“If we can’t warn Hara directly, can we reason with Aaron?” Vance asked. “Misha may be—”
He broke off, looking at me, as if afraid to speak ill of my family member.
“Misha is…gone,” I said. “My sister is gone. I knew it even before we bought her freedom, or, I should have known it, but I was too blinded by what I wanted to be true. Whatever they did to her in Midnight, it didn’t make her a slave, but it made her hollow.”
“What hold does she have on Aaron?” Vance asked me.
“Misha has no conscious magic,” I answered, “but she is a white viper.” Like me. Both sides of my parentage had a history of black magic. “Her power isn’t active, but it is strong, especially now when it is guided by madness and fury. It will seek to protect her, even if that means manipulating the minds of those around her. I do not know how long she worked on Aaron, but he is certainly under her spell.”
I wasn’t above magically manipulating an enemy into looking the other way or treating me more generously than I deserved, but where I used my magic as armor to protect myself and my kin, Misha had discovered how to use hers as a sword. Every time I looked at Aaron, I could see where Misha’s magic had seeped into his mind, twisting his thoughts and bending his will to hers.
“Then we’re back to needing to warn Hara,” Kadee said. “I know no one here loves her, but I would rather see her on the throne than Misha and her toy king. How does Misha expect to fight Midnight if she starts off by selling someone into it?”
“Fight fire with fire?” I suggested. “The ends justify the means? I don’t know what is in her mind. I don’t care to.”
Liar, I thought. I knew exactly what was in my sister’s mind, because I had seen it. She and Shkei had been slaves in Midnight for months. I knew the faces of those who had abused her and left her a creature of wrath and agony who would strike out against any hand that moved toward her, whether they meant to assault or help her. If I ever started to believe my sister’s words—that she was fighting Midnight, fighting injustice, tyranny, and slavery, and that the ends justified the means—I needed only to look at the way she had magically enslaved her own declared mate to remind myself that her true thirst was for vengeance and control, not justice or safety.
“I don’t know how we will get Hara to listen to us, but I can get us into the palace without the guards capturing us,” Kadee said. “I used to know every passageway in and out of that palace, ways even the guards never knew existed. They can’t have discovered and sealed them all.”
After she had been taken from her human parents, Kadee had been raised as a ward of the serpiente royal family. She had given up that life when she had chosen to protect Shkei from a royal guard.
She had become a criminal to protect my brother.
I had become a mercenary to save my sister.
Shkei was now dead, and Misha was becoming a tyrant.
Weren’t we doing well?
And here I was supposed to be a prophet.
“I agree that we should try to warn Hara,” I said, “as long as Kadee knows a way we could feasibly do so without getting caught.” I took a deep breath and added, “What we need to ask ourselves is if we are willing to get caught, if that is what it takes to deliver the warning.” I wasn’t eager to risk my life to save the serpiente princess, but I wasn’t sure how far the others’ frustration and guilt would push them.
Aika scoffed. “Are you forgetting that Hara is the one who sent the guards that killed Farrell? We don’t even know if the others are alive or dead now.” Her voice wavered just slightly, no doubt as she considered her mate, Torquil. “I trust Misha like I trust a bobcat, and I want nothing to do with Midnight’s slave-trading, but I don’t owe Hara anything.”
The faces around me were hard, but not self-sacrificing. We were a group of survivors, and survivors did not risk their lives for abstract things like principles. Food, rest, warmth, companionship, maybe, but high moral ground and ideals? No, those could fall by the wayside, as they always had.
“CAN YOU DRAW a map of the passages?”
Kadee bristled, straightening. “You don’t need a map. I’m going with you.”
Another day, it would have made me smile to watch the fourteen-year-old serpent square off with Aika. Now all I could think about was how I had failed Misha and Shkei. I had been away, and they had been captured. I could only pray that the others could successfully plan to rescue my only living blood kin.
