The whites of his eyes flashed as he crumpled. Nicholas watched in appreciation as Sophia stripped the robe and mask off him and set about rolling Owen off the trail, into the forest, where the mountain did the rest of the work in carrying him away.
“Did you finish your business?” she asked innocently.
“Did you?” he pushed back. Julian had gone ahead with Etta, and while there was much he wished he could have said to his half brother, there was likely quite a bit more that needed to be spoken between the formerly betrothed pair.
A gong sounded from above, where the graceful temple sat at the top of the trail. Nicholas straightened his mask and accepted Sophia’s offered shoulder as support for the last few yards of their climb. They passed through the structure with its airy, open foundations, the upward slant of its roof, to find an enormous white tent pitched in the center of its stone courtyard. So, then; they would not be trampling over a sacred place. Good. Perhaps the Belladonna still had some scraps of decency clinging to her tattered soul.
The scent of wine and spirits floated to him on the next autumn breeze, followed by the sweet notes of fruit. A short distance from the tent, a table was elegantly piled with food, though it had clearly already been ravaged by the others. The Belladonna stood beside it, waiting for them.
“Help yourselves, of course,” the Belladonna said, turning to greet a man who, Nicholas thought, must have been a priest or a monk, based on his ceremonial robes, different from the ones the travelers donned. He seemed harried, hovering near the tent but not daring to enter. The woman shooed him away by blowing a kiss.
“Is he a guardian?” Nicholas asked.
“No. Return a few legendary national treasures and you’ll be surprised by the favors people will do for you,” the Belladonna said. “And the things they’re willing to forget.”
Sophia snorted, drawing the woman’s eyes over to her. The Belladonna hummed thoughtfully but said nothing. “If you are ready, follow me. The rest of your party is already situated.”
The tent was far larger than it had appeared on the outside, so much so that he wondered if it might be one of the Belladonna’s illusions. The central aisle led up to a raised and gilded table, on which a dark wooden box had been placed. Two masked men stood on either side of it, swords in hand, as if prepared to slice any who dared to reach for it. If he hadn’t felt it just then, that chill creeping over his skin, the tremor in the air, Nicholas might not have believed the astrolabe to be inside.
“Do you…” Sophia whispered, sounding almost faint. Feel that?
The Belladonna jerked her head around. “Silence. Here. Here is your place.”
Lining the long aisle were stalls, divided by heavy white fabric that looked, to Nicholas’s biased eye, like sailcloth. At least one dark shape of a man or woman appeared to be sitting in each, backlit by a lantern or an arrangement of candles. So that was it, then—how she had managed to further the anonymity of the bidders and, likely, the winner who would be taking any of her auctioned goods home.
Where is Etta?
“You,” she said, brushing his shoulder with her long, curling nails, “are designated as a bidder. Present your offer when I call for the fourth bidder—should you survive that long.” As she leaned in closer, he breathed in that same earthy scent, as if she were a dark forest wearing a woman’s skin. “There’s still time, of course.”
Nicholas ignored the tremor in his heart as he said softly, “Good evening to you, ma’am.”
The Belladonna stood to the side, lifting the entrance to their stall. Inside, the Ironwoods were lifting their masks to taste the proffered food and wine, but they instantly slid them back into place. Sophia stepped in beside him, edging around the room to avoid too much notice that she was not, in fact, Owen.
“There he is!” Ironwood said as the curtain shut behind them. Still mercifully in possession of his good mood. “Now it begins.”
His footsteps were soft against the rugs and pillows provided; there was little else, beyond a few candles and a small wooden table. Nicholas surrendered himself heavily to the floor. The bruises and cuts he’d acquired were a low throb of pain, but they were nothing compared to the fire searing his veins. Instead of letting himself notice the twitching of his left hand, he focused on the foul smell of the pipe someone was smoking in the stall beside theirs. The Belladonna had placed them directly in the middle of the stalls, but save for that whiff of bad air and the murmur of the Ironwood men around him, he could not hear or see evidence of any of the other bidders. He could not even hear the wind outside.
