One jump, two jump, hide in bed,
Someday soon we’ll end them all,
Bring water for a witch,
And fire for their thralls.”
When the triple moons rise, I bathe, and Y’shennria has Reginall dig me something out of her closet from when she was my age—a black cotton outfit, with pants and loose sleeves and a long cloak, perfect for concealment while still enabling one to move quickly. When I ask where she got it, she changes the subject. When she’s gone, Reginall tells me with a twinkle in his eye that it’s from when service in the Wildwatch was mandatory for noble children, before the Sunless War. She was a scout. Y’shennria in the Wildwatch? I can hardly imagine it—elegant Y’shennria on the cold, rugged island continent—the Feralstorm—where all the world’s magical creatures are monitored and maintained by the group of skilled rangers. Her scout outfit fits me barely. I fix my hair back and pull the cloak over my shoulders.
“Do not take his heart. Do not give away your status as a Firstblood,” Y’shennria warns me on the steps of the manor as she adjusts my hood. “You can cross the channel between districts without being seen if you follow the watertell pipe system.”
“You’re awfully knowledgeable about sneaking around Vetris for a proper lady,” I drawl. She smiles faintly, a fraction of my dark mood lifting at it.
“I wasn’t always an old woman.”
She ushers me off, and I venture into the dusk air, the Twins trembling in the sky as they rise red. The Blue Giant is a paler azure tonight, smooth like the surface of honey—a mellivorous moon. The tangled maze of copper watertell pipes that spans the length of the channel separating the noble quarter from the common quarter is difficult to balance on, jump over and under, but it’s not unlike navigating through the roots of a thousand metal trees. Shops and stalls are empty, folded over with colorful blankets for the night. The only people who remain working are those in the flesh-houses and the priests and priestesses of Kavar at the temple. The flesh-house assigns a man to hawk their wares outside the building—and tonight he decides to hawk at me.
“Come now, miss—let my pretty boys show you how a real man kisses!”
I call back, “No thank you—I’m saving my first kiss for a dashingly handsome fellow by the name of Success!”
The man chuckles, and I leave him to enter the west square where Kavar’s temple looms. The eye of Kavar on the very top spire throws a long moonlit shadow, engulfing my every step. Two priestesses sweep the stairs, gray robes immaculate, necks rimmed with crystal pendants, faces placid and absorbed in their work. They look so…normal. They’re fed by the temple, clothed by the temple. The celeon guard who presided over the d’Malvane portraits—Noran?—his words echo in my head now. “To make a living in this cruel world.” That was his reason for serving the king. Are these priestesses the same—simply trying to make a living? I know of the demons that lurk beneath their domestic peace—intolerance, hate. Or is that simply Gavik? Are these priestesses taught to hate by their religion or by the archduke’s influence? Or do they both combine to create unstoppable machines of war?
How many purges have they swept the stages of? How many songs have they sung of the Old God’s worshippers deserving death?
The priestesses see me staring and wave, smiles bright, beckoning. I turn, the tail of my cape whipping behind me as I move on.
The sound of a celebration meets my ears, the edges of a crowd leaking into the streets. I follow, morbidly curious—is it another purge? Soon I’m surrounded by what feels like every person in Vetris—old and young, drunk and sober. I was wrong; this is no purge—this crowd sings, dances, all of them wearing some sort of white mask, the eyeholes outlined by the same symbol of Kavar. Massive waterdrums in horse-drawn carts thunder out a beat, the windlutes sighing a cheery song.
“Here, lady!” a little girl chimes, offering me a mask from a basket of them.
I take it and ask, “What are we celebrating?”
“Verdance Day is almost here!” the little girl insists. “Kavar blesses the water pumps, so we can have a good growin’ season and good health! Or at least, that’s what Father says.”
Take her apart, the hunger lilts seductively. She’s weak, delicious, and barely able to put up a fight. Look at all these humans—distracted by their happiness. Use it against them.
