She exchanged a look with another man and nodded towards me. Golden blond hair—true gold, not pale like the king’s—and a crown depicting a sunrise framed a remarkably handsome face. From his smirking lips and dimpled chin to his hooded eyes, he seemed made of sinuous curves. He raised his eyebrows at me and gestured at what had to be his father, as though reminding me that I was in the presence of a king.
As if I could forget.
“King Lucius.” Rose bowed when he stopped before us, and I rushed to follow suit. “An honour.”
He sniffed but otherwise ignored her, only looking at me. His mouth curved slowly like a bow I wasn’t strong enough to draw. “Well, if it isn’t the newest arrival to my city. And, may I say, such a pretty one.”
Some compliments made me warm—they were approval, safety. A sign I’d done something right.
Not this one.
Still, I smiled and bowed my head. “Thank you. Your Majesty is too kind.”
“The sight of you adorning my streets is thanks enough.”
“Then I’m glad to please Your Majesty.” My skin crawled at how sincere I sounded, but pleasing a king meant safety, so maybe it wasn’t entirely a lie.
He watched me a beat too long for comfort. “Yes, I think you’ll do well in Luminis.” He glanced at the gathering crowd and spread his hands. “But I must continue with my work—a king is nothing without his people. If you get bored of that shadow, you know where to find us.” Inclining his head, he took a step back. “Katherine.”
Never before had my name sounded so much like a threat.
It blocked my throat like a mouthful of stale bread, and I had to fight to keep my pleasant smile in place before Rose hurried us towards the Hall of Healing.
My fingers had never itched so much for the comfort of my pistol. Inside Bastian’s rooms, I’d felt trapped… but also safe.
I didn’t know the rules of this game, but having met one of its key pieces, I was certain of one thing.
Being noticed by royalty was not safe.
13
Bastian
“‘When the princess is in power’—that’s what they said.” The witness held my gaze, not troubled by the unseelie glow.
I shared a look with Faolán.
There were no princesses. Not anymore. Not since I’d beheaded the last remaining heir to Dusk.
Her elder daughter, Princess Nyx, had died in an unseelie attack before I was born.
My fingers tightened around my pen. All the more reason to stop Hydra Ascendant before they became a true threat. The Night Queen had no clear heir. If she died, factions would rise around her distant relatives, like Asher, and those factions would clash in a race to the Moon Throne.
A total fucking disaster.
As was the fact word had got out about Ascendants operating in the city.
The wrinkled woman before us had heard two people outside her house in the early hours. When she blasted them with a sudden rainfall, they’d fled. Unfortunately, her weather magic had also washed away any evidence, save for a pot of red paint.
“‘When the princess is in power this will all pay off.’” She nodded, grey eyebrows drawn together in a fierce frown.
“We heard you.” I tried to keep the sigh from my voice.
“Hmph, good luck getting her on the throne,” Faolán muttered.
The witness’s frown intensified. I liked it, to be honest—it was refreshing for a civilian not to fear me. “Dead women don’t make great queens, do they, Serpent?”
I fixed a smile in place, like I found her comment terribly amusing.
But I could feel the blood on my hands, even though it had been long ago. Throwing her head across the throne room had felt dramatic and daring.
Now I knew it for what it was.
Brash and thoughtless.
Not that I wouldn’t kill her again if I faced the same situation. But some aspects of how I dealt with it—those I’d change if I had my time again.
The orrery on the mantelpiece chimed softly. Almost time for that meeting. I cleared my throat and straightened. “Was there anything else?”
She shook her head. “That’s all I heard.”
“And I appreciate you bringing it to me.” I stood and gestured for the door. “If you hear anything else—”
“Aye, I know how to find you and your friends.” She looked at Faolán for the first time since she’d walked into my office. It was the kind of look that made me want to break things. One people gave shapechangers too often.
Instead, I squeezed my pen and herded both her and Faolán out the door. Even he couldn’t know about my next task.
He shot me a questioning frown after she’d gone. “You don’t think Princess Nyx could’ve survived, do you? No one ever found her body.”
“Three arrows and a fall from the bridge? I think it’s safe to say she’s long gone. If by some miracle she survived all that, she would’ve come back by now.”
“Hmm. True.”
Once he was gone and the door locked, I approached the far side of my office.
A carved panel showed the planets and the Celestial Serpent threatening to swallow them up as he raged at the loss of his beloved Tellurian Serpent. A pale echo of her coiled between planets and stars—a reminder that they were all made from her body. If only he would remember.
Another panel depicted them in the time before. The time before her death. The time before time. In utter blackness, the paired serpents’ undulating bodies knotted together to create the universe. One light with dark stars covering her scales, the other dark—her opposite in every way.
The light in the dark. The dark in the light.
The edges of a hidden door disappeared into their scales and stars, invisible, even to sharp eyes like Faolán’s.
I stroked the dark serpent’s head, drawing upon the magic around me so I didn’t have to say the activation word out loud, and the panel glided open. It closed behind me as I entered an unlit passageway.
Even if I hadn’t been able to see in the gloom, I knew this route so well, I could’ve followed it with my eyes shut.
Over the centuries, my office had always belonged to the previous ruler’s Shadows. Officially, I was just Braea’s representative in the Convocation, a council that helped give continuity and balance between the two monarchs. But everyone knew I was a spymaster. The identity of my Dawn counterpart was unknown, but we had a drop point should we ever need to share information for the good of the realm.
In all my years of doing this job, it had remained empty.
I wondered if they had their own network of secret passageways. There was no record of mine on any plans of the palace, so there was no way of knowing for sure when they’d been built or by whom. But I’d put my money on Tenebris’s first spymaster designing them at the same time as the palace. They integrated too seamlessly, taking me to my rooms, to Braea’s, and to various other strategic locations, including my destination today.
Ahead, a door awaited me in the gloom. I pressed the ring on my third finger into a tiny indent. The faint thrum of magic signalled the lock opening.
When I stepped through, the world shifted.