The gong sounded again. With a kick of his heart, Nicholas turned back toward the curtain draped over their stall’s entrance, and beyond that, the muted shapes of the Belladonna and her guards.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you to tonight’s auction. As always, your silence is mandatory. I have taken…liberties, shall we say…to ensure this. I will be able to hear you, but to protect the privacy of the winner, you will not be able to hear one another.”
Ironwood drummed his fingers against his knees, nodding repeatedly in an eager, childlike manner. The man’s entire world was winnowed down to this moment, as he stood on the edge of grasping the only thing that had ever been truly denied him.
“The winner of this item will be liable for its transportation and protection outside the barriers of this site. All sales, regardless of satisfaction, are final and binding. Upon the conclusion of the auction, the winner will be allowed to leave first, followed by the rest of you in the order of my choosing. Rather than conduct multiple rounds of bids, please submit your best offer as it stands. I will call each designated bidder forward to hand it to me.”
Nicholas’s fingers dug into the muscles of his thighs. He dropped his eyes to the floor. Please, God, keep her safe, let this end—
“I thank the consigners who entrusted me with this sale. Without further ado, I present lot 427, a purported astrolabe—”
Purported. Nicholas actually laughed.
“—of unknown, ancient origins. First bidder, please.”
Nicholas leaned forward, trying to peer through the smallest of gaps where the side of the stall met the curtain. His breathing had taken on that uneven quality that made darkness dance in his vision. Etta—where was Etta?
“Second bidder, please.”
Hell and damnation, he thought, wiping the sweat from his forehead, his eyes. He tasted rust in his mouth. Not yet. Not yet, damn you—
A dark splatter—deep enough to show through the thick fabric—whipped against the curtain directly across from theirs. Nicholas and Sophia jumped to their feet just as the bidder’s lifeless body, still spilling blood, was thrown out of the stall, a darkness deeper than night exploding after him.
AS SHE MADE HER WAY up to the Belladonna, Etta squared her shoulders, the scrap of paper on which she’d written her offer, A secret about Ironwood’s desires, soft and damp in her hand. The candles’ flames shook in their stands, the dimly flickering light outlining each of the stalls as she passed them. It was the silence that was unleashing her anger, unbraiding the knot of fury she’d wrapped around herself. Her hands clenched by her side again, as if to keep the feel of Nicholas’s rough skin trapped there a moment longer.
May the best pirate win.
It wasn’t even that they were at odds; she understood his line of reasoning, even as she wanted to strangle him for simply accepting it. It was what he had so clearly withheld: the reason why the fire had left his heart. Why, when she kissed him that last time, had he shuddered, as if on the verge of shattering? Something’s wrong, something is so wrong, her mind had screamed as her hands skimmed over him, searching for a wound, a bandage that might explain the exhaustion, the weakness.
Pattern. She hated that word now, the lack of control it implied. The way it had hooked into what Henry had told her in Russia, grown through her like a winding, barbed vine. You will see the pattern, too.
They were b
oth wrong. Etta didn’t have to accept that anything was meant to happen. She had been orphaned in Damascus, flung centuries away from Nicholas, but that was nothing compared to being trapped almost three hundred years ahead of him, locked away from her family, from the Thorns, from this hidden life. This wasn’t a pattern unless she let it become one.
We cannot possess the things and people not meant for us, we cannot control every outcome; we cannot cheat death. Etta hardened herself, straining to listen to the sound of her feet so she wouldn’t have to hear Henry’s words rising in her mind again, to see his bloodied face.
Etta stepped up to the table, feeling the icy pressure of the Belladonna’s gaze on her. When she was sure she’d released enough of her frustration in order to keep her expression neutral, Etta met her eyes and held out the offer. The woman plucked it out of her hand like a petal off a flower.
