“I could ask the same of you, rake.”
He sits upright, a word poised on his lips. Then he freezes.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end as I’m suddenly aware of our too-quiet surroundings. No birds. No whinnying moon mares. Just the crack of a twig and the slow, rhythmic sound of creeping footsteps.
“What is it?” I whisper.
He releases a grumbling sigh. “Brigands.”
21
EMBER
“Brigands?” I ask, heart thumping a panicked rhythm. “What do you mean, brigands? Who would dare attack a royal coach?” My first thought is Saint Lazaro. That’s how the rebellions started, with smaller attacks on ambassadors traveling between kingdoms, taking hostages of royal sons and daughters, nieces and nephews.
“Stay low,” Franco says. “They don’t always attack with weapons, but if they do…”
“Who’s attacking us?”
Franco puts a finger to his lips and shushes me. “If you keep talking, I’ll throw you outside to find out.” He cocks his head, listening. The footsteps are closer now. Slowly, he shifts his weight to the side and rises to his feet, keeping to the side of the window. A few more beats pass.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
He flashes me a dark, crooked smile, then reaches for the door. “Let this be a warning for you too.”
He shoves the door open. I don’t see who’s on the other side, but I hear their screams. Franco takes a slow, leisurely step out of the coach, then another, until he has both feet on the forest floor. I creep forward on my hands and knees, terrified of what I’ll find. At first, all I see is Franco’s back, arms raised, his body cloaked in swirling shadows from head to toe. But as he steps farther and farther away from the door, I catch sight of the figures who surround him. Three are frozen in place with dark shadowy tendrils connecting them to the prince. Two more drop knives at their feet and begin to retreat. Before they can take more than a few steps, the prince sends two smoky tendrils toward them. The shadows latch onto their heads, freezing them alongside the first three.
My mind spins to comprehend what I’m seeing. Is he hurting them? Controlling them? His strange dark cords seem to draw more shadows from each of the five figures.
That’s when I realize something. Our attackers aren’t Saint Lazaro’s minions.
They’re children.
Human children.
While each wears a hat and a cloth over their mouths, a few of their coverings have slipped off. I see rounded ears, gaunt dirty faces, filthy clothes. The oldest looks a few years younger than me while the youngest can’t be any older than ten. My heart clenches. They remind me of the children of the Gray Quarter. Or worse—the slums.
I pull myself to standing and rush from the carriage. Afraid to get too close to the prince and his strange shadows, I keep my distance and come up alongside him. “Franco, stop! They’re just children.”
I look up at his face then.
And scream.
Gone are his dazzling looks, replaced with a monstrous sight. His skin is thin and translucent, violet veins pulsing beneath the surface. His eyes are fully black without a single hint of white around the irises, eyelids rimmed with red. His lips are pulled back in a vicious snarl. Where before he had just two delicately pointed canines, he now has an entire mouth full of long, sharp teeth stained with blood.
His head swivels toward me and I shriek again, retreating. Then, in the blink of an eye, the monstrous face is gone. The tendrils unlock from his victims, and shadows absorb into him until they too are gone. Five screams erupt around us. My eyes leave the prince just long enough to see the terrified children darting away.
The prince looks from me to the retreating forms. When his eyes return to mine, they’re full of fury. “Damn it, impostor. Why did you have to distract me?”
“What the hell were you doing to them?” I say, voice trembling.
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“You do if you were trying to murder human children. I don’t care if you’re a prince. You have no right—”
“I wasn’t trying to murder them,” he says through his teeth.
“Then what was that…that thing you did?” I wave a hand toward his face, where moments ago he looked like a creature from a nightmare.
