But a chill trickled down my spine.
And it grew worse as I blinked up at the darkening violet sky.
The sun had set.
Dread gripped my heart, and I spurred our group on. Elthea had said aconite took up to an hour to kill. How much time did Kat have left?
We hit a main road leading to the palace and found the way blocked. The bodies of two Horrors lay on the ground, and Rose huffed as if clearing the stink from her nose.
“Who took them down?” I turned my stag, searching for any sign of Cyrus and his guards.
Faolán shrugged. “The lookout said they’d lost them. The unit for this quarter was scouring the lower city. This couldn’t have been them. There’s an arrow in its eye. Could be a civilian?”
Rose lifted her head and sniffed the air. Frowning, she pulled ahead, approaching the fallen monsters.
I growled, strangling the reins. “I could’ve started searching for Kat twenty minutes ago if I’d known they were already down.” She might be at the palace or Ariadne’s shop. The Hall of Healing didn’t seem likely—not after what Elthea had done to her. I wheeled my stag around, ready to ride for the palace. “Check on the other patrols. I’m going after—”
“Wait.” Nostrils flaring, Faolán started after Rose. “Is that…?”
Picking her way between the Horrors’ limbs, she nodded. “I can smell her.”
I leapt from my stag just as Faolán sucked in a breath.
“The fletching on that arrow.” He nodded towards the ruined eye of the Horror facing us.
“Barn owl.” My heart leapt as my stomach dropped, like I didn’t know whether to be hopeful or horrified. “She shot it?” I hurried closer, trying to ascertain whether the shot to the eye was what had killed it.
Something pale stuck out from its mouth. A second arrow. Definitely Kat’s.
She’d killed it. But there was a second—had she taken them both down and continued to the palace searching for me?
I turned on my heel. “I need to get to—”
And that was when I saw.
A spill of red hair snaking across the ground.
I didn’t remember moving, just that I was at her side. “Kat?”
Face down, horribly still and pale. She looked too much like she had at unCavendish’s feet, dying. Yet the only injury I could see was a cut on her arm, and her skin wasn’t dried out like she’d been fed upon by a Horror. Her bow lay nearby, covered in bloody fingerprints. Her blood—poisonous blood.
This was her work.
Her genius fucking work.
“Get this thing off her,” I bellowed as I yanked off my gauntlet. The instant I could, I pressed my palm to her ashen cheek, refusing to so much as blink at the sting of her poison, while Faolán, Rose, and the guards heaved the Horror to one side. “Katherine?”
With the softest sound, she frowned. Slowly, like waking from a deep, deep sleep, she stirred and her dark lashes fluttered against her cheek.
“Katherine, love,” I murmured, cradling her head, keeping my skin against hers. “It’s time to wake up. You’ve got two kills to celebrate.”
Two Horrors. Her incredible aim and her magic. A fucking miracle.
As her eyes opened and focused on me, the dread unclenched in my chest and pride surged in its place, hot and bright. “There you are.”
“I am.” She gave a tired smile, blinking slowly. “You found me in time. My poison…”
“Thank the fucking Stars.”
She touched my cheek, the leather of her gloves not nearly as soft as her skin. “Thank you.”
I scoffed but pulled her closer, desperate to reassure myself that this was real. “You’re the one who survived—who killed two Horrors. I could kiss you for it.”
She bit her lip. “Why don’t you?” She tilted her head, mouth coming closer to mine, so I felt her next words. “Memento mori.”
Yes. Yes.
Time opened up. I bent in. My body throbbed with each heartbeat.
But then that heartbeat lurched. I jolted upright, searching for another Horror on instinct.
There was none.
Yet my gut said something was wrong. That usually meant danger.
Before I could shake it off, Kat pulled from my hold, a tight, false smile in place as she yanked her sleeve over the cut.
Rose helped her to her feet. “How did you…?” She eyed Kat, then the fallen Horrors.
The guards turned on her, gaping. As she explained that she’d shot them with poisoned arrows, I became aware that my gaze skipped right over something on the periphery of the group.
Make that someone.
I steeled myself and turned to Orpha. “This is about your prisoner.”
She bowed her head. “He’s woken up.”
54
Bastian
Orpha had already tried to get him to talk the messy way.
Granted, things could get messier, but that didn’t necessarily mean he’d talk.
But I had another way, potentially.
After I ensured Kat was safe and we received a report confirming the last of the Horrors had been dealt with, I apologised to Faolán for how I’d spoken earlier. I was about to march headlong into a quagmire of guilt—I needed to get forgiveness where I could. He shrugged and clapped me on the shoulder in wordless acceptance.
That was one of the comforting things about Faolán. Simple and straightforward where so much of my life was… not.
With a heavy step, I set off for a small house on a side street and steeled myself to face the last person in Tenebris who wanted to see me… who just so happened to be the only one who could help.
I knocked. There was no answer.
Of course not. He probably knew it was me.
“Let me in,” I called, knocking again.
Nothing.
“I’m not going until you do.”
I could hear the sigh in my head a moment before he opened the door.
Chest tight, I faced my father.
Stone-faced, jaw set, he stood in the doorway. “What the hells are you doing here?”
Oh good, so it was going to be as friendly as usual. I pulled myself tight and straight, masked with professional detachment. “It’s for the security of the realm. I wouldn’t have come otherwise.”
“Of course it is. What else could the Serpent of Tenebris possibly be interested in?” His smile wrinkled his nose, sardonic and sneering.
“I’m not discussing this on the street.”
“And I’m not discussing this at all—not with you.”
But when he went to close the door, he found my foot in the way.
“Three minutes. Let me in. Let me talk. And then tell me to fuck off.”
He exhaled through his nose as he stepped back. “Two minutes.”
I gritted my teeth as a dozen familiar scents and sights hit me. I couldn’t let myself focus on them. I wasn’t his son—not right now… maybe not anymore. If I allowed myself to see the books on military tactics that had been Baba’s or his carved deer on the shelf, I would be that boy in the stables again. Their scrawny child who adored them for teaching him, for laughing at his jokes, and for the simple fact that they loved him.
And the Serpent of Tenebris couldn’t afford to adore anyone.