparring partner as well. There was a spindly confidence to his movements, like the small luminous spiders that occupied places of honor and reverence alongside the crickets in Nerezeth’s castle. Vesper’s family and subjects always took care not to step upon the royal bugs. Yet here was this boy who appeared to have been trampled again and again and somehow kept going. Finespun as glass and tough as iron. A mix of qualities that intrigued Vesper beyond reason.
“What’s this?” Selena wandered over to the jagged opening the boy had made. She lifted a pouch that was dangling from one of the vines. “Must’ve slipped off in his struggle to plunge through.”
Vesper took it. Opening the flap revealed two jars. Upon seeing their contents, his mood turned somber. “That was no common boy. He walks through brambles without shoes; he faces flame without cowering; he commands untamable beasts and signs in the ancient language. And then this . . .”
Selena took the pouch back and looked for herself. “Shadows and crickets, smuggled in from Nerezeth?”
Vesper tensed. “He stole my knife, but it looks like that’s the least of his crimes.” He waved Alger, Leo, Thea, Tybalt, and Uric over. “Follow his trail. Go on foot and we’ll see to your horses. He had the eyes of a Nerezethite, which means he can see in darkness. Perhaps he’s a scout, paid to lead smugglers into the night realm.”