He extended his arm to me, and I took it as if I was very grateful to finally have someone who could actually see to lead me around.
The guard escorted me into the palace. It was warm and stuffy inside, the air damp. Someone desperately needed to open some windows. Still, it was far cleaner than Aaves’s pit of depravity—Tarkan, at least, had a more sophisticated idea of power than Aaves’s indiscriminate obsession with furs, silks, and drugs. Tarkan, like the Pythora King himself, controlled his followers with their addictions, but never partook himself. Smart men knew better.
There were a lot of people on the first floor of the palace, mostly the chosen few of Tarkan’s followers who were allowed to enter. Primarily men. A few women. Many were teenagers or younger, hands at crude weapons hung by their hips that they seemed overly eager to use. They’d probably be dead the day they did.
I didn’t make small talk with the guard as he led me up the grand staircase, and he didn’t try. Instead, I stretched out my awareness, feeling the threads around me.
Only clusters of presences down here—blurry, out of focus, their own awareness dulled by the drugs. I reached up, to the floor above. A few more of those types, faceless guards with unsharp minds, but not many.
I stretched further as we reached the top of the stairs. It was far to sense, most auras distant and difficult to read. But Tarkan’s… he was easy. A shard of glass in a pile of feathers.
The guard led me down the hall, the presences of the others growing more distant. Tarkan kept his inner circle small—he’d allow his followers to the ground floor, but few of them any higher. Even the grand staircase wouldn’t lead up directly to his suite. Hence why I was being taken down a deserted hallway, to a smaller stairwell. A set of windows ahead, at the end of the hall, overlooked Vasai’s sparse eastern slums and the rocky plains beyond them, all bathed in the silver light of the moon.
The guard started to turn the corner to lead me up the stairwell.
I made my move.
He was easy to kill. Yes, he was bigger than me, but he wasn’t expecting to fight right now—least of all against a concubine, and least of all in the halls of his own master’s palace. The downside of this ridiculous outfit was that it made it hard to move. The upside was that it provided lots of places to hide a blade.
My dagger was out and across his throat in seconds. My other hand clamped over his mouth before he could let out his gurgling grunt of shock. I positioned myself to break his fall before his body hit the ground.
There was a lot of blood. I’d intentionally chosen red for my dress. By the time anyone noticed, it wouldn’t matter.
I dragged the body—still twitching—into a nearby room and shut the door behind him. Then I went to the window and unlatched it.
A welcome gust of cool air hit my face, drying the sweat on my cheeks and flecks of blood on my veil. I lifted my chin to enjoy it for a moment, while a large figure hoisted himself up to the windowsill.
I grabbed Atrius’s hand and helped him in. He hit the ground with impressive silence. Erekkus was right. He was like a cat.
He’d climbed up hundreds of feet. Clung there for Weaver knew how long, and without being spotted.
I was glad my face couldn’t show it, but I was impressed he’d pulled it off.
He rolled his shoulders and smoothed his hair, which was messy and windswept.
“Do you know how hard it was to follow you?” he muttered.
“You didn’t have to come.”
He let out a grunt that somehow managed to say, I did have to come, and you’re insulting both of our intelligence by saying otherwise.
It was almost impressive how much he could communicate with those things.
I would never admit this aloud—I didn’t even want to admit it to myself—but a small part of me admired the fact that Atrius had insisted on doing this personally. If I was considered too important to risk, I’d told him, what did that make him?
But Atrius was firm. He would go. That was that.
No one could say he didn’t get his hands dirty. I couldn’t imagine Tarkan, even during the height of the wars, clinging to the side of a building by himself for hours on end.
“We don’t have much time,” I whispered, then pointed to the stairwell. Atrius glanced at the pool of blood slowly spreading from behind the door I’d stuffed the guard into and nodded.
The minute I’d killed, the hourglass had turned. Now the real game started.
We crept up the staircase, me leading with Atrius a step behind. I kept my awareness attuned to our immediate surroundings, but also peered ahead, to those on the floor above. Tarkan was easy to spot, but it was more difficult to keep track of the exact locations of the others.
We emerged in a narrow hallway. This was clearly a back path, originally intended for servants and others too unfit to be seen by nobility. But paranoia drives one to inventive measures. Tarkan had decided that this was the only way his followers would be able to reach him.
The first hall was empty. I could sense Tarkan’s general proximity, but it was harder for me to understand the specifics of the castle layout. People and nature were easy, their threads bright and clear. Architecture… that was more difficult.
I paused at the juncture of two hallways, reaching—
Atrius’s sword was already out, body coiled. Something came over his presence when he was getting ready to kill—a certain determined ruthlessness, a singular focus, like he was preparing to do what he had been born for. “Which way is he?”
“That way, I think.” I motioned, still preoccupied with the threads. “But—”
The answer was more than enough for Atrius. He started to move.
A moment too late, I felt them.
I grabbed his arm and wrenched him back with all my strength.
Atrius realized what I had a split-second later. Perhaps he smelled them—perhaps his superior vampire hearing helped. One moment I was grabbing him, and the next, I was pressed between the wall and him as he flattened his body over mine into a shallow enclave.
Seconds later, the voices drifted down the hallway.
One of Atrius’s hands pressed to the wall above my shoulder. The other held his sword, while I gripped his wrist—both of us battling for that arm. Every muscle of Atrius’s body was tight, ready to strike. All that taut energy surrounded me, raw power contained only by my grasp.
His breath rustled the silk fabric of my veil.
I shook my head slowly. I felt his eyes burrowing through that silk like hands pulling back layers.
The guards around the corner, oblivious, wandered closer.
“—doesn’t have a chance against him,” one of them was saying. “Have you seen him fight? Dunno why he’s trying.”
The other one let out a slurred scoff. “It’s not just about strength, idiot. He’s scrappy. You’ve never seen ‘im in action.”
“I’ve seen enough not to throw my money away. You just wish it was you in front of all those people.”
Tournaments. Sporting events. Mindless small talk.