Unnerved by my silence, the little girl trots away. The white mask in my palm seems to cackle at me with its open mouth. I don’t want to wear it, but it’s a very good disguise—better than the hood around my head. I clip it on and slip into the nearby Tiger’s Eye Pub. Music blasts from a trio of key harps in the corner, pipe smoke blurring the high ceiling. The barkeep is a broad celeon, his furred chest bared, his ears studded with long silver chains ending in little bells, and his blue arms stacked with copper bangles. A busty woman smiles and offers me watered beer. I ask for wine, sipping from my tin goblet and watching the polymath in the corner. He’s with several others, drinking and laughing.
It hits me then that the metal coffin I saw drown that boy when I first arrived was mechanical—no doubt the polymaths made it. They made the water pumps that give the city plumbing, sewage, and irrigation for their crops outside the wall. They made the watertells the lawguards and nobles use for communication. Half of their inventions seem made to improve killing, the other half made to improve living. The humans’ technology is a rather dangerous conundrum. I think of the witchfire that destroyed Ravenshaunt, the Heartless spell that saved my life—I suppose magic is no different.
In the shadows behind the polymath’s table sits a young man in a deep hood. His eyes gleam hard, like obsidian freshly polished. Black leather armor, a cowl, ever-confident posture. Prince Lucien. Even pretending his hardest to be a commoner, he doesn’t blend in entirely, that noble upbringing still clinging to him. I can’t help but think of his hunts, his role in witch death. His heart is my goal, but I must never forget he’s taken lives with his hatred.
Does he keep count? Does his number haunt him as my own haunts me?
I get up and walk over, settling in a chair opposite him. The music is just enough to cover our conversation.
“And here I thought you and Malachite were born attached at the hip,” I lilt. Lucien looks up at me and snorts.
“I managed to cut the cord this once. He kept insisting he come. Something about how ‘watching the two of us is like watching the most entertaining play,’ or similar nonsense. I don’t doubt he’s followed me out here, lurking in the shadows as he likes to do.”
Damn! The possibility of that silver-haired, smarmy bastard watching means I can’t try anything on Lucien. Y’shennria wins this round, but the idea of holding all our cards for one day is ludicrous with how much we stand to lose. If a good opportunity presents itself tonight, I have to try, bodyguard or no bodyguard.
You can make it sound as noble as you like, the hunger sneers. But in the end, you’re just hurrying for that heart of yours—
“You don’t drink?” I cut off the hunger and motion to his glass of water. Lucien narrows his eyes.
“No. Not anymore.” He laces his fingers together on the table, eyeing the mask covering my face. “You look prettier than usual. New makeup?”
“I was so ready to declare you have a heart.” I click my tongue. “As it turns out, it’s just a lump of coal in there.”
At the next table over, a brawl is brewing, two men glaring holes into each other. Lucien leans back in his chair. “You take so many stabs at me, I figured you’d appreciate a stab back once in a while.”
“Oh, I do. But only aimed at a nonvital organ.”
“Implying your beauty is a vital organ of yours?” He scoffs. “I took you for many things—troublemaker, inscrutable. Not once did I consider vain.”
“You forgot selfish,” I add. “And demanding of your time.”
“This demand of my time is nothing compared to the daily demands you make of my patience.”
“One can only h
ope someday I’ll blossom from an awful harridan into an undemanding, demure, boring high lady.”
The two men begin to argue, drunk voices steadily rising. Lucien’s cowl moves, an eyebrow quirked. “Is high lady a metaphor of some kind?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. As if I possess the intelligence to construct metaphors.”
“I’ve seen you do it at least twice,” he points out lightly.
“By the New God, the secret’s out; I’m fully capable of thinking!” I lament. “There goes my courtesan career.”
“It was over the moment you blackmailed the Crown Prince of Cavanos,” Lucien murmurs as he leans in, eyes gleaming with something like amusement.
“Is the Crown Prince not enjoying the price of my blackmail in the slightest? And here I thought it’d be entertaining for one of us at the very least.”
