A challenge. A dare.
Kael’s nostrils flared. “Fine.”
Her eyes widened, lashes fluttering in disbelief. “What?”
“I’m going into the city.” He stepped forward, towering now above her. “You’re coming with me.”
She opened her mouth, to protest but he silenced her with a flick of his hand.
“You’ll wear glamour,” he said. “You’ll obey every order I give. And if you disobey me, I’ll carry you back to this chamber like I did the night of the feast, only this time… I won’t set you down gently.” He offered a knowing smirk.
Maris’s pulse stuttered not entirely from fear. The air between them pulsed. A heartbeat. Two.
She stood slowly, chin tilted high.
Without hesitation, she said, "Let us be on our way then, your highness."
-Kael-
He hated how well she moved in shadow.
Dressed in plain leather and wool, dyed ink-dark and cinched at the waist, Maris looked like any street-born girl in the capital. He kept a glamour over her face, just enough to blur the unique angles that had lodged into his mind like a blade. Still, she glowed. Kael’s own glamour shifted his hair from starlit black to merchant-brown and dimmed the gleam of his skin. But nothing could smother the predator in his stride.
Nythra’s capital city sprawled like a living beast around Calyrix Castle. Narrow alleys spilled into broad, stone avenues. Market tents of blood-red silk fluttered from balconies, their spices curling into the air like incense. Roasting meats, fried dough, and the sharp bite of fermented plumwine mixed into a pungent, intoxicating fog.
Maris crinkled her nose.
“You’ll get used to it,” Kael said.
“I’d rather not.”
The crowds were thick today, traders from the coast, nightbound nobles disguised in charm glamour, street children darting between wagons. Musicians played haunting three-stringed harps beneath lantern-lit awnings, the melody ghostlike. A beggar woman sang an old ballad about the five gods, her voice fraying at the edges like an unraveling thread.
They passed a masked fortune-teller murmuring to cards made of bone.
A blacksmith sharpening twin daggers that gleamed green with poison oil.
A girl no older than Maris, selling copper coins strung on cursed thread to ward off dream-spirits.
Kael watched Maris’s eyes take it all in, the colors, the smoke, the rot beneath the silk. He hated that he found her awe beautiful.
But his mind was on the hunt. Astrielle had come through here, he knew she had been the one to leak information — acting on wounded pride. Someone saw her. Someone spoke to her. And someone would die if they helped her leave this city alive. He had checked her chambers this morning, the maids said they had not seen her in an age. So that left the city or beyond the walls.
He was pulled from his thoughts as he sensed the danger a breath before the scream.
It curled around his spine like frostbite, an unnatural cold threading through the crowd.
Kael’s hand shot out, gripping Maris’s elbow. “Stay behind me.”
They had just turned down a tighter alley, slipping toward one of the lesser-used wine streets of Nythra’s capital, where the shadows were thicker, and few dared name the things they saw out of the corners of their eyes.
The creature erupted from a collapsed stable house, bone-thin, sinew-covered, slinking on spider limbs and trailing black smoke like ash. Its eyes glowed a molten silver-blue, and its mouth was packed with too many teeth.
A nightmare come to life. One of the veilspawn, that slipped through unnoticed, feeding on the dreams of the desperate.
A woman screamed behind them. Bottles shattered. Kael unsheathed his sword in a blink, already casting a protection glyph with the other hand but it wasn’t fast enough.
The beast lunged.