Standing near the table, Etta picked up the murmurs of the bidders, the debates they were having with themselves, as if all of their words had been funneled to that exact spot. But even those conversations were lost to the sound of the blood rushing in her ears.
If she reached out, she’d be able to brush the smooth, dark wood of the box that held the astrolabe. The candlelight caught all of the intricate detail, the etchings and marks of the device resting on the box’s velvet interior. Etta had held it for only a moment, but she recognized it all the same.
The flames flickered with her next step forward, and the sight gripped her, made her hold the next breath she drew in—because when the flames danced, so did the image of the burly guards.
A projection? An impressive one. How—?
Don’t do it, don’t do it— But she couldn’t help herself. She brushed her fingers against the edge of the astrolabe’s box.
The lid snapped down. The Belladonna’s long fingers, knotted at the joints, held it firmly in place.
“I see your heart,” the woman said. “It cannot be you.”
The scream set Etta’s pulse stuttering long before she saw the splash of dark blood against the curtain. A piercing laugh followed, an attack on her eardrums, and her legs were suddenly weak beneath her.
Them.
The Belladonna merely took a step back, crossed her arms over her chest, and watched as the same bidder’s body was tossed through the curtain, landing in a sickening, blood-soaked heap in the central aisle, his mask askew. The force of it blew out the candles at the table and the guards vanished like shadows meeting sunlight.
Etta barely swallowed her gasp of shock as she turned toward the Belladonna. But the woman’s face was impassive as she watched a new figure emerge at the entrance to the tent. It must have been a man, for he was broad in the shoulders and seemed almost inhumanly tall. He was draped in a shimmering cloak of gold and silver threads that made him look like a flickering flame. He reached up and slowly lowered the hood, never breaking eye contact with the Belladonna.
His shock of white hair was combed back neatly over his skull, and though Etta recognized his face as human, all of his features seemed to be exaggerated by the desperate way his skin clung to his pointed chin and prominent cheekbones. The arch of his brow was severe, and several veins bulged across his forehead. He looked as if he’d been carved from wax—patches of his skin seemed to gleam as golden as his cloak, while others were gray and flaking.
But even in decay, he seemed…
Radiant.
The small boy, the Belladonna’s servant, had been sitting to one side of the table, his book open in his lap. Now he stood, calmly shutting the cover, and left through the rear of the tent.
“It’s been a lifetime,” the Belladonna called to him. “And now we find ourselves here again.”
“I might have known it was you. What an intriguing reinvention; and more intriguing still that you did not consume this one, this time.” The man walked with an eerie silence, the only sound was his long golden robe whispering against the stone ground.
“You know, I’ve been quite content with two lives, the second of which will keep me in comfort for many years yet.” The Belladonna’s eyes drifted down the length of the man, skimming over the worn edges of his form. “It seems the same cannot be said for you. I wonder, how long would you have without it? I could not have drawn you out if you were anything short of desperate. Unless, of course, you merely wished to see the flock. I admit, they are amusing. From time to time.”
“I am as impervious to your words as I am to your blades,” he said, the words chiming like a song.
“We shall see.” Etta almost jumped clear out of her skin. It sounded as though the Belladonna were standing directly beside her, whispering the words loudly to her for the man to overhear. “Why…it looks as though a single spark would set you aflame.”
A shadow passed over the man’s face. That strike, at least, had landed. “I felt your mark upon that child, that young man, and spared his life only to amuse myself by killing him in front of you. This game is at its end, sister.”
The Belladonna gazed back, as serene and still as the moon. “And so it is.”
The man’s eyes were like sunlight passing through glass, intensifying as they fixated on something. Etta felt the gaze burn through her skin, to her core, as his eyes flicked over to her. They narrowed, as if in recognition, and terror froze her in place.
She sucked in a sharp breath; at that moment, darkness broke loose from the closest stall and flooded the tent with night. Blood slapped the white canvas, the fabric rending, as a body was thrown through. It rolled over to them, limbs flapping, sucking wounds visible, until the stranger—a traveler Etta didn’t recognize—gazed up at her, unseeing.
