Yes, the Raven Ball was a feast for a girl like her. Every single important person in the kingdom and from lands beyond gallivanting in a bubbly, liquor-fueled daze. The work practically did itself on a night like that. If she was lucky, she’d be able to scrounge up enough dirt to hold her father off for months. She practically salivated at the thought.
The rancid smell of decay brought her back to reality in a hurry.
Elysia looked down into the sink, grimacing at the box. Knife in hand, her stomach rolled as she put off what she needed to do.
“Come on, Parker,” she chastised herself. “You’re made of stronger stuff than this.”
Wariness twisting her face, her knife slashed through the bow of twine before she could overthink it. Box flung open wide, a fresh bloodied tongue stared back at her, pink and red, with a film of white on the top. Elysia swallowed down the instant surgeof bile in the back of her throat and grabbed the blood splattered note pinned to the top flap of the box.
Too bad you didn’t hold yours.
Elysia didn’t blink until the words on the note began to blur. She had zero questions about who this little love note was from—the disgusting creatures who had been stealing women and draining them of their blood. Ever since the Fall, a new illness had cropped up, and eventually your blood ran black with it. These con men were sellingfresh bloodto the desperate folks infected, but instead of finding willing donors for their harebrained scheme, they were murdering women.
The women were typically a specific demographic. Single, childless, and addicted to whatever street drug was the current trend. In other words, women who wouldn’t be held as credible or missed.
But they were missed.
These women moved in packs, taking care of each other the best they could, and the more of them who disappeared, the louder they grew. Brushed aside by the Crown, Elysia let her magic and curiosity carry her away.
She hadn’t expected to discover a bloodletting healing sham. Collecting enough information had only taken a few evenings, and then she’d anonymously dropped off a file of facts to the Crown’s investigators. They might not care about the women, but they did care about infected citizens guzzling blood like it was some sort of magic cure-all. There was obviously no logic in this action. Healers had tried transfusions years ago to no avail and putting blood in your stomach wasn’t the same as replacing what was in your veins. Elysia could only imagine thehopelessness that led to being willing to swallow down gulps of blood.
While there wasn’t technically anything magical or forbidden occurring, the unnaturalness of the situation was disturbing to the Crown. If people were willing to drink blood, then the next thing they knew they would be seeking magic. Better to snub it out immediately.
Given that she had basically handed the Crown a map to the bloodletters, she’d assumed they would take care of the guilty parties. Clearly, she had been mistaken. Someone had gotten away, and they seemed to be well aware of who had gotten all their scammy friends strung up in the square.
Elysia slowly lowered the note to the counter, feeling tired down to her soul. She should’ve known better than to get involved in this mess. As if her father hadn’t already punished her enough, now there was a tongue in her sink and death threats to contend with, and her day hadn’t even begun. Her mouth tightened. There was only one place for her to go now.
It wasn’t to the castle or her parents, and it definitely wasn’t to the bumbling Crown idiots who had let this person get away.
No, she knew a man who could fix this before the sun could so much as rise.
Chapter 2
Elysia clambered up onto a turret.Inside the turret was the bedroom of the man known as Kava’s Shadow. There was no doubt in her mind that he’d heard her not-so-subtle scraping and cursing as she climbed up the side of his damn house. Ass firmly planted on the roof, she kicked her legs and looked out at the horizon. Still two hours from sunrise, there was barely any light to be seen. Only a dim sheen filtered through the heavy sky. But that was normal here at any time of day.
The roof’s layered clay tiles were slick, slippery from the constant soft but steady rain. Soot was a dark, mournful veil upon Relaclave. Mixed with the rain, it became an oily substance that had sent many victims tumbling from roofs, balconies, and even on the solid cobblestone roads.
Watercolor streaks of charcoal ran down the sides of the cream-toned homes surrounding her. If she had been feeling poetic, she would have said they looked like tears. A torrent of wind whipped her dark hair back, and she was grateful for the stimulus. Every inch of her body cried from the lack of sleep. It was a miracle she was even still awake. The venture over here had left her with burning muscles and her breath coming short and fast, when it should have been slow and controlled.
But the icy wind and water stung her wide awake, forcing her to be alert. Rain continued to splatter against her skin. She picked at the wet fabric clinging to her body.Disgusting.And there was her heart thumping erratically, unable to withstand her usual physical torture. Frustration cracked through her cool focus.Get it together, Parker.The question of how long she could keep this up was becoming pressing.
The lack of sleep. The rabid, but necessary obsession.
All the while pushing herself through her normal routines and duties.
The sounds of Gage shuffling around inside his room carried up to her. She knew he was just making her wait. The man had likely known she was on her way, long before she stuck her butt on his roof and settled in. She dragged her finger across a tile and inspected the nasty film now infesting the underside of her nail. Relaclave was undoubtedly a city of gray. The sky. The speckled buildings. The people and secrets that it held close.
Elysia’s secret was that she traded in those secrets.
She’d been born into the court and its politics.
Her father, Jack, controlled the region’s trades and imports. A highly necessary and important business in a land where the sun hid and barely anything grew. Her father, like many of the current regime, had come from nothing. Instead of gold and silver running in his veins, it was a brutal, undying need to prove himself. To maintain security at all costs. This was buried deep, of course. She doubted he had any idea what was beneath his own skin. He didn’t worry about those sorts of things. He was too busy being vigilant about how to continue scraping his way to the top. If he could do it, then anyone could. And if they couldn’t? That was their own damn problem.
There are some things people never want to experience again. Hunger that bends you in half. The loss of a place to rest your head. Your body being used in ways that are not your own.Rage that blinds you senseless. The whispers told her that Jack Parker once knew something about those kinds of things. He was ruthless now. No one would ever imagine he’d once been scared or helpless.
He’d taught her to never apologize.
That her only responsibility was to herself.