The drunk men at the next table jump to their feet, throwing anything within reach at each other: mugs, bread crusts, their own shoes. Lucien suddenly whirls his cape in one fluid motion, the two of us covered from a wayward splash of beer. Inside the dimness of the cape, he pulls his cowl down, a smirk crooking his lips.
“You know, if you’re regretting it, you could always beg my forgiveness.”
I laugh too loud—but the fight outside our cloth haven drowns the sound. I slide up my mask and smile sweetly at him. “The only time you’ll ever see me beg, Your Highness, is when my body is cold and dead and on the pyre.”
There’s a moment, our eyes roving over each other’s faces, our grins mirror images of each other. That rainwater scent of his is faint but very much there, a welcome relief from the smells of the tavern. We’re so close I’ve no doubt our eyelashes will tangle any second, but Lucien’s expression suddenly hardens, and he puts careful distance between our faces. The locket under my shirt trembles violently. His heart is no doubt still, unmoved. I’m so rooted in the moment I barely register the sounds of the celeon barkeep kicking the drunken men outside. Finally Lucien snorts, pulling his cowl back up and lowering his cape. I quickly put the mask back on, watching as his eyes grow progressively duller.
“A pyre, hmm?” Lucien ponders. Before I can speak, he does. “I’ve only ever been to one funeral, and I’m not keen to go to any more.”
He means Varia. I lace my fingers between one another, determined not to tread this dangerous ground again. Once with the king was enough. Lucien swirls the water around in his glass, the lamplight reflecting as rainbow shards over his skin, over the bandage on the back of his hand.
“Much to my utter disgust, I find myself owing you yet another thank-you,” I brave the silence. “For sending Malachite to stalk me.”
“He is very good at that,” Lucien agrees softly. “Just as the Priseless twins are very good at hurting unsuspecting Brides and using their family’s influence to make them stay silent about it.” His dagger eyes glance up at me. “I warned you about the court.”
“Say that one more time and try to act surprised when I explode from it.”
“If you exploded here and now, all my problems would be over. Well.” He thinks about this. “At least eighty percent of my problems. It’s like you don’t have ears. Either that, or you don’t believe in obeying your Crown Prince.”
“I don’t believe in obeying anyone, Your Highness.” I smile. “Least of all the entitled.”
“Entitled,” he murmurs. The waitress comes by, offering us more wine, but the prince refuses it brusquely. I take more, eager to drown out the hunger that’s slowly crawling its way up my throat.
“I used to drink,” Prince Lucien repeats when the waitress is gone. “I was thirteen—angry at the world. I’d spend my days drinking until I couldn’t feel anything, let alone the pain.”
I’m quiet. He doesn’t continue, so I ask the burning question.
“Does it hurt?” I motion to the bandage. Lucien looks surprised.
“I wasn’t aware blackmailers cared about the well-being of their victims.”
“If you die, I don’t get any more of your time.” I clear my throat. His surprise dims, a half-cocked smirk replacing it.
“It hurt when it first happened. But I had more pressing matters on my mind then.”
“Like saving a beautiful damsel.”
“You think so highly of yourself,” he says, but unlike Grace, it’s without ire. Just a clear, simple, slightly bewildered statement. I take his water cup and raise it to him in a toast.
“If I don’t, who will?”
He snorts, a rare almost-laugh. “So unwavering. You’re most definitely Lady Y’shennria’s niece.”
Those words burn in the nest of lies smoldering where my heart should be. I get the fleeting, impossible thought that it’d be nice if I really were related to her. If we really were family. If somehow, someday, she could treat me as one of her own.
But not in this life.
“I don’t want you thinking you owe me something just because I pushed you out of the way of some rubble or sent Malachite to guard you,” he insists, black eyes razor-sharp once more.
“Fantastic,” I agree. “I do prefer not owing anyone anything, ever. Makes things much easier at the inevitable end.”
The prince studies me, or rather, my mask. My eyes behind the mask. It feels as if he’s trying to peel away the layers of my defenses, my secrets, like a bird of prey peeling back skin and muscle from a kill. To redirect the intensity of his gaze, I point at the sword on his hip. It’s of strange make—white metal, and very gracefully wrought, with a basket handle carved like a nest of snakes. It looks somehow familiar.
