I always have time to make deals with your guild, Gabriel had said. You do offer the prettiest toys.
Misha must have made her deal with him just moments before. No wonder Jeshickah had made a point to clarify that Vance’s agreement with the Shantel would apply to future negotiations, so it wouldn’t … how had Jeshickah put it? Complicate other business.
“Just for that?” Aaron echoed. His gaze was on the pyre, hot before us. “No, not just for that.”
“Absolutely not,” Malachi said, speaking up. My heart lightened. People were angry and hurt and wanted to lash out, but they would listen to Malachi. “The last thing Farrell would have wanted is for us to engage in the slave trade to—”
“The last thing Farrell wanted,” Aaron spat, “was my safety. He shoved me away. He told me to run. He told me that I needed to take the throne, that I could not be caught in this fight. He died for that idea.”
Vance’s voice was harsh as he told Misha, “If you do this, you’ll be no better than Hara. She sold your brother and you. Now you want to even the scales by wallowing in the same sin?”
“Sin?” Misha echoed. “If you’re offended by what we do here, go back to your masters. I’ll send you with Hara if you like.”
Malachi gasped. “I will not allow—”
“Allow?” Misha snapped. “We are the Obsidian guild, Malachi, and Aaron is a prince. We bow to no master, least of all you. You allow us nothing. If you are not with us, you can get out of this camp.”
My voice seemed to escape me before my mind caught up, and I heard myself say, “I am with Malachi. I am sick of this, trading and selling and buying flesh. It’s disgusting, and degrading, and it will destroy us all. Farrell would never—”
Misha’s slap caught me by surprise. My head whipped to the side and my ears rang as she said, “If you refuse to stand with me, and to obey Farrell’s dying wishes, then you have no right to speak his name.”
“Misha, think about what you’re doing,” Malachi pleaded, an instant before Vance caught Misha by the arm and dragged her away from me, shouting, “Keep your hands to yourself, or—”
Fighting.
My own kin were suddenly at each other’s throats. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t want to understand it. Farrell was dead, and now the only family I had left was tearing itself apart. Torquil had leapt to Misha’s defense, and swung a punch at Vance, while Aika finally let loose months of simmering anger and grabbed Misha by the throat.
Malachi stepped between Vance and Torquil while I tried to plead with Aika to release Misha. Not long ago, we had unleashed this violence against guards who had been sent to kill us, and left their bodies in the woods for the scavengers. No matter how we disagreed, I did not want to see the same deadly force unleashed against our own people.
I saw Torquil throw Malachi to the ground at the same time that Misha got a knee up and kicked Aika away. She shouted at me, “This is the only way! How can you not see that?”
“Everyone, you need to calm down,” Aaron pleaded. He knelt next to Malachi, holding up a hand to try to keep Torquil back as he pleaded, “Malachi, we need you with us. You have been our guiding light, our prophet, since before I was born. We—”
“Stop saying we,” Malachi snapped, shoving the prince of the serpiente away so he sprawled in the dirt. “You are not us. You are not Obsidian. You are—”
“I am Farrell Obsidian’s son!” Aaron protested.
“And Farrell is dead!” Malachi shouted.
The words seemed to echo long in the woods. Farrell is dead.
Voices overlapped, protesting, shouting, crying, chaos, but Torquil’s cut through the rest to say almost calmly, “Does anyone else hear that?”
When our shouting ceased, the sound of hurrying footsteps in the woods was clear. More guards.
“Aaron, can you help us?” Torquil asked.
Aaron replied, “I need to go. Misha—”
“Coward,” Vance spat. “You say you’re one of us, but you’ll run as soon as—”
“Stop it!” I hissed. If there were guards coming our way, we couldn’t afford to stand here bickering. “We need to go. Malachi—”
Aaron disappeared into the shadows before the guards broke into the clearing. Most of the others fled, but Malachi seemed to freeze, staring at the space where his sister had been.
“Malachi,” I repeated as I reached for my dagger. I wouldn’t leave him alone.
“Kadee …” Vance had stayed with me, and drawn his own weapon, but his body was trembling with exhaustion and fear as he moved to set his shoulder next to mine.
On Malachi’s other side, I glimpsed Aika with her stave in her hands.