She was pinned by that moment, unable to get her feet under her again. The screams of the other travelers tore through her ears, but she couldn’t work up one of her own, could barely breathe.
“Etta!”
Nicholas, Sophia, and Julian tore out of their stalls as she dove for the table, for the box, for the astrolabe. Her fingers closed around it, and she felt the familiar pulse of the astrolabe’s power inside. The air pulled around her—her only warning before she was blown off her feet by the impact of someone slamming into her. The ground rushed up to greet her.
No, no, no! The box flew out of her hands as she fell, her vision blanking out with the force of her impact on the stone. She heard the wood splinter; her knife, her sole weapon, clattered as it danced away; but before she could reach for either, a torrent of black fell over her. Hot spittle flew in her eyes; the attacker’s weight was oppressive, as if trying to force her deeper into the ground. Etta choked on her next breath as the man leaned low, coming close enough for her to smell the decay emanating from his rotting teeth. His clawlike dagger dug into her upper arm and twisted.
With a cry, Etta managed to unpin one hand long enough to catch his jaw, desperately reaching with the other for the knife she’d lost, muscles straining, fingers grasping—
A sword swung out, its dull edge catching the Shadow on the side of his head. The blow was enough to stun him, but not to knock him off her chest. Etta managed to wriggle that last inch to the left, latch on to her knife, and, without any thought but getting out from under his weight, slam the blade upward, into the only place she could find without armor: his neck. The spill of dark blood made her stomach riot as it bubbled from the man’s wound. The Shadow was shoved away from her, and she sucked the smoky air into her already burning lungs.
Etta scrambled to her feet, assisted by a hand that gripped her beneath one shoulder. She whirled—
“Are you hurt?”
Henry stood there, his white robe spattered with blood. A bruise covered his skin from his temple to his jaw, and he couldn’t seem to fully straighten to his full, powerful height. But it was him. Alive.
Etta felt the burn of tears in her eyes, and choked on her words. His face was so unusually soft as he looked at her that she had to wonder if he’d mistaken her shock for fear. She stumbled forward, surprising both of
them as her arms wrapped around his center, and she buried her face in his shoulder.
Alive.
“Are you—are you all right?” he asked, one tentative hand touching the back of her head.
Behind him, around him, men and women burst through the entrance of the tent, in clothing that ranged in style from the twentieth century to the first, weapons in hand. Leading the charge was Li Min, shrouded in black silk. The young woman shot forward, skimming through the carnage, seemingly searching. Nicholas and Sophia were locked in the middle of a blood-soaked circle, the bodies piling around them, choking them off from the rest of the room—from the attackers, the victims, the men and women who clutched their dead, screaming, until they too were silenced. With the smoke filling the space, it was nearly impossible to tell a shadow from a Shadow.
Nicholas stumbled, taking a blow to his back that brought him to his knees. Li Min drew herself back, just like an arrow notched on a bow, and then she was flying again, straight for him. She pulled a small dagger from her boot, launching it at the neck of the Shadow who’d cornered them at the table. The range of emotions that exploded across Sophia’s face at the sight of the other girl was indescribable.
“You are not forgiven!” she shouted.
Li Min kicked a silver serving platter up off the wreckage of canvas and wood on the floor. A man—an Ironwood—had taken up a gun and aimed, but she used the heavy platter to deflect the shot away from Nicholas and Sophia, and then to knock the man clear off his feet. In her next move, she seemed to produce a sword out of thin air, driving it through the back of the Shadow who had recovered enough to swing her claw and sword at Sophia’s face. Nicholas, his face fixed in determination, ripped the blade out from between her shoulders and proceeded to slash her with the cold dispassion of someone who’d fought, and thrived, in many more battles than his opponent could ever imagine.
Sophia gripped the front of Li Min’s cloak, drew her in, and kissed her soundly as the flames from the nearby candles caught the tent and set it ablaze.