“Is that yours?”
“No. I stole it,” he drawls.
“Aha! I knew it! Your stealing wasn’t entirely selfless.” He goes quiet, and my sardonic tone flattens. “It’s a very pretty sword, is all I meant.”
“Varia left me two things—this sword, and the crown. The latter wasn’t meant for me. A part of me hates her for giving it to me almost as much as for leaving me alone.”
That’s why it was familiar; the sword in Varia’s painting and his sword are the same. The stone wariness in his usually guarded expression vanishes—eroded by years of mourning, leaving only a young man behind. Not a prince, not an heir, not a target, but a brother. A boy. A human who’s lost as I have.
“And so you carry her sword around.” I grip the hilt of Father’s sword on my hip, tracing the grooves with my thumb. “Hoping beyond hope that maybe someday she’ll come back to get it. Hoping someday it’ll be gone from your waist because she took it back—because she’s as alive as you are.”
The prince’s eyes move to Father’s scabbard, his face unreadable.
“You’re not the only one who knows what it’s like to lose someone,” I say. “Or to desperately, foolishly hold on to whatever tiny scraps you have left of them.”
Prince Lucien drinks in the silence that falls after my words. He finally gets up, putting two coppers on the table, and leaves out the door. I follow. The cool night air kisses my flushed cheeks as I look around for him—finding him leaning against a stack of barrels. He looks so empty, despondent, like the first bitter snow of winter, like the first time I saw him—standing imperiously in front of me during the Welcoming. That wine might have been a little too strong, because I get all sorts of ridiculous ideas in my head about cheering him up, making him smile.
“If you want, we could be friends,” I say. “Instead of blackmailer and blackmailee.”
“That’s the worst joke I’ve heard from you yet.” He snorts.
“I’m serious,” I say. “You saved me. Twice. The least I could do is not force you to spend time with me.”
“What if I want to be blackmailed?” he asks. My head shoots up, and he catches my eyes with his own. “A prince can’t have friends. He can have subjects, certainly. But he can’t consort with those subjects, lest they influence his decisions. Lest they try to manipulate him for their own gain or assassinate him.”
His words sound reh
earsed again, like they were said to him instead of independent thoughts he’s had. It almost sounds like something King Sref would say.
“But if a prince is blackmailed into spending time with one of his subjects…” Lucien smiles sadly at me. “Then what choice does he have?”
The loneliness in his voice claws at me like a starving wildcat.
“The Welcoming,” he continues, staring up at the three moons, the heavenly orbs reflected in his obsidian ones. “After you gave that answer and looked at me—like I was equal to you. I could tell in your eyes; you weren’t afraid. Of me. Of anyone. And that’s the exact moment I knew you’d be a thorn in my side.”
His arm crooks above me against the barrels, his shadow blocking the moonlight from my face as he leans in.
“But now I’m not so sure. Are you a thorn? Or are you a flower?”
The heart locket on my chest thunders against my skin. I’m still, terrified any movement of mine will be uncontrollable. He’s still a human, and the hunger is still very much within me, begging to end him where he stands.
He’d open so easily under your fangs.
This is the perfect place—quiet, no onlookers. A short jog to Y’shennria’s manor, and I’d have his heart in the jar in no time, despite her overcautious fears. It’s his freedom for mine. My freedom, Peligli’s and Crav’s, and delaying a war on top of all that—for his heart. A prince who’s never stepped foot out of Vetris, who lives alone, locked away in the insincere world of the court and his own mourning—shackled to a witch and forced to fight for her. Forced to live somewhere dark and isolated, forced to become one of the very monsters who took his sister from him.
Forced to live with this dark hunger.
It was so easy a week ago. But now he has a face. Now he has a story. Now he stands here, looking at me as if I’m the greatest mystery in the world, his eyes both sad and hungry—starving for something he’s never known the name of.
Challenge. An equal. A friend. He’s starving for it all.
Starving for me.
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