This whole kingdom is shadowed. I feel it differently than when I came here for Colden Moeshka the first time. One would think the Shadow World has seeped through realms and begun to bleed the Nether Reaches’ poisonous presence across the land.
Perhaps with Thamaos’s rise, it has.
Moeshka shakes off my grip, coughing bursts of frost from my sifting us across the realm. “You couldn’t deliver meinsidethe palace? Or at least somewhere less—” He bends at the waist and coughs again, then glances past me. “Awful?”
Taking a deep breath, he straightens and adjusts his tunic like a proper man. Much more proper than the soldier he used to be and a league away from a beast like me.
I look over my shoulder. We stand in a narrow alleyway behind a silversmith’s shop, my pawed feet pressed into a mixture of mud whose cold I cannot feel and sharp-edged gravel that might as well be air. A sleeping woman sits on a wooden pallet with her back and head against the door to the silver shop. Her mouth hangs wide open as she snores, and her bodice lies in a puddle of black fabric around her waist. A stump of a man lies with his head in her lap. One of his hands clings to the neck of a wine bottle, his face pressed to her bare tit.
Half alert, his beady eyes require a moment to focus, but then he latches his gaze on Moeshka and me, blinking in confusion, like he might still be drunk and is only now realizing it.
“You’re dreaming, you stupid fuck,” I grumble. “Go back to sleep.” Frowning, he slowly lowers his head to the woman’s lap once more, and I turn back to Moeshka. “In spirit form, I’ve no power over the magick of men. Coming to rescue you for Nephele was dangerous enough. I will not risk becoming trapped by the prince’s Brotherhood now that they know I’ve already infiltrated their walls once. They’ll be more prepared this time, especially with Thamaos inside.”
I glance back up at the palace. The street view is different than I recall, but not so different that the sight doesn’t unbury a thousand memories, even carrying me back to a time so long ago that nothing occupied this land save for marigolds and wildlife. Quezira was lovely before a god and his men sullied its fields, forests, and shores.
“I’m sure you can find your way into Min-Thuret alone,” I say, watching Moeshka scrub his hand through his dirty hair. “If not, try to remember your training. There’s a simple way to penetrate the enemy’s gates.”
He peers at me with a black stare sharpened to a deadly point against the relentless friction of three-hundred years of hatred. Even still, the dregs of the soldier who once considered me his leader rises to the surface of the immortal king standing before me.
“Get caught,” he mutters, as though he loathes that he hasn’t forgotten my words.
“And I’ll leave you to do just that. If you achieve your goal and persuade the prince to escape, be ready when I return. I will not hesitate to leave you here to rot.” I study the sky, the way it brightens, though the clouds still cast the world in shades of gray. “I’d say you have a few hours at most. Like I told the witch, I’ll do all she asks before the sun reaches the middle of the noon-day sky.”
He looks at me sidelong. “So confident for a god who’s never been raised from the grave before.”
“You mock me. But you should hope I’m right. For your friends’ sake, if nothing else.”
“Agod?”At the sound of a woman’s voice, I twist toward the couple behind me.The woman shoves at the man with one hand as she attempts and fails to shield her rather voluptuous breasts with the other. “What in the devils? You have,you havefangs. And claws. Emon, he hasfangs and claws.”
The man jerks awake, startled, and takes me in again, from white hair to beast-like feet. Even though he’s likely still steeped in liquor, I can see the realization that I am no apparition settling in. He swallows, the knot in his throat bobbing.
“Of course, I have fangs and claws.” I curl my lips back. “I have to eviscerate and eat you withsomething.” I lunge toward them and growl again, this time much louder than before. I also send a heavy frost into the air, enough to cloak their exposed skin in a shimmering, white sheen.
The pair scramble to their feet, screaming, and stumble-run down the alley until they round a corner into another alley where I hear the city stirring. Wooden wheels rumble as carts roll across cobbled streets, and sleepy voices mutter their protests to the rise of day. We’ve but minutes before this bastard and his woman run wailing to the night constables that a giant half-man/half-wolf is prowling Quezira’s back alleys.
“Go.” I jerk my head at Moeshka. “Before any control you have over the fate of your next few hours disappears.”
Moeshka grits his teeth, making the muscle in his square jaw leap, as though he cannot stand the thought of obeying me. For effect, he lifts his hand and flings out his fingers, sending shards of ice flying down the alley. They’re as fast and sharp-tipped as arrows, but the only thing they strike is the side of the next building.
He curls his fingers into a fist. “I can control my fate, but I’m a bit impatient, and I’d rather not suffer a ridiculous deterrence.” With that, he turns to leave.
“Say whatever you must to convince yourself that you’re not doing exactly what I told you to do, soldier.” I scoff as he shakes his head and keeps walking. “I can’t figure outwhatshe sees in you,” I add, a knife I can’t help but twist.
I don’t know why I can’t leave well enough alone. Why I envy him enough to feel such spite and enmity—for a human, immortal or not. But I do. And not because of anything we went through in what feels like another lifetime. No. Only because he holds Nephele Bloodgood’s heart and doesn’t know what to do with it.
He stops and spins back around. “Ah. I see now. If either of us is jealous, it’s you, isn’t it?” He closes the distance between us in a few long strides. “If you care for Nephele at all,” he says, “though that seems utterly impossible, tell her that Iwillreturn. If you can’t get to me, assure her I know what I’m doing and that I’ll find my way back home. After what you did to me, you owe me that much.”
“I owe you nothing, and you already chose your home. Like a traitor, you chose to be with the enemy. Care to know the name of the man you’re betraying your friends for?”
Moeshka’s eyes, however mistrustful of me, sparkle with anger, but also with curiosity. “Yes,” he grits out. “I want his name.”
“Your prince really is a prince,” I tell him. “He’s the oldest child and only son of a very well-known king you might remember. King Gherahn.”
The shock on Moeshka’s face is quite what I expected. I give him a few moments to let this knowledge sink in.
“Prince Elias Gherahn is his name,” I finally say. “His father is the man whose armies we battled so long ago. Somehow, the prince still lives. And youfeelsomething for him, don’t you? More than the loyalty youshouldfeel for the witch who has warmed your bed for years or the kingdom that has bled and died in your name.”
In a movealmosttoo swift to detect, he’s holding a dagger of ice to my throat. I could sift behind him and drive that dagger into his skull. But I don’t.
