“The king was nearly killed tonight.”
“So I heard,” said the queen, as if they were discussing dinner courses instead of regicide. And someone else might have thought she was being flippant. But Alucard knew her better. Nadiya turned and walked away, disappearing into the next chamber. She didn’t tell him to follow her, didn’t have to. When he reached the second room, the iron tang of blood hit his nose, followed by the scent of citrus and mint, thin streams of smoke rising from tapers.
The assassin’s body lay naked on a stone block, the killing wound a bloodless tear in his chest.
“My queen, if you longed for company, you could have simply asked.”
“Oh, Alucard,” she said, rounding the body, “is that an invitation? You know you’re not my type.”
“Is it the manhood or the pulse?”
“Neither.” She plucked the glasses from her face. “Or maybe both.”
It was nothing but banter, as worn as a good pair of boots. Much to his dismay, Nadiya Loreni seemed perfectly content alone.
“But I am not alone,” she’d told him, more than once. “I have a husband, and a daughter, and a friend who haunts me while I work. I have all the freedom of a wife, the wealth of a mother, and the indisputable power of a queen. In short, I have everything I need.”
“And everything you want?” he’d pressed, knowing how it felt to be denied a dream, even when surrounded by riches. But Nadiya had only looked at him, amused, and said, “If I wanted a woman in my bed, Alucard, I’d have her. Believe it or not, I prefer to sleep alone.”
And so he believed her—because if Nadiya Loreni wanted something, she would not stop until it was hers.
Alucard approached the block, studying Rhy’s would-be killer. In death, the assassin looked young. A tinge of red streaked his cheeks, all that remained of the paint he’d worn.
Alucard’s gaze dropped until he found what he was looking for. There, against his ribs, just below the killing blow. Fingers branded into skin.
The Hand.
Anger bloomed in his chest at the sight of the mark. He dug his nails into the block. The air shivered, lanterns flickering around the room. Rhy’s voice came back to him, then, soft and sad and thick with sleep.
Why do they hate me?
Alucard looked up, past the body, to the chart that spanned the wall beyond. It had grown, like weeds in wet weather, spreading tendrils over stone.
Six months ago, when the whispers became rumors and the rumors showed no signs of dying out, he’d come to the queen, the sharpest mind he’d ever met, and the only one he trusted, and forced himself to ask.
“Is there truth to their claim that magic is failing? Is there any way to know?”
He hated the words before they left his lips. They tasted wrong, rancid with doubt, and he was scared to see the queen’s reaction, the horror on her face.
But he should have known better. Nadiya was Nadiya, after all. She had not recoiled at the question, because she had already asked, and sought the answer herself. She’d led him here, and showed him the beginnings of her map. What would become a sprawling diagram of magic, as she attempted to chart its presence and its strength, from the sealing of the doors between worlds three centuries before—she lacked the data to go further back—to Rhy’s time on the throne. That day, he’d seen the downward curve, his heart sinking with the angle.
“So there’s truth then, to the rumor?”
The queen had only shrugged. “All things in nature ebb and flow. The tide rises and falls. The seasons come and go and come again.”
“When will it come again?” he’d asked, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “When will the tide rise back?”
Nadiya had hesitated, her brow furrowing. She didn’t answer, which meant she didn’t know, and that was unnerving.
Alucard had stared at the chart until his vision blurred, the points and the lines between them smoothing into a shape that made the rise and fall less damning.
Maybe Nadiya was right.
But their enemies wouldn’t care.
A blunt blade was still a weapon in the wrong hands.
He’d stared at the chart for what felt like hours. And then, at last, he’d said, “Don’t tell the king.”
“It’s not Rhy’s doing,” she’d said. “The tide curves down before he takes the throne.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Alucard. “He will make himself a martyr.”
Nadiya’s fingers had come to rest on his shoulder, and he welcomed their steady weight.
“Then we protect him,” she’d said. “From the Hand, and from himself.” They stayed like that for a long time. And then her hand fell away, and she said, “I’m still missing a key piece of information.”
And Alucard knew that she meant Ren.
Ren, who was not yet five. Too young to manifest her power. Or fail to. He knew that was Rhy’s worst fear. That his daughter would be like him, born without magic. And if that happened, the Hand would use it as the spark to light the fire, and burn the kingdom down.
But Nadiya had an arsenal of magic. She would destroy anyone who came for her daughter.
And no one would. Because Alucard had no intention of waiting for Ren to come of age. No intention of letting the Hand grow any stronger.
A glint of metal caught his eye, and Alucard dragged his attention away from the wall and back to the body on the table, and the queen beyond, who was rolling up her sleeves, a sharp knife in one hand.
“Do you intend to harvest him for parts?”
He meant it as a joke. He should have known better.
Nadiya had the kind of face that seemed always about to smile. Full lips, and wide hazel eyes, and one eyebrow set ever so slightly above the other, giving her a look of mischief, which she’d passed on to Ren. There was no malice to it, only curiosity and wonder. The difference being that Ren liked to draw birds, and Nadiya would prefer to take their wings apart one feather at a time to understand exactly how they navigated currents. More than one of Ren’s pets had found their way down here … after meeting a natural end. He hoped.
He watched as the queen slid the knife across the dead assassin’s chest, the skin parting waxily beneath the steel.
“What happens to a life when the body dies?” she mused aloud. “Arnesians believe the body is a shell, a vessel for the life that animates it. That as long as we’re alive, we are full, and when we die, the vessel empties, and the power is poured back into the stream, leaving nothing but the empty shell. No memories. No mind. No spirit. If that is true, we can learn nothing from the dead.”
She took up a serrated knife, and began to saw open his ribs.
Alucard swallowed and looked away.
Nadiya chuckled. “Surely you saw worse when you were a pirate.”
“Privateer,” he corrected, “and even then, I never made a habit of butchering the dead. Care to tell me why you’re…”
He trailed off as she set the saw aside and began to pry open the man’s rib cage with her bare hands. Alucard felt bile rising in his throat. He took a step closer to the mint and citrus taper as Nadiya withdrew her bloodstained fingers long enough to retrieve a narrower blade, then resumed her work.
“Now, the Faroans also believe that the body is a vessel for the spirit,” she continued, “but that, in the time the two are fused, they mark each other, like a hand in wet clay. The body is shaped by power. The flesh retains memories.…”
Her tone was casual, as if they were in the gallery, having tea and toast and—
Alucard tried to put the thought of food from his mind as her hands made a sucking sound inside the man’s chest, and finally came free.
Holding his heart.
“The Hand plagues us because we know so little of them. We have yet to learn what they want.”
“What all enemies want,” he said. “To cause chaos, and call it change. To see the end of the Maresh rule.”