“You’re not a fighter,” Torquil argued with Kadee, his calm tone cutting through the tense air. “Let someone else—”
“I’m going,” Kadee said flatly. “Shkei saved my life. He’s my best friend. And I’m the only one who won’t get caught getting into the dungeons to save him. Aika, you’re good, but even you’ll lose if you face an entire dungeon full of palace guards. We don’t need a fighter to go after Misha and Shkei. We need someone who won’t have to fight.”
“What do you think, Malachi?” Farrell asked, cutting into the argument. “Stealth or strength?”
I tried to make my inconsistent magic serve me. If Kadee went into the palace dungeons, would she be able to rescue Misha and Shkei? Or would she be caught, and lost, as they had been? Would Aika do any better? Or were all our plans doomed to fail?
My power just coiled inside me, useless.
I didn’t know, so Kadee won the argument. In the end, it didn’t matter. She didn’t get caught, but she returned pale and beaten anyway.
“Julian sold them,” she whispered, spitting the serpiente king’s name with venom I had never before heard from her lips. “I was too late to do anything. They’ve already been taken to Midnight.”
—
Last summer, we had discussed ways to get into the palace to rescue my brother and sister, without knowing it was already too late. Now we needed to get inside again in order to warn Hara. My magic might be strong enough to let me sneak in, but it would never convince the princess to trust me. Once again, Kadee was the only one with a chance of success.
“What do you recommend?” I asked.
The girl’s hazel eyes widened in surprise. “I thought…” She trailed off, looking around, as if waiting for others to speak up against one of our youngest members endangering herself. No one did, so she drew a deep breath. “We should—”
I placed a hand on her arm to silence her as I sensed someone approaching through the trees. I tensed, reaching out magically to strengthen the illusion that should keep us hidden.
“Guards?” Aika whispered.
“Vampire,” I answered as I recognized the distinct power.
When I saw Aika reach for a weapon, I shook my head. Serpiente guards were dangerous to us, but Midnight’s people shouldn’t be, unless we did something dumb like threaten them.
I knew the man who stepped into view from my many past visits to Midnight, but that wasn’t why seeing him now made my blood run cold. This was the mercenary who had taken Misha and Shkei “off Julian’s hands” like troublesome stray cats and brought them to Midnight. Rainwater had made his black hair slick and plastered his clothes to his shadow-dark skin, but he seemed unconcerned by that as he looked around, fingers moving over a talisman in his hand that pulsed with unfamiliar magic.
That hint of power warned me an instant before he turned directly toward us, his gaze shattering my protective illusions.
“Morning, Vance,” Nathaniel said, pocketing the charm that had broken my spell. Clearly, the mercenary had been looking for us, and had even purchased expensive magic in order to find us, but I couldn’t imagine why. “Kadee, Malachi, Aika, pleasure to see you all.” To my knowledge, Aika and Nathaniel had never met, but he was a mercenary; it was his job to know who people were.
“There’s no business for you here,” I managed to spit out. The words were not as satisfying as a blow would have been, but they were less likely to get me picked up and thrown into Midnight as well.
“Come talk with me, white viper,” Nathaniel
said. “Just the two of us.”
Aika’s sharp laugh answered for me. Aika, Vance, and Kadee weren’t the type to be left behind if they didn’t want to be. They also weren’t quick to trust vampires or mercenaries.
“I know all about Misha’s plan,” Nathaniel said. “Including the deal she made with Gabriel. Do you?”
The words sent chills through me. Gabriel was one of Midnight’s trainers—specifically, the one who had owned Misha for several weeks last fall. I knew she had spent some time in his company more recently. Supposedly, Misha had gone to Midnight to look for Vance and Kadee, who were there trying to help the Shantel untangle a debt left by a failed attack one of their witches made on Midnight. In the end, Kadee and Vance had no choice but to facilitate the sale of the Shantel’s holy sakkri—a spirit-witch whose power let her commune with the land and whose gift of prophecy enabled her to advise the royal house—to Midnight. Now I feared Misha may have done a little slave trading while she was there as well.