The guards who had us in their sights seemed to be waiting. Were they nervous to approach the Obsidian guild’s famous half-falcon witch … or did they just know they had even more backup on the way?
Malachi took a deep breath, and I saw his eyes flicker around us.
“We run,” he said. The words were soft, but the power of them flowed over me, through me. I dropped the weapon in my hand, saving the instant it would have taken to sheathe it. Aika and Vance did so with equal hesitation, and like a flock of birds that shifts direction without warning, we fled together.
For the last score of years, the legend had built that the Obsidian guild was capable of disappearing without a trace. I could feel Malachi’s magic struggling to hide us now, but there was a difference between hiding in plain sight and disappearing once seen.
We ran, and the guards chased, and the night became darker.
Where were the others?
Do not think of them now, I commanded myself. Protect yourself, and those who stand with you.
I let out a yelp of surprise when Malachi grabbed my hand and yanked me down, drawing Vance with us at the same time. Aika followed without questioning, and then I realized we were in a grove of white birch trees. I could see Malachi’s lips moving as if in prayer, but I could not hear the words he whispered.
Three of the guards who had been chasing us came as close as the edge of our birch refuge, but Malachi’s magic kept them from noticing us there. I thought the rapid patter of Vance’s heart might deafen me as he leaned against me, and I held him tightly. I felt the madness rise in him, the fear of captivity that made him want to launch himself at the white bars of our self-imposed cage and draw blood from our captors, who shook their heads and began to make camp only a few yards away from our refuge.
Why were there just four of us here? Were we really the only ones who had stood with Malachi instead of following Misha?
I realized Malachi was looking at me. Softly, he said, “The spell a white viper spins is like a spiderweb. It is nearly invisible, even to one caught in its trap.” I looked nervously to the guards, so near our hiding space, but they did not seem to hear Malachi’s hushed voice. “You two were away and Aika always avoided her, but Misha has snared Aaron so tightly that he has no choice but to follow her and the others … even Torquil.…” He looked at Aika, whose mate had gone the other way when our group had split. “I think Farrell might have been able to stand up to her still, if—”
His breath hitched. As if the sound had given me permission, I felt the first sob break its way out of my chest.
I’m not sure if I slept, or simply passed the night in an exhausted, numb fugue. Sometime in the rainy morning I found myself asking Malachi, “Do we have … any kind of plan?”
“I don’t know,” our prophet said. He looked toward where the serpiente guards had been, but they had moved on as soon as dawn turned the black skies gray.
“We need to warn Hara,” Vance said. His expression twisted as if he had tasted something sour before he added, “Carefully. I don’t imagine she will welcome us gratefully if we go speak to her, even if we are trying to protect her.”
Hara was a symptom, not the problem. “We need to stop Misha,” I said.
“Do we?” Aika asked. “I don’t approve of her methods, but
she is the one who is supposed to—”
“I’m sick of prophecy,” I snapped. I met Malachi’s pale gaze without flinching. “I’m sorry, but I am. I’m sick of us following what some vision says. We sold Alasdair to Midnight. We helped the Shantel sell the sakkri to Midnight, too. Now Misha and Aaron are working to sell Hara Kiesha Cobriana to Midnight. If we continue this way, pretty soon every royal house of the shapeshifters will be owned by the vampires.”
The sakkri’s prophecy echoed in my mind: Each great nation will give its flesh and blood to the beast. Every land will know betrayal and bereavement. A white queen will rise in desperation and brutality. The line is drawn. Players take their places. The battle cannot be won, but it will not be lost.
It was time to draw the line. It was time to admit that sometimes, mere survival wasn’t enough.
It was time to make a stand.
AMELIA ATWATER-RHODES wrote her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, when she was thirteen. Other books in the Den of Shadows series are Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror, Midnight Predator, Persistence of Memory, Token of Darkness, All Just Glass, Poison Tree, and Promises to Keep. She has also published the five-volume series The Kiesha’ra: Hawksong, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and a Voice of Youth Advocates Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection; Snakecharm; Falcondance; Wolfcry, an IRA-CBC Young Adults’ Choice; and Wyvernhail. Her most recent novel is Bloodwitch (The Maeve’ra: Volume One). Visit her online at AmeliaAtwaterRhodes.com.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Bloodkin
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