When she turned the next corner, Ana drew a sharp breath. Her steps faltered.
Where the Playpen once was sat a charred skeleton of a building. The farcical imitation of a Cyrilian cathedral was burned black, the stained-glass windows once depicting scantily clad women now shattered. Gaping holes were left in their wake like empty eye sockets staring out from a ruined face.
It was hard to imagine the Playpen as it had been over a moon ago, when she had encountered Yuri in the midst of an Affinite trafficking ring: raucous, crowded with writhing bodies, and hot with the pungent smell of sweat and cloying perfume. Now, the gilded mahogany doors had been smashed through. Debris cracked beneath her boots as she entered, her steps echoing loudly in the silence. Beaded curtains littered the floor like pearls from a broken necklace, and the love seats were overturned, stuffing spilling from them.
Ana cast her Affinity before her like a torch, sensing the outline of the place through the blood splattered on the walls around her and the steps leading to the room below.
Gradually, she picked up on a single flicker somewhere beneath her.
Her contact.
With a gloved hand she retrieved a globefire from the inner pocket of her new cloak—a dark red this time, the color of blood. It was one she’d chosen in a remote village in a rare act of self-indulgence.
Ana shook it. The chemicals inside rattled and then, within seconds, crackled to life in the form of a small, persistent fire, throwing light onto her surroundings.
Holding the globefire before her, she descended the staircase and made her way down the long corridor that led to the auditorium. Ana’s Affinity pulled taut, tuned in to the flicker of blood that grew closer with every step.
She entered the room that just weeks ago had been alive with torchlight and laughter and the thrum of drums.
The performance dome now resembled a graveyard. Stone pillars were in pieces and covered the floor, the silk and ribbons once clinging to them now half-buried among the rubble. Here and there, the walls were scorched with burn marks, and people had toppled the statues of the Deities that once guarded the stage. A sorrowful stone face stared up at her as she picked her way across the room.
Ana stopped before the stage. It was still littered with flowers and bits of whatever elements had been used to perform before it was destroyed. The blackstone-infused glass that May had brought down glittered like snow. No one had even bothered to clean up this place. Kerlan must have left it like this after the rebellion.
For a moment, a ghost of a memory flickered in her mind, and she saw a child standing on the stage, nursing a flower to life. The child looked up, her ocean-eyes bright, her hair a soft tangle around her face.
We are but dust and stars.
Ana turned away abruptly. Tears ached, deep in her chest.
But there was something else. In the torrent of her emotions, Ana almost—almost—missed the flicker of movement at the edges of her Affinity.
The light of her globefire suddenly vanished, plunging the auditorium into darkness.
Ana could hear her own breathing, the stuttering of her heartbeats…and the slightest shuffling sound from somewhere beyond the wreckage of the stage. She shook her globefire; the chemicals rattled, the glass was warm, as though the flame still burned…but there was no light.
She could sense the person standing about a dozen paces from her.
Ana drew a sharp breath. “Show yourself,” she said.
A spark of light flickered in the globefire, between her fingers. And then the light flared again, filling the chamber.
On the stage, by the statue of a weeping Deity, stood a young man. He’d appeared as suddenly as an illusion, and as he gazed at her intensely, she had the distinct impression that he was less illuminated by the light than carved out by an absence of shadows.
“Apologies if I frightened you.” His voice was smooth, cold, dark as velvet night. “It is necessary that we take the utmost precautions when meeting with strangers.”
She considered him, thinking of the way the light of her globefire had been stolen, watching how the shadows seemed to drape him like a cloak.
Search for my contact in the shadows.
An Affinite, then. A shadow Affinite.
“I’m a friend,” Ana replied, “of Yuri’s.”
“I highly doubt that.” He began to walk toward her, debris cracking beneath his polished shoes. His outline flickered, shadows licking at his edges, and as he drew near, she began to make out his features. He looked to be around Ramson’s age, just a few years older than she. A crop of straight, ink-black hair fell with casual neatness over his forehead, framing a startlingly beautiful face with the features of the Aseatic kingdoms. He was clad in an all-white tunic, silver buttons fastened tightly at his pale throat. Lithe and elegant, he resembled a fairy-tale prince.
Only, his eyes held a wild darkness.
Briefly, she wondered whether he had been trafficked into the Empire at a young age, like her friend Linn; like May.