“I’ll speak with you,” I agreed as I considered the possible implications of that meeting. “Vance, Kadee, Aika…” I trailed off, not sure they would let me send them away.
“See what he wants,” Aika conceded. “We’ll stay here and work on a plan to get to Hara.”
Kadee nodded agreement. Vance asked, “Do you need backup?”
“I should be all right,” I answered. “I’ll meet you back here.”
Nathaniel and I walked farther into the woods with the cool rain sliding down our skins.
“You’re the one Misha hired to pick up Hara,” I guessed once the others were out of earshot. I wanted to be wrong. How could Misha make a deal with the man who had once sold her, as if her value could be calculated in the same way as a bolt of wool?
Nathaniel nodded. “And she has arranged for Gabriel to purchase her.”
“Which means the deal has already been made,” I said with a sigh, “and our standing in the way of it would be impeding trade.”
Midnight’s high crimes may have been merely economic, but like anywhere else, they carried stiff penalties. Impeding the trade of a royal-blood serpent would carry the cost of replacing her value…and none of us was royal in blood. I had already been deemed worthless to Midnight, and Aika was too scarred to be acceptable by Jeshickah’s standards. Vance…I was not sure what they would do to Vance. When they had given up on keeping him as a slave, they had made it very clear that they thought he had the makings of a trainer. Kadee would be considered most valuable, but she was still far from royal. If we interfered with Hara’s sale, Midnight could claim all of us.
“Good, I have your attention,” Nathaniel said. “Now listen very carefully, because I am only going to say this once:
“It is too late for you to save Hara. That deal is made, and I cannot renege on my word without causing too much suspicion. But if you are interested, I have another deal I want to bring you in on.” Nathaniel put up his hand when I started to object. “No, don’t give me the speech. You’ll like this one better than the last.”
“Every deal is ‘better than the last,’ ” I bit out. “You may not be a trainer, but you’re still one of their ilk.”
“What if I told you that letting Hara go is the first step on the path to seeing Midnight fall?” Nathaniel asked, so softly I was sure I misheard him.
“I would tell you you’re mad,” I choked out. “How is that even…” I looked around instinctively, afraid of being overheard discussing treason against both the serpiente and Midnight.
“My employer is paying me a great deal of money to engage in a great deal of risk to bring the end to an era.” Nathaniel spoke slowly, as if that would make his impossible words more comprehensible. “If I understand correctly, that has been your goal for quite some time. Incidentally,” he added, “did your vision ever say that Misha being on the throne would be the cause of Midnight’s fall?”
“Prophecies are never that clear,” I answered vaguely.
Was he really saying what I thought he was?
Was the mercenary who worked as one of Midnight’s strong hands telling me that he had been hired to destroy the empire?
“Will you work with me?” Nathaniel asked.
Did I dare respond?
“I should talk to the others,” I hedged, trying to fish for more information, any hint of whether he was sincere, or if all this was some kind of elaborate trap. When we exchanged Alasdair for Misha last winter, we learned that the vampires were sometimes willing to go to extreme lengths to get their way without technically breaking their own laws.
“Yes or no, Malachi Obsidian? On your name and your falcon blood, yes or no?”
No! How could you think I would be naive and suicidal enough to agree to such a thing?
Yes! How could you think I would be selfish and gutless enough to refuse?
I pictured Misha, covered in bruises and shame, staring at me vacantly when she returned to us after months of abuse by the vampires. I thought about Shkei, who had never come home at all, but had died last winter in a trainer’s cell. Midnight had destroyed them both.
I remembered all the blood I had helped wash from marble. I remembered my hollow-hearted mother, who had been broken as a slave years before my birth; I had never known who she was when she was free, only what the vampires had turned her into.
I imagined Hara Kiesha Cobriana, who—too soon, it seemed—would be in that same position. Even Aaron was a victim of this juggernaut, chained to Misha for as long as she found him useful.
On your name and your falcon blood.
Nathaniel knew there were not many ways to hold me to my word, but the falcon portion of my heritage could magically enforce vows. I would get myself into trouble if I swore to this path and then decided to turn aside.
If he was trying to entrap me, then telling the mercenary yes would get me enslaved—along with my allies—and I would probably not survive. If he was sincere, then I was a threat to him, in which case telling him no would certainly result in my death, as well as the deaths of my allies who had seen him with me.
“My magic will bind me to my word, but it will not necessarily bind my people.”
“Kadee, Vance, and Aika might tell me to go to hell, but they wouldn’t speak up against me,” Nathaniel said with a sigh. “You’re the only one in that group who might see the profit in turning around and selling me to Jeshickah.”
“If I’m such a threat,” I spat, offended that he would even for a moment think I might favor profit over Midnight’s fall, “then why speak to me at all?”
“Because you’re a seer,” the mercenary said, “and you’re a man of magic. I need prophecy and power on my side if I am to succeed, and if I cannot have Farrell Obsidian of the Obsidian guild, or Misha the would-be queen, I want the white viper who first prophesized that Midnight would fall in this generation.”
“Why not Misha?”
“Because I trust her even less than I trust you,” Nathaniel shot back. “The trainers didn’t put enough time into her to break her completely, but I have no faith that she’ll be reasonable or predictable with regards to Midnight. More importantly, I need her to rule. The prophecy said she will be queen when Midnight falls, so I need her on the throne.”
“Which means you won’t let anyone rescue Hara.”
He shook his head.
I stared at him, so resolute, and the words I knew I needed to say burrowed into my stomach, through its lining, and into my guts to twine there tightly.
“I’m still waiting on your answer, Malachi,” he said.
The choices were certain death or likely death, with the possibility that Midnight could be destroyed. But he didn’t know…no one knew…
I opened my mouth to swear, but the words were stifled by a terrible truth, which I needed to utter first.
“It’s a lie.”
I knew I had whispered, but the words seemed so loud, like they were echoing all around us, heard by everyone who had fought, died,
or killed based on my prophecy.
“It’s all a lie,” I said again. The air felt thick now, choking, and the rain seemed to find its way into my nostrils to slide coldly down my throat into my constricted lungs. “I was seven, and I knew Jeshickah was planning to put me down. Farrell was just going to walk away, so I said what he wanted to hear. I said it because I knew it would make him take us with him. I didn’t even know what it meant, I just said it and later I convinced myself—”
Nathaniel stepped forward and clapped a hand over my mouth.
“I don’t believe in prophecy,” he said softly, “but everyone around you does. I’m having enough trouble convincing my allies we have a chance after what happened to the Shantel, but the famous Obsidian prophecy, combined with Misha’s unexpected rise to the throne, is enough to turn skeptics into believers. So do us all a favor, and keep lying. And give me your word that you’re on our side.”
I nodded, and he took his hand away.
“You have my word,” I said. “On my blood as a falcon.” My liar’s blood. “It will be hard to convince Kadee, Vance, and Aika to work with you, though. They’re not the most trusting people to begin with, and they won’t like that we can’t save Hara.”
“You’ve made worse sacrifices,” Nathaniel said.
I flinched. “I have.”
“Talk with your people,” the mercenary said. “Convince them. Then meet with Misha. Convince her you’ve changed your mind. I need you to make sure her plan to take the throne succeeds. Once that is accomplished, I will speak to you about the next steps.”
Uneasy allies, we shook hands in the pouring rain. With the handshake, I condemned a royal serpent to slavery, on nothing but the hope that someday the hell we were about to send her to would see its end.
I DROPPED TOWARD the black iron gates of Midnight without the same confidence I had felt when leaving the Obsidian camp. The shapeshifter guards ignored me; I had come and gone so many times in the past decade that they recognized me and considered my arrival unimportant.